COMING TO THE PAST

 Some in the family have recently expressed an interest in things genealogical (... Rachel).  On this FHE evening we take this opportunity for a non-typical post to share some bits of details regarding some historical family COMINGS AND GOINGS.

Recently, dad's aunt, Chris Mix shared an interesting connection between dad’s grandmother Maude Elizabeth Groberg Neeley and Lenore LaFount Romney, the mother of Mitt Romeny.  Yes, that Mitt Romney.  Maude and Lenore were dear friends in high school.   Lenore LaFount would go on to be an actress for MGM, first lady of Michigan and mother of a presidential candidate.  (More on Lenore LaFount can be found in Wikipedia under her name.)

Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt & Maudie

Maude and Lenore were both born in 1908.  Maude was born in Idaho Falls, on her maternal grandmother’s birthday, while Lenore was born in Logan, Utah.  Maude was orphaned as a baby and raised by her maternal grandmother – Elizabeth Susan Burnett Brunt – in Idaho Falls.  When Maude was 14 she talked her grandmother into a move to Salt Lake so Maude could attend school and Grandma Brunt could work in the Salt Lake Temple.  (Grandma Brunt often commented on her dream of a temple one day in Idaho Falls.)


While attending Salt Lake City Latter Day Saints High School, Maude made friends with Lenore LaFount.  During their junior year Lenore became sweethearts with senior George W. Romney.  George would serve a mission and have Lenore promise to wait for him (which she did).

Maude Groberg

After high school Maude convinced her grandmother to move back to Idaho so she could attend Ricks college in Rexburg.  George W. Romney’s uncle, George S. Romney was the president of Ricks at the time.  There were a lot of Romney cousins in Rexburg so Maude had the privilege to be in the home of the college president on occasion to visit with her friend Lenore. While at Ricks Maude met Kenneth Neeley.  They married in 1927 and had a baby girl, Lenore Elizabeth in 1928.  They named their first born Lenore, after Maude’s dear high school friend.  The little Neeley family eventually moved to Salt Lake where they grew to 8 children.

Kenneth & Maude

Baby Lenore Elizabeth

Maude and Lenore

As a side note - Maude’s brother, Delbert, who was raised in Ogden, Utah by an uncle, loved his Grandma Brunt. During his formative years he remembered his grandmother saying to him how much she wished there would be a temple in Idaho Falls.  After his mission and marriage, Delbert moved back to the town of his birth -- Idaho Falls.  Delbert quietly went about buying up the shanty shacks around the street where his grandmother had raised his baby sister Maudie.  Eventually he presented the rental properties to the brethren in Salt Lake for the purpose of building a temple. In 1937, six years after Grandma Brunt died, the first temple in Idaho was announced to be built on the gifted properties in Idaho Falls.  Delbert would eventually serve as the president of that temple from 1975 - 1980.  During that time he invited his widowed  little sister Maude, to came back to Idaho Falls to serve as a temple worker, overlooking the site of the little home where she lived and was raised by her grandmother.  The exact property is currently marked with a monument in her honor named, ELIZABETH COURT

We just had to add this last photo - altho' it has almost nothing to do with the above post.

Elizabeth Anderson - 2012      &   Lenore Elizabeth Neeley Cornwall - ca. 1934