Nelson Arave's shipwreck on Fremont Island in 1874

Looking from the southeast shore of Fremont Island back along the sandbar, toward south Davis County. The Great Salt Lake level is so low now that you can walk on the sandbar to the Isle.

NELSON Arave, the first ever "Arave," did some boating on the Great Salt Lake and even had one recorded shipwreck.
A large pioneer map of the Hooper area, on the wall at the Hooper, Utah City Offices (drawn and produced by the late Hooper historian, John M. Belnap), lists Nelson Arave (one of my great grandfathers) as having wrecked a boat on Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake in 1874. Three years later, in 1877, there’s a reference in The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Volume 39, p. 223) that states Nelson Arave had built two large boats to transport cedar posts and wood from Promontory (Point) to Hooper. Presumably, it was one of those two boats that wrecked on the isle.

                                      Nelson Arave

-Four years after Nelson Arave’s wreck on Fremont Island, one of his friends, Charles Smaltz, wrecked his large boat too on Fremont Island, in 1878.

     Fremont Island as seen from the sandbar This was all under some five feet of water in 1874.

Why did these ship wrecks happen? Back in the 19th Century, there were no weather reports and storms could then surprise boaters and seemingly come up suddenly on the lake. Its briny waters also pack more of a punch than fresh water does, given its high mineral content. And, Fremont Island was the only safe haven from a storm, if you were out in the GSL, between Promontory Point and the Davis County line.

Taylor Arave marks how high the water level of the Great Salt Lake would have been during its all-time high mark in the mid-1980s. He is standing in the southeast bay to Fremont Island, with Isle seen in the background. In 1874, this was all under four or more feet of briny water,

Arrivee is the correct geneological line for Arave

Arave & Arrivee are related

By Todd Arave

  "This year (2015) I did a Y-DNA test to see if I could confirm the relation of my last name (Arave) to other individuals with the last name of Arrivee. My testing was intended to confirm genealogical findings that my mother (Karen Arave) and others discovered when researching the Arave paternal line. My 2nd great grandfather, Nelson Arave was orphaned at a young age. Nelson's father and grandfather (my 3rd and 4th great grandfathers) drowned the same day in the St. Lawrence river, Quebec, Canada.1 Following their deaths, Nelson's mother lent Nelson to another family that promised to care for him. With time, distance and poor methods of communication, as a result Nelson and his mother never reconnected. There had been many years the Arave family could not research their paternal ancestry beyond Nelson Arave because of him being orphaned at a young age and very little information about his early years was known. 
Then in 1992 a death record was discovered for Nelson's father. The Y-DNA test I did was meant to help confirm the family's research findings. 
Why Y-DNA
 Each man gets his Y-DNA from his father, who got it from his father… all the way back. These Y chromosomes are passed from father to son virtually unchanged. (If there were no changes, each man would have exactly the same Y-DNA as "Adam" and with each other). These slight changes occur during replication of cell DNA, but the majority of Y-chromosome DNA remains the same. When a mutation does occur, all male descendants of the man carrying the changed Y-chromosome DNA will have that mutation. When a second mutation occurs, all of that man’s descendants will carry that mutation as well as the first one, and will be a distinct sub-group of the group with the first mutation. Because YDNA is passed down from father to son, just as surnames are passed down in western societies, it is pretty easy to visualize - and to track through genealogy. This is why Y-DNA projects are organized around surnames. All men who share the same "common ancestor" will carry essentially the same YDNA and receive tests results that are also essentially the same. 

Mr. Arrivee and two other persons in the database had a genetic distance of 0 as associated to myself, Todd Arave.

(So, the test confirms that Arrivee is the correct branch of the Arave line backward from Nelson Arave.)


I figured that it was worth spending my money to see if I could confirm a Y-DNA match between Arave and Arrivee. Result I was pleased to get the result I got from doing the Y-DNA test. It confirmed my mother's and other's research on the Arave family line. I hope by sharing my findings that other Arave's will know the validity of their ancestry. I did send an email to the Mr. Arrivee that I had the 0 match (exact match) result. I had requested of Mr. Arrivee that we correspond on our Family genealogy but as of this writing he has not replied and it's been several months now."

 --Feedback or Questions? Contact:
 Todd Arave arave95@yahoo.com

Posted by Lynn Arave, great-grandson of Nelson Arave.
lynnarave@comcast.net

The Arave Who Almost Made It To The Grammys

Jake Arave was featured in the Syracuse Islander newspaper.


Read:
http://www.utahislander.com/2013/02/08/clinton-native-eyed-for-grammy/

How Many Araves Are on Facebook?

Facebook searches are not as comprehensive as you might believe they are.
However, I counted 67 different Araves out there, in addition to the 15 that are members of All Things Arave, and so the total is at least 82 on Facebook.

First Arave Mother -- Aroline

I've posted a photograph of Nelson Arave's grave previously.
Now I'm adding the headstone for Aroline Arave, Nelson's first wife.
She is buried in the Hooper, Utah cemetery.
Her full name was Susannah Aroline Wadsworth Arave. She was born in Camden, Maine on Sept. 16, 1836. She died on May 15, 1917 in Hooper.
She was a daughter of Abiah Wadsworth, another prominent early Utah pioneer.
If you have the name Arave, you are either a descendant through Aroline or through Nelson's second wife, Mary Ann Williams, Arave (born May 6, 1848 in Abercarn, South Wales, United Kingdom).
Back to Aroline, she was apparently blind in her latter years and the family had to take care of her. She lived five years longer than Nelson's second wife, who died at age 64. Aroline was age 81 when she passed away.
Nelson had 12 children by his first wife and 11 by his second wife and so that's 23 total children.
Since I served an LDS Church Mission in southwest England and South Wales, I wish I would have known then that an Arave ancestor had been born there. I know I went right through Abercarn,South Wales at least once. I remember it well since there were so many professed atheists in that area, because of a coal mine disaster that killed hundreds in the 1870s. (I lived in Chepstow, Cardiff and Ebbw Vale while on my mission and also visited castles and the site of President David O. Mckay's mother's birthplace.)

Why A-R-A-V-E?

We're stuck with this unusual Arave name, like it or not.
However, how did it come to be?
My mother, Norma Arave, has the answer in one of her 4 oversized Nelson Arave research books/scrapbooks.
Her research states that when Jesse Lampson (also times misspelled "Lambson") Nelson's "adopted" father (though not legally)realized he was going to die soon, he told Nelson what his real surname was, though he didn't know how to spell it.
The name was very likely Arrivee (the French word for Arrival).
Somehow, Lampson came up with the weird ARAVE spelling and likely the even stranger verbal way to say it -- "Arvey."
Nelson himself was probably no more than grade school age at the time.
In addition, a letter that Nelson Arave sent to a son, Joseph Arave, on an LDS Church mission and dated April 16, 1905, gives further support:
"Dear Son:
"I received yours of the 12(th). Twas very glad to hear from you. I am well at present and hope this will find you the same.
"You spoke of a man named Aravee (,) that is the way it is pronounced in France. My father and grandfather were drowned in the St. Lawrence river while rafting logs about the year 1836. In 1837 my mother went to St. Laurence County New York. There she married a man named Meyers. Her name was Jenette. I had a brother named Louis. He was born in 1836. I was born in 1834. I do not know my father's given name or whether he had any brothers or now. This is all that I can remember about it.
"Please write soon and let me know how you are getting along and how you enjoy your mission.
Yours afectionately (sic) Nelson Arave."
So, there you have it.
Anyone else out there have a different origin story, or one with more detail?
The one problem I have with the letter is that means Nelson was drawing on memory of when he was no more than two or three years old. I certainly can't recall much before age four or five in my life, so was he an exception to that? I'm not sure.
(Note: There is also some question as to whether "Nelson" was really the first Arave's first name. Some have wondered if the Lampson family didn't give him that first name.)

Unique Name? Not Mine!

If you want, Google your name (in quote marks) and see what comes up. You may or may not be unique.
Until I was in my early 40s, I had always assumed my name, Lynn Arave, was unique.
That, I rationalized, was the reward for having that strangely spelled and stated last name.
However, I eventually learned that there were at least two other Lynn Arave's in the world.
In Kentucky, a woman had married into the family and was Lynn Arave too.
Also, a distant relative in Idaho Falls, and older than me, was also named Lynn Arave (actually Lynn J. Arave, vs, my Lynn R. Arave). So, the Idaho Lynn Arave is actually the "original."
There appears to be a huge Arave extended family (in the thousands), startling when you consider that the first Arave, Nelson, was ONLY my great-grandfather. So, I guess it make sense that few Araves may actually have a unique combined first and last name.
Even my mother, Norma Arave, wasn't unique in her name. There was a Norma Arave Earl (recently deceased), as well as an earlier living Norma Arave.
One of my younger brothers, Mark, has also been plagued somewhat with mail/bill confusion, by the older and same-named Mark Arave who lives in the Ogden area.
However, such name confusion doesn't just involve same-named Araves either.
For example, Leonard Arave, the current mayor of North Salt Lake City, Utah, often goes by "Len," a very close name to "Lynn" (see the accompanying illustration). Especially when Len Arave also lived in Layton, Utah, there was occasional phone call confusion going on. It was entertaining far more than annoying, though.

Arave vs. "Arvey"

If you are an Arave relative, but don't carry the actual Arave surname, you may be lucky, at least in the area of having your name pronounced correctly.
It is just not often outside my own neighborhood where the name is said correctly.
The range of wrong pronouncements ranges from A-ravee to Rave.
Of course the correct way is "Arvey."
When I served an LDS Church mission in England, I eventually had my name badge redone to "Arvey" (see the accompanying picture), simply because I cared more then about how it was said than how it was spelled.
One British church member used to referred to me as "Elder Harvey, without the H."
Years later, Dave Blackwell, a well-known Utah sports writer/TV-radio broadcaster from the 1970s to the 1990s, coined my name in informal writing and notes as "RV," like recreational vehicle.
When Michael Arave was the studentbody president of Weber State University in the 1980s, I recall a rise in how often my Arave name was correctly stated in the Ogden area.
With Len Arave as North Salt Lake City mayor now, I'm betting there is a similar effect in that area.
Often times, it is more surprising when my last name is stated correctly than when it is not. For example, in January of 2012 I went into an America First Credit Union in Logan, Utah (some 60 miles from my home) and the branch manager surprisingly knew how pronounce my surname. There are a few Araves in Cache Valley, but not a lot.
-Also, in October of 2014, I went to the Rexburg Idaho LDS Temple, never dreaming my last name would be pronounced correctly. But, the sealer surprisingly knew the name and how to say it. He also said there are lots of Araves in Blackfoot.
-Then, later the same day, I visited the Idaho Falls Temple, where Parley Arave was its third president. No one seems to recognize the last name and sadly scanning the list of temple workers and volunteers revealed not a single Arave to be found.

-The "Why" Arave is spelled its unusual way is fodder for a future blog.