In Search of Caroline
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Harriet 		Until the spring of 2009, we’d wondered about our Aunt Caroline. We knew only that our Utah celebrity Grandma Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young had mentioned three younger brothers and a sister to her friend, bishop, and biographer Orson F Whitney. We also knew that some of what Grandma Harriet had told Brother Whitney about her family wasn’t true. Might Clarissa Caroline Wheeler be just another example of Harriet’s fertile imagination? In other respects, we might excuse her factual lapses on the ground of ignorance, but we’re sure Grandma knew whether she really had a sister.
Orson
So here’s what we knew about Oliver’s and Hannah’s descendants as we set out for Cattaraugus County. Harriet and Isaac had six children together, all but one of whom married into Brigham Young’s family. Starting with our own Grandma Lucy, who was Brigham’s first plural wife; biologically, we come through her first (failed) marriage to William Seely. After Harriet married Brigham’s younger brother Lorenzo Dow Young, she gave him a couple of children, but none who lived to adulthood.

Of Harriet’s siblings, we were aware that Charles Oliver had died young and that Henry and Benjamin had “removed” to Ohio about the same time (1836) that Harriet and Isaac did; if the Wheeler boys had anything to do with the Mormons, we’ve yet to find evidence of it.
Clarissa Caroline, though, was a story yet to emerge. I’d checked the records of Salem, Massachusetts, where the siblings were reportedly born. Also those of Farmington and Freedom,
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