This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/5519/XKE.2ACIB/30.41.46.50.1 Message Board Post: I stumbled across this while reviewing my wife's genealogy this evening. My name is Duane Bitner, Abraham is also my ancestor. My line of the family has an interesting history, do any of you know it? After his first wife died, Abraham (Sr.) married Ann(a) Barr, who had also been married previously. They had a son, Breneman Barr, and two daughters, Martha and another who died very young. They soon moved from Lancaster County to Quincy, Illinois for reasons we aren't aware of (please fill in any information in this story that you may know). However, Abraham was in failing health, our record states that he & his family returned to PA near Philadelphia, & that he died soon afterwards. Ann(a) joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints soon thereafter and slowly traveled west with her children from her first & second marriages. Our only information about Abraham's children from his first marriage is that they "stayed in the East." Breneman drove a team of oxen from Iowa to Utah at 11 years of age without mishap, stating later in life that "the Lord is ever mindful of the widow and the fatherless." After settling in Utah, Breneman married 3 times and fathered a very large family. One of his sons was my grandfather, Milton Bitner. I believe he was named after Ann(a)'s son from her first marriage, A. Milton Musser, another family from the Lancaster area. It is of interest to note that one of Breneman's daughters, Ada, married a bit later in life and gave birth in 1910 to Gordon Bitner Hinckley, who became president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1995, the same church Breneman's mother joined in the 1840s as a twice-widowed single mother. He continues in this role today, leading this church with a membership of more than 12 million individuals worldwide at the age of 93. I hope you have had the opportunity to see some of his television interviews over recent years, perhaps during the 2002 Winter Olympics or with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes in 1998. That was more than I intended to write, but I do feel some pride in our family and Pres. Hinckley. We hold a Breneman Barr Bitner family reunion in Utah every summer, and I'm sure we'd love to have a visit from relatives or have the opportunity to attend any family reunions held in Pennsylvania someday.