During his waking hours, William Odell Tolman was an inspirational teacher, father, and husband and a visionary with respect to family organization, family history, and genealogy work. During his sleeping hours, he gained personal revelation from dreams and was wise to write down many of these dreams. The following are excerpts from his journal:
2 Mar 1960: Last night I arose from my bed as I dreamed of hunting in the forest and wrote down my impressions. A good camper or hunter marks his trail by the use of land marks or trail signs so he will always know where he has been and never get lost or lose his life. So like the true genealogist who indexes and files his records so that he will never waste time or get so lost in his research work.
19 May 1965: Last night, I dreamed that I heard my sister scream for help. I dashed to her aid to face one of three vicious men left to kill me. The strength of heaven came upon me. lover came him and broke down the door to help her. I found myself against two armed men. I yelled for help and fought them. My five brothers came to my aid. (I don’t know which sister.)
(From William’s notes for a devotional talk).
My experience with my great-grandfather, Judson Tolman
1. He bothered me in my night dreams.
Thursday Night, 12 Jul 1979: As I slept, I saw an old man (Thomas Tolman, 1608-1690) with a huge farm yard filled with valuable heirlooms, but no one could find anything because of the disorganized “mess.” The family heirlooms were worth millions. Two elderly men were in the yard exchanging stories and apparently really enjoying themselves. I was so impressed with this dream that, in my mind, I asked for the interpretation and received it. The farm yard had the accumulation of the records and other things of my ancestors back to Thomas Tolman (1608-1690), and if properly organized, were invaluable to descendants. The two elderly men were exchanging stories of the experiences of my ancestors and ancestral relatives. I was impressed that they (the stories) needed to be gathered, so I made a very comfortable seat for them to be seated as they exchanged stories. (Note: I discovered the sheet of paper, which was in father’s handwriting, that contained this dream the day before my second meeting [July 22, 2008] with Mark Gardner, the professional genealogist, who is helping me try to resolve the parents of Thomas Tolman and found it quite thought provoking. Loraine Tolman Pace).
(Talk from Alfred Pace III at William’s funeral). Brother Tolman had great faith. After twenty-seven years of being out of college he went back to finish his bachelor’s degree with a family of seven. When he went on to his master’s, he let some hours lapse because he got busy and couldn’t finish; and so he approached the staff at the BYU and asked ifhe could still keep his lapsed hours. They said: “No, we don’t do that. It just isn’t done and would set a precedence if we allow you to do it. Dad said: “Well I have to. I just can’t do those hours over again. I don’t have the money and I don’t have the time. I’ve got to have the hours. If I can prove to you that I am just as adept in those courses now as when I received those straight ‘A’s’ when I took the courses, will you give them to me?” They said they would talk about it and they did. They said later: “If you can come and prove to four doctors that we submit as your board and you can sit for some hours and just show us that you know your information, we will give you your Master of Science in Church History. They said there was no other way he could do it. He told us if the hours he would study and then in the middle of the night in his dreams, and Mother can verify this, all of a sudden he would sit straight up in bed. He said that sometimes he nearly scared her to death. All of a sudden he would sit straight up in bed with a question. He would write it down right then and the next day he would study that. Or he would raise up in bed suddenly awake with an answer and he would write it down. And he wrote all those questions and all those answers down. And then the morning he was to go from Bountiful to BYU and take that exam, he said in his final study he ran across the words the Black River Lumber Company which just grabbed a hold of him. He never heard of it. He said he needed to know what that meant and he searched frantically and he couldn’t find the answer, and he looked and looked and finally the time came for him to leave and so he made one final glance in his library and in the upper right hand comer was a little book, which when he opened it fell open to the Black River Lumber Company which was established by the Church up river to provide lumber for the Nauvoo Temple. When he walked into his exam in Provo, the first question was: “Brother Tolman, tell us all you know about the Black River Lumber Company.” And then they asked the questions he had had in his dreams and he gave those answers that came in dreams. That’s the kind of faith he had.
(From a letter from William to his missionary son, John). One day while I was thus thinking, I was lying in bed and had my eyes shut; but I was not asleep. A vision came to me. I know it was for me alone; but I want to share it with you, my son, because it had a great lesson for me, Thousands of parents, mostly mothers with boys and girls, stood before me beginning at the foot of my bed and stretching in a great fan as far as my vision could reach. My first impression was that they are hungry; but I said, “that can’t be, because they are all so healthy and well dress.” Yet I could see a yearning, hungry look in the eyes of all the parents; then the thought came to me that these parents wanted someone to give knowledge to their children and watch over them. They wanted an expert teacher to care for the souls of their children, like the expert physician had cared for my suffering physical body, and the thought rings in. my mind even from then until now that we need men of greater ability as teachers than in any other profession because teachers have the responsibility to shape the soul of a boy or girl. The vision was still before me and I looked to my night and there I saw almost as far as eternity other beds with people in them and below and surrounding each bed were thousands of people like unto those around my bed. I looked to my left and saw the same picture. Then I was impressed with the fact that the persons in all these beds were teachers and we were all sick and imperfect. We need to arise from our beds and through off our imperfections and become real teachers and start giving of ourselves each day even as the Master gave of Himself to mankind. Then I opened my eyes to look at these people but the vision vanished. I have never been more impressed. Many maladjusted boys and girls never have the pain removed from their heart because we teachers are not specialists. We don’t know our job.
(Contributed by the Thomas Tolman Family Organization. Excerpts from William Odell Tolman: Patriarch, Genealogist, Teacher compiled by Loraine Tolman Pace, First Edition, 2009, pages 236, 320, 482, 497, 527, 565).
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