Day 1: Wednesday June 13, Arrival
6+ p.m.  Sign in Host Room: orientation materials, auction items put on display
7:30 p.m. Optional: visit Tabernacle Choir rehearsal 8:00 to 9:30 p.m.

Day 2: Thursday, June 14 Breakfast on own
9 a.m. Bus Tour
Cruise Downtown
State St. North: City Center
State Capitol: Stop at Mormon Battalion Marker
South and turn on South Temple: Beehive, LDS
Temple Square
9:45 I-80 to Great Salt Lake turnoff near Saltair
Get acquainted on bus
10:15 Fifteen minute photo op with GSL in background
10:30 Leave for Kennecott Pit
DVD re Great Salt Lake
11:15 Kennecott Pit for 40 minutes
noon  Leave for Snowbird resort
1:15 Snowbird Lunch
Tram Ride
4:00 Reboard Bus, drive to Hotel
5:15 Return to Hotel
Dinner and evening on own
8:00-9:30 (optional) Tabernacle Choir Rehearsal

Day 3: Friday, June 15
9 a.m. Walk to Family History Library,
9:15 Family History Library Tour and Orientation
10:00 Tour Temple Square
12:30 Lunch: Lion House
1:30 Beehive House
2:30 Joseph Smith Building
6:30 Banquet
BFA Business, Auction
Speaker: Gaylen Bunker, “Edward Bunker and Pioneering the West.”

Day 4: Saturday, June 16
9:00 Board Vans
9:45 University of Utah/Rio-Tinto Kennecott Utah
Museum of Natural History
(spectacular new museum, with major dinosaur skeletal remains)
11:00 Board vans
11:15 Tour spectacular Red Butte Gardens
12:00 Board vans Board Bus
12:30 Return to Hotel
Afternoon on Own
Gateway
City Creek Center
Family History Library
LDS Church Museum
7:00 Celebrating Edward Bunker (Program)
___BFA Promotion of 2013 Boston Reunion
___Musical Number; Sharlene Wells Hawkes
___Powerpoint Presentation: Bill Hartley, “Edward Bunker’s Infantry Service in the Mexican War, Ft. Leavenworth to Santa Fe to San Diego”
address:  3051 South 2900 East Salt Lake City, Utah

Day 5: Sunday, June 17 On your own
9:30 to 10:00 Tabernacle Choir broadcast (be there at 9:00)

Reunion Registration   by  May 1st
Lodging: Salt Lake Plaza at Temple Square
122 W.  South Temple  1-801 521-0130
free shuttle   S. L Plaza Hotel ( call at Kiosk)
You must make your own hotel
reservations. Ask for rooms reserved at a
special  Bunker Family rate.
Room rate:  $82.  1-2 beds,   1-2 people
after May 1st , rooms  if space available

TRAX,  downtown train ,is free within downtown and runs
right past the hotel, New City Creek Mall, and The Genealogy Library.

Reunion Registration
Single Person $20
Couple $30 $______
Bus Tour June 14 $40 ea $______
Lion House Lunch $20 ea $______
BFA Banquet $50 ea $______
Van to Sites June 16 $20 ea $______
Total For Events $______

Make check payable to:
Bunker Family Assoc SLC

Send Registration to:
Shirley Howell
38 West 1600 South
Orem, Utah 84058

It is designed to bring technologists together with genealogists of all skill levels, so they can learn from each other and find solutions to the challenges faced in family history research today; hence the lineup of speakers this year from Google, Instructure, Ancestry.com, and FamilySearch!

Check out these exciting evening events:

Thursday, February 2: Exercise your Funny Bone with Comedian Ryan Hamilton
Friday, February 3: Late Night at the Family History Library

Of course, attending RootsTech 2012 is a great excuse to spend some productive research time at the Family History Library any time you want. The RootsTech 2012 Conference venue is practically adjacent to the conference venue in Salt Lake City! Come early, stay late, plan to satisfy your research needs.

Go to RootsTech 2012 to explore the full list of topics, sessions, speakers, and conference offerings.

Take advantage of the special registration rate now. We look forward to seeing you at RootsTech!

Don’t Miss the Final $149 Discount Rate for RootsTech 2012 in Salt Lake City!

A new family history and technology conference
    February 2-4, 2012
    Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah
    The special discount ends January 13, 2012.

RootsTech is sponsored by Microsoft, Dell, FamilySearch, Oracle, the National Genealogical Society, brightsolid, Ancestry.com, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Archives.com, Brigham Young University, and the Association of Professional Genealogists.

Since I have just updated to the latest version of The Master Genealogist, the family tree software that the BFA uses, I looked at how many names we now have in the various databases.  All together we have just under 95,000 names. Many of these are duplicates and also several people have more than one name but even if 50% of them fit in that catagory, we have about 50,000 people now listed in the BFA databases.  Every day I add more and actually have two stacks, each about 1 foot high, of papers with information on them that need to be input.  There are several separate databases so that it takes less time to search for someone.  Our largest database is the one with the descendants of James Bunker of New Hampshire and those related to him through DNA tests.  Well, actually, the old database is bigger but it has so many duplicates in it that it is harder to search and I usually use it only as a last resort.

If someone sends me a query, I can usually determine whether we have informaton about that person in just a few minutes as long as I am given any information to go along with the name.  For instance, trying to find a specific William Bunker is impossible but if I am told he married Sarah Johnson and lived about 1850, I can find him or eliminate fairly fast.  Once I receive a query and either find the person in the database or determine that he/she cannot be found, I update that particular file as much as I can by using census records, information from the person making the inquiry, and all kinds of internet sites.  I usually have all the information I can easily find within an hour or so.

The BFA will supply a free pedigree for anyone located in our files.  All we ask in exchange is that you send us information about your family so we can update the files.

The 1940 census records are coming out soon with the indexes so they can easily be searched by name.  This will add a lot of information to our database if I can just find the time to get it done.  I believe we have all the Bunkers listed in the US 1880 census now in the database.  1880 was the first year that all the household members were listed instead of just the head of household.  The 1900 census gave birth months and years and I have tried to get all those records in but I still keep finding new ones so I have a way to go on those.

Bette

RootsTech is a leading edge conference designed to bring technologists together with genealogists, so they can learn from each other and find solutions to the challenges they face in family history research today. More than 3,000 people attended the inaugural conference in 2011 and their feedback on RootsTech was overwhelmingly positive. Don’t miss out in 2012!

Take advantage of the special $99 registration rate and we look forward to seeing you at RootsTech 2012!

Utah and the West have large populations of Bunkers, mostly descended from Edward Bunker (D-185) born 1822, Atkinson, Maine. Seeking his fortune near the Great Lakes, Edward converted to Mormonism in 1845. He spent 1846 and 1847 as part of Gen. Stephen Kearny’s Army of the West in the Mexican War. His infantry unit marched from Ft. Leavenworth to Santa Fe then to San Diego. In 1850 he settled in Utah and helped found several towns. In 1850 during his return from missionary service in England and Scotland, he was Captain of the now-famous Mormon handcart companies. He founded the Town of Bunkerville, Nevada (near today’s Mesquite), that was named after him.

During our reunion next year, time will be allocated in downtown Salt Lake City for visiting the LDS History Center, the “world’s leading genealogy library.” Tours of Temple Square and the Beehive house, home of Brigham Young’s polygamous families’ are planned. We can observe a spectacular view of the city atop the 26^th floor of the LDS Church Office building if time allows. A rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is a must-see event; the acoustics within the Tabernacle are astounding. An optional half-hour live radio broadcast on Sunday is planned.

A bus tour will take us to the shore of the Great Salt Lake. We will hear about its history of breaking land speed records on the “flats” and learn how the salt is mined from catch basins. We’ll continue on to Kennecott and the world’s largest open pit copper mine (it’s visible from outer space); even the size of the dump-trucks’ tires will astonish you. From the deepest pit, we’ll climb aboard a tram for breathtaking views as we ascend the towering Wasatch Mountain with its premier ski-resort of Snowbird. You could say we’ll experience the reunion’s high point and low point in one day.

If you like dinosaurs, Utah claims to have discovered the most. Another tour will take us to the University of Utah and its brand new Rio-Tinto Kennecott Utah Museum of Natural History to see the skeletal remains and exhibits of these pre-historic beasts. We’ll bid ado to T’rex and his friends for a leisurely stroll through the magnificent Red Butte Gardens.

Saturday evening’s Bunker History Program will be held at the downtown 8^th Ward Chapel and will include several speakers. We’ll learn about Edward Bunker’s participation in the Mexican War. Among his numerous progeny is Sharlene Wells Hawkes, 1985 Miss America, who will be a guest speaker and present a vocal solo. Can’t get much better that that!

Negotiations for a downtown hotel are not final; there may also be changes in the above listed itinerar.  This, however, will give you a general idea of what is planned for the 99^th annual reunion.

If you are a BFA member living in Utah and would like to help in the reunion planning, please contact Shirley (e-mail: howellrash@comcast.net).

Anyone wishing to subscribe to the list may send an e-mail request to BUNKER-L-request@rootsweb.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject line.  Alternatively, some folks prefer to allow the list manager (that’s me) to manually subscribe them.  You can send me at an e-mail request at doug.detling@gmail.com and I’ll add you.

Our web site at http://www.bunkerfamilyassn.org is hosted at a large commercial hosting company, and we have obtained certain economies of scale since I manage other web sites. Costs of maintaining the site are stable, though this year there was a dollar increase in the domain registration. We’ve managed to keep the costs at $110 a year with no web data traffic charges.  Web site maintenance has been made more efficient through the newest versions of WordPress—one of the most popular blogging software packages used on the internet today.

As another contribution to the association, we have been able to post photographs of interest to BFA members, such as the restoration of the Bunker graveyard in New Hampshire. The photos are accessible through the webmaster’s photo site at http://greencity.phanfare.com.

Another activity of the web master is the production of the CDs Bette Bunker Richards has created on the Bedford and Devon Bunker families.  As needed, these discs are producing using masters kept on file on the webmaster’s computer and an HP Lightscribe CD writer.  I am working on an extension of Bette’s work on my own line (descendants of Sobriety Bunker).  This will be an update of a report printed when I first got involved with the BFA, and my family tree data base extends and corrects some of the work on the Devon CD (errors in the data base were the result of an incorrect link; my great-grandfather was an illegitimate child and the discovery of the incorrect link wasn’t made until the Devon CDs were under production).  No matter, all genealogy is a work in progress, and the same will be true when my CD version of the Descendants of Sobriety Bunker is completed in a few months (hopefully this summer).

As soon as that work is completed, I will turn my efforts to making PDF versions of all back issues of the Bunker Banner, which will likely fit on a single CD.  If that can be accomplished, BFA President Gil Bunker will have less paper stored.  Pricing for the CD has not been determined at this time.

As always, any suggestions may be sent to me via e-mail.

The early Friday excursion will wind through center city; you’ll see historic Philadelphia and visit some of her 3,000 huge works of art. It’s a tour unique only to the “City of Brotherly Love.” Afterwards you can gain a great insider’s look of Philadelphia’s Chinatown during the afternoon jaunt; a clever initiative by a noted chef.

The Annabelle Moore Scholarship is awarded annually to a graduating senior or college freshman who is the child or grandchild of a BFA member in good stand. Good luck to all the entrants.

Don’t forget your entry for the “neck-tie” party and a limerick to add a touch of gaiety during the business meeting. Under “new business,” your suggestions will be solicited for a 100th birthday slogan, motto, saying or jingle to help advertise our first century. Send Gil your ideas even if you won’t be in Philly. A prize for the winning selection.

The annual raffle is always an exciting conclusion to our festivities, made particularly eventful by your generous donations. You are invited to participate even if unable to Celebrate Ninety-eight. Your kindness is sincerely anticipated and appreciated by all.

[this event has concluded]

If you wish to go directly to those albums designated specifically for the Bunker Family Association, use the subdirectory method:  greencity.phanfare.com/bfa.  If you use this method of navigation, the subdirectory requires the visitor to enter this password:  CND_BunkY!