BACKDROPS
Who made the backdrops?
Alphagraphics from photographs we supplied.
How much did they cost?
8’×10’, $380 each
What is pictured in the backdrops?
One is a picture of the Buseth farm in Norway where Christian’s father was born and where our name comes from. The farm is on Bua River about 20 miles southeast of Trondheim, Norway.
The other is a picture of the log cabin where Agnes was born. Her father, Henry Albert Cheever, is seated on the right. Her mother, Mary Jane Nelson, is standing on the left next to her son, Samuel. The others have not yet been identified.
Why did you have them made?
They were used as photo backdrops at our reunion.
FAMILY ORGANIZATION/COOPERATION
How formal is your organization?
It is informal. We have no officers, no bylaws, no permanent funding.
We have a core group of interested family members who counsel together and seek to involve other family members.
Have you considered formal organization?
We discussed it, but this seems like the right approach for our family at this time.
How long have you been organized as a family group?
The family had reunions from time to time in the past, but without any set organization. The reunions stopped as the grandchildren generation passed away. We got organized again in late 2023.
What got you started again?
A few family members were doing some research in 2023 and discovered that Christian and Agnes met in American Fork, not in Provo as previously believed. They also realized that 2024 would be 150 years since they met and got married. They reached out to other members of the family about having a reunion to commemorate the event. And they found there was interest in the family for a reunion.
How did you plan the reunion?
After talking to members of the family from different descendant lines, we organized a reunion planning committee. We met via Zoom on Sunday evenings to discuss ideas, make assignments, and follow up. We met once a month in the beginning and more frequently as we got closer to the reunion date.
The first thing we did was select a date for the reunion. We picked a day we thought out-of-town family members would likely be in Utah and close to the time they met in early August.
The second thing we did was to find a place to hold the reunion, which we wanted to do in American Fork where Christian and Agnes first met. We wanted a big enough place and one that had Zoom capabilities and indoor and outdoor space. We were fortunate to find what we needed and reserved a ward house in American Fork.
Then we worked on publicizing and planning the reunion.
How did you publicize the reunion?
We started by identifying as many living descendants as we could, starting with an Ancestral Quest file that one of us had. We migrated that information into an Excel spread sheet that we put on Google Docs. And we asked members in each descendant line to update our information and provide email addresses and phone numbers where possible.
After pinning down the date and location, we sent around a “Save the Date” email to everyone on our list, asking them to forward the email to other family members.
We followed up with other emails to promote the reunion in the months and weeks leading up to the reunion.
How did you send the emails?
We migrated the email addresses from our spread sheet into a Google email group. {add details}
How did you get ready for the reunion?
Each member of the group took responsibility for different aspects of the reunion, such as:
Publicity
T-Shirts
Registration & Name tags
Table Displays
Games and Activities
Food
Family Photograph
Program
Technical – Zoom
Sites to Visit
2024 REUNION
How did you get T-Shirts?
We worked with Custom Ink to design T-shirts and get orders. {details}
How much did it cost?
We put in a provisional minimum order of 200 T-shirts at ${} each. And we were able to reach that goal.
Were you happy with the result?
Yes. We discovered that people were interested in paying a little more to obtain higher quality T-shirts {describe}. And that helped us get 229 orders—more than we had planned on.
How did you handle registration?
We set up an account on Eventbrite that provided details about the reunion, including answers to FAQs.
People could register for the reunion and order T-shirts from that site. A week before the reunion we had 196 reservations.
How did you greet attendees?
We provided name tags for each person who registered in advance with the name of the child of Christian and Agnes from whom that person was descended.
We had other name tags for those who came without registering in advance.
All were able to sign up to help with cleanup, childcare during the program, or to order a print of the family photograph for $10.
And we handed out the pre-ordered T-shirts. (Some had been mailed directly to people who requested it.)
Attendees were also given a Reunion Bingo Challenge card—a five-by-five grid listing 25 different reunion activities. Stickers were provided at the various activities to fill out the card.
How many people came?
We had at least 209 attendees.
Tell me about the table displays?
We invited members of each descendant group to prepare tables to display pictures and other memorabilia pertaining to their ancestor—each a child of Christian and Agnes.
We also had table displays for Christian and Agnes and for their children who had no posterity.
People brought photographs, dresses, Chinaware, letters, and other documents.
One cousin brought a picture of Christian and Agnes the rest of us had not seen. We had a scanner set up, so we scanned it and later shared it on Family Tree for all to see.
What games and activities did you have?
Two computers played brief histories narrated by animations of Christian and Agnes, prepared using MyHeritage software.
People could taste some ancestral foods—such as Norwegian lefse and lingonberry jam from Christian’s heritage and dried fruits and cakes from Agnes’s heritage.
A cousin who speaks Norwegian gave instruction on how to pronounce our ancestors’ Norwegian names.
People could interact via computer with emulations of Christian and Agnes asking questions about their lives and hearing their answers.
The backdrops you see here were set up to provide photo ops, complete with period hats, etc. for those who wanted to dress up for a photo.
We also had outside activities—such as volleyball, basketball, and checkers—for youth and children.
We had previously provided a list of important family sites in Utah for people to visit before or after the reunion.
And, of course, there was plenty of time to visit and socialize with other attendees.
How did you handle food?
We provided an entree of pulled pork or chicken, corn, and rice catered by BYU Food To-Go, and potato salad from Costco. Local attendees brought salads and desserts to share.
How much did that cost?
Total food cost was about $818—$725 for BYU Food To-Go and $93 for Costco. That’s about $4.00 per attendee.
Who took your family photograph?
Busath Photography, of course.
They took the picture from a tall ladder in the choir section of the chapel, which enabled them to get a good shot of everyone with similar head sizes.
One shot was taken with everyone holding up name cards in front of their faces. This enabled us to easily identify everyone in the final photograph.
Tell me about your program?
We started the program with a song.
The keynote speaker presented the results of new research that showed when, where, and how Christian had immigrated to Utah in 1870 and how he met Agnes in American Fork in 1874.
That presentation was followed by seven brief video clips prepared in advance by members of the Reunion Committee to tell the stories of the six children of Christian and Agnes who had posterity and the five who did not.
Other presenters told stories about Norwegian relatives, showed slides of trips to Norway, talked about the Busath-Cheever Archive on Permanent.org, and reviewed various features of FamilySearch.
The presentations were made available via Zoom to members who could not attend and were recorded to include on our family website.
How did you cover the costs of the reunion?
The out-of-pocket expenses of the reunion—excluding T-shirt and photograph orders and items for which no reimbursement was sought—were a little over $850.
Half of that was covered by a reunion fund left over from prior years. The rest was covered by additional contributions.
WEBSITE
What prompted you to set up a family website?
After the reunion, we continued to meet as a family council and discussed the idea of a website where we could host the recorded presentations made at the 2024 Reunion for future viewing.
We also wanted to set up a “one-stop-shopping” place where family members could go to find information about the family from many different resources.
We then worked together to set it up.
How did you set it up?
Fortunately, one member of our group had already set up a Busath website using Go Daddy. Godaddy has services to build a website using WordPress which made it easy if your familiar with WordPress. You create pages, menus, and upload PDFs that are callable from the website. You can have as many menu tabs that will fit across the width of the page. WordPress also allows for submenus withing the main menus so that you can have a topical index of pages within master menus.
What’s on your website?
The master menu includes tabs for:
Home
RootsTech
Reunions
Places to Visit
Other Resources
FAQs
Contact
The website provides:
Summaries of prior reunions
Recordings of presentations from prior reunions
Information on sites to visit in Utah and Norway
Information about the Busath family book (Busethslekta ) published in Norway in 1953 and 1994
Links to Archives on Permanent.org
Information on Norwegian Facebook groups of interest.
And a single email address to contact the family group overseeing the website to share information and ask questions
How long did it take to get the content on the website?
We worked on the project for about a year until we had enough content to share the website with the family, which we did in the summer of 2025 at a virtual reunion.
Do you have other plans for the website going forward?
One issue we have discussed is how to capture the interest of younger generations.
We have ideas for promoting that by setting up some family-oriented games on the website and sharing current news to provide reasons to visit the website more often.
2025 VIRTUAL REUNION
Tell me about your virtual reunion?
We held a virtual reunion for the family in the summer of 2025 over Zoom. The primary purpose of the reunion was to introduce the family to the new website.
One person provided an overview of the website. Then others reviewed the content under each of the various website tabs, such as
Places to Visit
Busethslekta – a Norwegian family book
Busath Archive on Permanent.org
Roster of Descendants
Norwegian facebook groups
FamilySearch ordinances and memories
Other presentations were made on Norwegian pronunciation and pictures of trips to Norway.
All the presentations were recorded and later added to the website for future viewing.
PLACES TO VISIT IN NORWAY
Tell me about the places to visit in Norway.
One of us has identified the coordinates in decimal degrees of the various places in Norway our family lived.
These can be visited virtually by copying and pasting the coordinates into GoogleEarth.
BUSATH-CHEEVER ARCHIVE ON PERMANENT.ORG
Tell me about the archive on Permanent.org.
Permanent.org is a 501(c) organization that provides a platform for preserving and sharing family history information indefinitely. If you are interested, they have a booth here at RootsTech 2026 you can visit.
How much does it cost?
They charge a one-time flat rate (currently $10) per Gigabyte of storage used.
How have you used the Permanent.org platform?
We set up a Busath-Cheever Archive, which is available online for all members of the family to review. It contains:
Two short, animated video clips in which Christian and Agnes tell their own story, which were first shared at the 2024 Reunion. (Voices provided by two of their descendants.)
A 272-page detailed history of Christian and Agnes and their families.
Over 800 contemporaneous documents, photographs, vital records, newspaper articles, and other items relating to the family.
Non-contemporaneous histories and other publications of interest.
Resources for doing family history research in Norway.
BUSETHSLEKTA
Tell me about this Norwegian family book.
A distant cousin in Norway, Severin Singsås, worked for years compiling family information on all the descendants he could. He published this in 1953 under the name Busethslekta, which means Busath Relatives.
An updated version of that book was later published in 1994.
It has been an invaluable help to us in our family history research.
How have you used the Norwegian family book (Busethslekta)?
We have methodically reviewed it to trace all deceased people mentioned in the book to Family Tree and to add them if not there.
And then to gathered sufficient sources to corroborate the information in the book to perform temple ordinances for them.
TEMPLE ORDINANCE WORK
Do you work together in doing the ordinances?
Yes. We have a family group on Family Tree for interested members of the family to take names to the temple.
DESCENDANTS ROSTER
How are you keeping track of new developments in the family?
We are using the descendants excel file we created as a lead up to the 2024 Reunion to keep track of new developments.
Family members can send an email to our group with any updates and we will add them to the roster.
We have plans to add a News section to the website for family members to share family news items.