Meet Chas Hathaway and His Sweet Family ~ A Descendant of William S. Seely

Chas Hathaway has been a viewer of our blog for a while.  He has left a few comments now and then.  It wasn't until a year ago, that we found out he was an amazing musician, lived right here in Mt. Pleasant and was a descendant of William S. Seely.
 We have downloaded some of his piano selections  to play as background music for our blog.  Be sure and visit this website: chas.willowrise.com/                             

   I am a direct descendent of William Stewart Seely, through his daughter Emily Seely Coates, and then through Emily's daughter Lillie Claudina Coates, and Lillie's daughter Grace Chloe Lake. When Grace Chloe Lake met William Ezra Curtis, they married, lived in Castle Dale for a while (where they had my grandpa, Merrill William Curtis) and eventually moved the family to Provo. After my Grandpa married my Grandma, Leola Jex Freshwater, they moved to Salt Lake, where the family has hovered ever since.


It wasn't until we were in the process of buying a house in Mt. Pleasant that I discovered that I even had ancestors in Mt. Pleasant. I was doing some family history, and discovered William Stewart Seely. I just about fell out of my chair when I found that he was the first bishop and mayor in Mt. Pleasant.


I once heard a lecture that talked about how we have biological inclinations toward the locations and climates where our ancestors lived. I didn't give the idea much thought at the time, but I've come to wonder since. I loved growing up in the Salt Lake Valley, but Mt. Pleasant feels more like home now than Salt Lake Valley, even though we've only been here about 2 ½ years. I love it here!


My parents (Doug and Debe Hathaway) moved to Fairview about six years ago, while I was dating my wife-to-be. When I married Jenni, we lived in South Salt Lake so I could go to school at the Community College and U of U.


I've been playing the piano since 1994, when as a teenager I decided that I really wanted to write music. I had taken about a year of piano lessons in 1988, as a nine-year-old, but had gotten bored with practicing after a year. When I was 14, I picked up my old piano books and began re-teaching myself to play. But I quickly discovered that playing by ear (listening to music and learning to play it by picking out the notes) was both more fun and more effective for me. Eventually I put the books away and focused entirely on playing music by ear.


Within a year or two, I found that playing by ear provided a natural transition into writing original music. Soon I was writing as much original music as I was learning to play other's music. Since that time, which was about 1996, my greatest focus has been writing original music.


I have a sister who is an amazing artist, a brother who is a computer wiz, another brother who creates original musical instruments – especially flutes, and a sister who is an awesome photographer and web-designer, and we all overlap in our skills to some degree. So a few years ago my whole family got together and decided to start a family business to provide a way for us to market and sell our skills. We decided to call the company Willowrise. Since then, we've all accomplished a lot with what we do. I publish music CD's, my sister is a full-time professional artist (just Google Maria Hathaway's name) and now lives in Spring City, my brother is a full-time programmer and computer consultant, and my other sister does professional photography – especially Irish Dance photography, since she's also an Irish Dancer (Google Shelly Hathaway to see her stuff).


As of a couple weeks ago, I've now published my first book, Giraffe Tracks, which is a personal memoir of my full-time mission in South Africa only a few years after the end of Apartheid.


When I follow the lives of my ancestors, and see all of their creative ambitions, I can't help feel that it's the legacy they have left that fills me and my family with such a desire to create more beauty and joy in the world. They were pioneers, builders, blacksmiths, home-builders, and missionaries. That creative, spiritually motivating spirit has carried on through every generation since, and we continue to try to fill the world with joy, life, and the Spirit of God.


- Chas