Flashback Family History Friday

The picture for this week's Flashback Family History Friday is of Martha Hermine Rasicot (Groberg).  She married Charles August Groberg, the brother of John Enoch Groberg, the father of Maude Elizabeth Groberg Neeley.    Martha was Maude's Aunt Mattie who had seven children and was having babies into the mid 1920s.   When Maude was 14 or 15, she visited her aunt in Ogden to help her care for her little ones.  Maude bathed Aunt Mattie's new baby and two younger children, loving and caring for them.  During this visit, Maude went to bed one night and prayed earnestly that she could one day have babies like her Aunt Mattie.  It was during this prayer that Maude heard a voice tell her that she would have eight children, if she desired.  Here are Maude's own words as recorded and transcribed by Lenore Neeley Cornwall:

"I went to bed and I said my payers and I said to bless Momma, help her not to be lonesome, bless everything to be alright and not let anything happen to her and to bless Aunt Mattie with her babies and everything.  I thought how wonderful it was and I said "Heavenly Father, I want to, when I grow up, have some babies just like Aunt Mattie and I want to pray for them right now, I want to ask you to help me be prepared to be able to have a family and to have little babies like that."  I was so sincere and I wanted it so much and I was kneeling there and I felt someone come into the room and stand right over me, but I didn't see them, but I heard the voice say, like you hear the still small voice, "There are eight children if you will" and it was so strong and so clear and I knew and I promised the Lord right there that I would not do anything that I knew of that would keep me from having the children that I would keep well and I would do everything I knew so that I would be able to have those children and I did.  I got married and I just knew that I would have eight if I could.  Before that night, you see, my mother had died when her third child was born and before that night I thought I was only going to have two children and I'm not going to take a chance on a third child.   I'm going to only have two children and this is what I had said all during my growing up years, until that night."

This was sent to Sue by Matthew Neeley.  He added the following insight.

I wonder how the Lord must have felt to hear Maude's plea to be a mother, especially knowing that her own mother died in childbirth.  It must have moved Him with compassion to see such faith.  Her prayer brought a blessing and promise of the Lord - one that Maude lived for and eventually obtained in due time through faith.   What a wonderful example!  

  

Aunt Mattie, or Martha Hermine Rasicot, was born 23 January 1883 and died 22 April 1962.   Her last baby died in 2012.