The Wool Socks in President Oaks’ Family Story

At a family reunion in central Utah in July 2026, President Dallin H. Oaks shared memories of the generations who came before him.

Among all the stories connected with his family, there is one tiny detail that is especially hard to forget:

wool socks.

On July 4, 2026, more than 600 descendants of Abinadi and Hannah Seely Olsen gathered at the family ranch in Joe’s Valley, Utah. President Oaks is their great-grandson. According to Church News’ account of the reunion, he has attended the biennial gathering for 85 years, with only a few exceptions. This was the first time he attended as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But the story of the wool socks goes back much further — to 1895.

Abinadi Olsen and Hannah Seely had been married for eight years and already had three children when Abinadi was called to serve a mission in Samoa.

For his mother, Samoa was an almost completely unknown place.

And so, as her son prepared to leave for the distant Pacific islands, she tried to make sure he was prepared.

She gave him multiple pairs of wool socks to take on his mission.

That small detail appears in the family history recounted by Church News. The account does not tell us what Abinadi thought when he received them — or whether he ever needed them. It simply tells us that his mother knew little about Samoa and sent the socks with him.

It is a detail that can make us smile today.

But it also makes the story feel remarkably human.

Behind a missionary call that would take Abinadi far from his wife and three young children was a mother doing something mothers have done for generations: trying to prepare her child for a journey into a place she could barely imagine.

Abinadi served in Samoa for three and a half years before returning home. He and Hannah eventually had 11 children; 10 of them lived to raise families of their own. Their descendants now span seven generations, according to the Church’s Newsroom account of the Olsen family reunion.

And the connection to President Oaks runs directly through their oldest child.

His grandmother, Chasty Olsen, was Abinadi’s oldest child. President Oaks’ mother was Chasty’s oldest child, and President Oaks was his mother’s oldest child.

At the 2026 reunion, as he approached his 94th birthday, President Oaks reflected that he was likely now the oldest living descendant of Abinadi Olsen.

More than 130 years later, the story of those wool socks is still being told by the family Abinadi left behind when he answered that missionary call.

The socks are only a tiny detail in President Oaks’ family history.

But sometimes tiny details are what make history feel real.