Connecting my mother's family to my husband's daughter-in-law

Recently I was looking on the Family Tree at FamilySearch.org for ancestors of our daughter-in-law. Her name would appear in the yellow squares above. Her grandfather Henry Eddington had a brother Marshall, whose wife was Dorothy Tanner. I was reviewing that Tanner line since my (adopted) son has some Tanner ancestors. I didn't find a connection to his ancestors, but noticed a spouse in the Tanner lineage named FLANDERS. That piqued my interest because my mother's maiden name was Flanders and those of that name in the US are my cousins. 

You can see in the chart above that Marshall Eddington's wife was Dorothy Tanner. Her father George had a sister named Jennie Mable Tanner, whose husband was Collins Lee Flanders. 

Collins's grandfather, as you can see in the blue box above, was Collins Eastman Flanders. I did a Google search to learn more of this man and discovered a very nice blog with his name, prepared by Jacque Bluth Gurney. The title of the post that appeared is "The mysteries of Collins Eastman Flanders". I was hooked. Here's a Flanders, a blog featuring only him, and a story about a "mystery"! 

The mystery involves his direct ancestry, thus the empty two boxes in my chart above. There may be more generations missing, but the blanks represent the unknown. You can read about Collins here. 

Of course I usually come upon these interesting discoveries when it's time to go to bed at night! It was difficult to do when I read on Jacque's blog that Collins Eastman Flanders was baptized into the LDS church in Salt Lake City on July 17, 1854. I had no idea any of my Flanders ancestors were members of the LDS church, as I am today. And 1854 was significant since the "Mormons" had only arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. These were the very early days in the history of the Church. Ground had just been broken for the construction of the Salt Lake Temple on April 6, 1853. 

By the way, at this link you can read a good recap about the life of John Tanner, husband of Elizabeth Bestwick and grandfather of Jennie Mable Tanner, above. 

I'm still quite amazed at the facts that were uncovered with the research of Jacque Gurney. I'm so grateful to know more and to also have the opportunity to "meet" her as a new Facebook friend. 

You can see at the bottom left of the chart above where I am: M Rebecca Margheim, second wife of Larry Jamison. My Flanders ancestry goes up to Stephen Flanders and Abigail Carter (and beyond), and Collins also presumably descends from that couple. I'll update this information if anyone is able to document his direct ancestry.

But for now, I'm still in a state of awe at the discovery of the connections from my Flanders family to the Eddington family. 

Don't tell me "It's a small world". We can't just establish connections to anyone we want to, so these connections are significant to me. And I feel blessed to make their discovery.