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“During the Nauvoo years, Charles began to court [Uncle] Brigham Young’s oldest daughter, Vilate… In February of 1847, upon returning from one trip to buy corn for the sick and starving Saints at Winter Quarters, Brigham Young asked Charles how he felt. Charles replied, ‘Just like getting married.’ Brigham responded, ‘Well, bring Vilate to my cabin and we’ll attend to it.’ After the short ceremony, but before he could be alone with his 17-year-old bride, Charles went with Brigham to attend to burials at the graveyard.”1
Photo courtesy of Jolene Allphin

Photo courtesy of Jolene Allphin 		These sketches don’t include many obituaries, but then I’ve never seen another obituary so extensive, informative, and entertaining as the one the Deseret News gave Uncle Charlie Decker when he died in 1901. I’ve squeezed the whole thing into the next page of this collection. At this scale, Valerie says it’s a bit hard to read; so, a transcription follows.

I’m aware of only two details that the newspaper got wrong: Uncle Charlie’s paternal family was of course Dutch, not German.2 And Aunt Vilate was Uncle Brigham’s second, not his first, daughter by his first wife, Miriam Works.3
1Ibid..
2Charlie may not have been aware of that, though. His mother, my 3rd great-grandmother Harriet Page Wheeler Decker Young, told Orson Whitney incorrectly that her family was Welsh. That’s a topic for another day and another document.
3It also doesn’t mention that Charlie was an eighth-generation American along his Decker line, and seventh in this country via his mother’s Wheeler ancestry. Some accounts incorrectly identify 3rd Great-Grandpa Isaac Decker, Charlie’s father, as an immigrant. I’d call that a spectacular if mildly inconsequential error.
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