14 April 2007
Introduction to Speakers by Don Snow
Main Presentation: Harvey & Susan Easton Black – A New Property Database and Information About Early LDS Members in Nauvoo and Iowa
When you call their home and ask for Dr. Black they ask which one, they both have PhDs. They have been involved in compiling many different collections. Many of you are familiar with the Susan Easton Black Collection a big collection of Early LDS Information. There is a seven volume set of who owned the property in Nauvoo from 1839-1859. They just did a compliation of a Passport to Paradise, The Copenhagen Passenger List, Vol I & II. They have lots of other compliations. Harvey did one when we were in Nauvoo. If you go to the Seventies Hall there you will find Harvey’s collection of all the Seventies. They make a great team, they have done all kinds of databases together. They are going to talk today about a new property database, information about early LDS Members in Nauvoo and Iowa. They will be discussing recent projects that they have done and what is planned. Among other things they have indexed the “Frontier Guardian”, that is a newspaper that the Church printed back in Iowa, when the Mormons were coming across the plains. Lot of genealogical data in it, but most of us hadn’t even heard about it before. They are involved in the Winter Quarters Project at BYU, which has a nice website. There goal was to find out what people died of, sponsored by a medical group. Between the two of them they have authored 20 books and numerous articles. Susan is still teaching at BYU. Harvey is retired from BYU. Susan recieved the Karl G. Maeser Distringuished Facility Lecturer Award in 2000 and the Eliza R. Snow Fellow. She is also the past Associate Dean of General Education and Honors, and Director of the Church History and Religion Studies Center.
Harvey & Susan Easton Black – A New Property Database and Informatio About Early LDS Members in Nauvoo and Iowa – http://winterquarters.byu.edu, http://www.earlylds.com
Harvey Black
I am the junior member of the team. I have only been doing this for 20 years. Susan has been involved for 30 plus years. She has lead the way and gotten me excited about it. We we were married I couldn’t help myself I was just swept in with the tide. For all of our married years I have been looking at these early records.
We are focused in our work on the mid-west pioneers. The pioneering years and Deseret. Our work focuses on those people who actually got in covered wagons and went from Pittsburgh to Nauvoo. They travelled around and settled in these about 200 identifiable settlements that were found along the banks of the Missouri as they waited to cross the plains. 90 to 110 of them they will identify from the Frontier Guardian. Around Nauvoo there were about 20 communities. Each one had little branches, records, and they had all kinds of information about the people we know and love. Some of these people were valiant and held in there and did wonderful things for a few years. Then for different reasons, often times the father of the family died, and the rest of the family diaspora. (a jewish term of the scattering) The gathering was to the Utah Valley, the diaspora, the scattering is used by the Community of Christ (RLDS). There communities are all over the mid-west. With interesting name like: Manti, Zodiac, Texas and places like that.
Having to give this talk made me think about my being a great-grandfather. Between Susan and I we have about 50 descendants. As we were thinking about this talk and about all the volumes you heard about I was talking to my daughter, who is the most kind of history orientated, she is actually a newspaper reporter. She is very involved with famly and she loves doing family things. I said, “Susanne, have you ever looked at any of these things we have done.” That is a humbling type of question to ask. She said, “Well Dad, No, isn’t it all done. I don’t really need to look at that stuff do I?” I said, “Susanne, we know we have just spent our life blood, we worked day and night, every time you don’t see me or Susan we are at the computer digging out this stuff.” She asked if some of our people were in there? I told her hardly any of them. Our people were in the last wagon, they were the people nobody paid attention too. They were the people that didn’t get on the branch lists. They were the people in the 1850 census in Pottawattamie that are not there. We both parted company, both of us feeling a little worse. I wondering how on earth do I do something that a great grandson Josh, that just became a deacon, turn his heart to his ancestors? Me as one of them, but in particular the hearts of the children to their fathers, the fathers I was thinking of was those people that were the spiritual lineage for his Aaronic priesthood. The other kind of fathers, the genetic fathers, the ones we usually think of as we trace our families. I think he knows my name but there are at least four other generations back before he gets to the fathers of the faith in this restoration. Does he know George Black, does he know anything about him, how could he? I’ve been doing this for 20 years, this is a challenge for me and you to turn our children’s hearts.
We are working in that direction, to get these records so people don’t have to spend a year back in the land records office in Nauvoo, trying to sort out from dusty piles of records, was he involved in any way any of the things that were happening there? Why should this person have stuck with it when his neighbor was Lyman Wright and took off for Texas and established this Zodiac place. He had all kinds of strange neighbors that took off and created new versions of Mormonism all over the mid-west.
Susan and I have focused on Nauvoo and Council Bluffs. Kirtland is in progress and some of you know this and that the records are being perfected there. They even have a yearly event when people in the community that are descendants of the first members of the Church in Kirtland are invited there. Most of them know nothing about the Church.
Down in Far West they have some of our friends, mostly friends and groups that did not follow Brigham. I hate to call them apostates because they are our brethren, they are mormons in their own way and they are part of the family. I don’t know how your family is but of my 60 descendants some of them are friends to mormonism, they are not exactly 100 percent mormons. That is part of our challenge isn’t it, to get all of our family together.
Finally we get to Nauvoo, and that is where we have been spending the last 20 years. In Nauvoo we are trying and Susan has lead the way. For years and years and years nothing was known really about the early membership in the Church. There was no basic keeping of the records as we have been admonished to do. Susan reconstructed and worked on that. I came along and discovered that the place they asked me to be as a missionary, the Seventies Hall, we had an old purple hectograph copy of a list of names of people that were supposedly Seventies in Nauvoo. By the time I spent 2 or 3 more years on it we discovered that there was 35 quorums. That there were indeed lists some of which Milt and others by blood, sweat and tears dug out of the Church historians office. We reconstructed who they were and discovered that basically every body in Nauvoo, every man from age 18 to 45, also the age to serve military service in the militia, were seventies. They are on one of these lists. Anyone that has worked on lists like that knows it takes a lot of work to try to figure out what that name was. Its spelled way different from the way the person usually spelled it. We tried to found out when they were born, when they died, what happened to them, their family, did they stay with the Church. Did they go to the Nauvoo Legion, did they go to the temple. That is one of these books.
All this work, we created this collection or book and we were thrilled with it. A couple of years went by and we went back to Nauvoo and just checking on our offspring – the box. We asked were are those records? About three generations of people in the land records office had transpired since then, they said we think we put that in the vault were we keep things we don’t to lose and we don’t want to get messed up. That is where it is. Our dream was to have these records available so everybody, so my little grandson Josh, can someday turn his heart to these people. Not to be kept in a big vault. So at that point we started doing our little part of it. Luckily we found people like Don and Diane Snow. Today my grandson can go on his computer and find www.earlylds.com and find this record. He can find the land record description, the parents, the children. He can find everything that is in the land records office.
I was a little paranoid we know how quickly records can disappear, and get lost and forgotten. Susan insisted that it be published, so we got it on hard copy. She feels like it never happens until its on hard copy. We got it onto another website, some of it is on the http://winterquarters.byu.edu/. These are the people that got all the way up to that Missouri frontier. So it is on at least two websites. It’s rapidly becoming much more enriched. I sure Don and Diane Snow have shared with you the incredible amount of work it has taken to make this website. A beautiful and usable and valuable tool in trying to discover who were our Nauvoo ancestors.
Susan Easton Black
How it started for me. By the time I had come to BYU I had already done a family book. Which mean that when I was a young child my parents paid for piano lessons but it didn’t take. My parents paid for dancing, it didn’t take. What I really liked was books. I convinced my business father to literally pay for my sending for certificates to try and prove who my own ancestors were. In some cases I got back, on my Benyon line others had done a lot of work and was back to the 12th century. I wanted to verify that with pictures and testimonies. By the time I was coming to BYU I knew I had been promised in a patriarchal blessing that I would have great joy in genealogy. I had concluded by the time I was in my 20’s that my great joy had passed in life. I had wondered what would joy be like, because now I had already found the best part.
Very fortunate for me I had an opportunite in 1981 to move from the department in which I was in in the academic field at BYU to also an academic field, religious education. When I moved into our religious education area there were just incredible professors in Church history. Each professor it seemed to me had been assigned some area of the United States were the latter-day saints had lived, to focus their career on. A personal favorite Milt Backman had Kirtland. He and Keith Perkins were working in that area. Larry Porter he had New York. Don Kanis seemed pretty interested in Vermont. LeMar Barrett, Missouri. Everybody had kind of carved out what they were hoping to do research and had done wonderful things in it. So the question was what would I do. You know when you are the only women everybody is pretty sure you take notes.
I kind of struggled for a little while. I don’t know what I would of done if I didn’t have such a great friend as Milt Backman.
So then there came a time in 1981, just as I am coming in, I had only been in for a few months. There was an invitation that went out to all people interested in Church history from the pros like Leonard Errington and others down to people like me that were just starting to put my toes in the water. The invitation was to come to the church history office and was issued by Earl Olsen. Some of you may remember him. The purpose of it wasn’t told to at least me. When we arrived there we were told that many people were coming to the family history area and they wanted to know about their ancestors. Their ancestors wasn’t Parley P. Pratt, or it wasn’t Joseph Smith, or it wasn’t Brigham Young. That people in the know of church history could talk about forever. It was kind of the Joe Blows, the people like me. Earl wanted to know if anyone had seen the membership list. We several spoke up and said they had seen a branch list here, something else there, and something else here. It all sounded really wonderful but it had never been pulled together. So then the question was, who would like to pull it together. This Brother Olsen he was so serious about it that he invited people to one stand up tell who they were and if they would be interested in pulling it together. As I recall I was the only woman in the room and I had worn pink, if you want to stand out that will do it. I was sitting in the back row and someone said they liked my perfume and someone else asked if was there to take notes, so I was kind of the last seat like some of you in the back. Anyway people would stand up and then say their name and most everyone seemed to know somebody. After they said their name then they would talk about what wonderful things they were doing and they would be happy to open up their files to somebody that would like to pull it together.
Everybody kind of passed the buck a little bit and finally I am sitting in the back, I remember growing up in a home where talking about pioneers was almost like you had stepped on holy ground. My grandmother, I love these pioneers, she would tell me stories even of mine own ancestors and their sacrifice, and their struggles. The one I remember the most was of her telling me of a young girl names Sarah Ann, who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley wearing gunny sacks on her feet. She would say would you do that and I would say “Heavens no what if somebody saw me!” Then she would say oh there is such a difference between you and your great-grandmother Sarah Ann, she had faith and you don’t.
With a multitude of stories like that as everyone said no, when it came my turn to say who I was, well I said I would do it. I’ve learned in life that you don’t be a quitter when times get tough. Actually that’s when you get up and you start moving it. You know my younger brother a few weeks ago introduced me as a speaker down in New Port. He said, You know I didn’t really think she was bright when she grew up, I’’m actually not really bright I am just have an ability to hang in there and to not give up.
We are now going to talk to you about some of things we pulled together. The first thing was a book about my ancestors. I am forever grateful for my father he put up $5,000, when $5,000 was $5,000 bucks. I said “Dad, there is a reason you are in business because you are going to help me with this mania.”
The first series was a compililation of 50 books, 48,000 pages and it is called “Memberships of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1830 to 1848. Now at the time that I started this there were not computers. There were the archives way back so for 10 years every Friday I went to the archives to gather what information I could. You will notice if you have used it that there are secondary sources, some are primary sources, I’m just learning how to do it. You know you have to cut your teeth on something. I wish it wasn’t my biggest project because then it would of been better. You have to begin somewhere.
The impact of it was absolutely a huge experience. Nothing better than in the process I was on volume S when I found Harvey. Maybe it’s because Joseph Smith was saying she needs help. When I started dating Harvey I was kind of like, ok, here’s a nother one. Then I asked him about himself and he said he was president of his family history organization for his family. Suddenly I found myself going from one end of the couch to the other. I just didn’t know there was a man out there single like that. So it’s been a real happy life.
What can you find in the Memberships? People that joined the Church and knew the prophet Josesph Smith. In this process it was a great blessing, it was before the time that you were told that you only submit work for your own ancestors. Getting wind of it George Durrant, a great man head of the genealogical part, one time I had an office next to George. I just loved it because every day when I would see George and say “How you doing George?” He would go, my best day yet! One day I called him up and told him I found all these people but what is the chances that they joined the Church say 1830 in Palmyra and they lived long enough to seal themselves to their parents in 1877 in Salt Lake? We talked about it and he then gave permission for religious education to go as a facility at BYU to make sure that all their temple work was done. Of all the ones I did that one had the biggest impact in my life, one I found Harvey in the mist of the process, and two, I now have thousands and thousands of friends in the next life. So when the Lord starts say to me, Hey you really messed up, I can go whistle and tell them I need their help. I am hoping that they will rise up.
I realized in the process, as Harvey has indicated, we can now look at our own family and say that not everybody related to us was at church last week. Perhaps you can say the same thing, I hope you cannot. If I was to say the greatest sarrow in life thats it. But I decided to say, ok, I love the people too that don’t always stay faithful and where did they go? The impact was a seven volume set called “Early Members of the Re-organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. It was so interesting to found out how these people literally made the decision to leave the Church. So many of them left Nauvoo, but actually stopped in Iowa. Part of it was that they heard were Brigham Young ended up, it wasn’t the green pastures of Oregon, Vancouver, or California, you know there is gold in them there hills, it was out in the desert but by a great salt lake. Have you ever seen Iowa, everything grows in Iowa. They had large tracks of land and they chose to stay. So if you are looking for some of your ancestors in the mid-west and wonder where they ended up that might be a place you might like to look.
The list goes on and on it’s pretty crazy actually. I wanted to speak about some people have said to me, as the years came and went. Some will say I know you found my ancestors, but most instead of saying thank you will say, I want to correct something on page 76 in volume 26. There is no way I am going back, by the time it hit computer it was DOS. At least you have something. I know everyone likes to correct now what everyone thinks is the pro, but I good with it. People began to ask what about the people that came before them? In other words we can name Joe Blow but what about his father and his children, what about his ancestors? By this point Harvey is hooked we did something called “Anotated Records, Baptims for the Dead and Nauvoo. I had been saying to people “You know I actually do know how you can find their fathers and their grandfathers and so forth.” These people were kind of like the people in Hawaii, they actually knew the names of their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents. I would always say “The secret is in the River.”
The people in Nauvoo spent so much time doing baptisms for the dead. It was not an unsual day to have Joseph Smith out in the river, and people lined on the banks of the river to go in to do the baptism work for those who had gone before. Then a hundred yards from him, here’s Parley P. Pratt, and a hundred yards from him, Wilford Woodruff, and people lined up. What you will find in this baptismal book is that Emma Smith went into the river and she did the baptismal work for her father Isaac Hale and for her mother Elizabeth Hale. You will also find where you can see a redundancy in baptismal work. Have you ever wondered who is the first man that had his baptism work done again and again and again? Where did it begin? The answer is it began in the Mississippi River. Who’s the man that had his work done so many times, and the answer is George Washington. The people would call him, their friend George Washington, even though it’s not the same time period. You are going to find one man actually knew back 32 generations. He says he is doing the work for his great-grandfather, now his great-great-grandfather and he actually knew that. If you have pioneer ancestry that goes back to Nauvoo you will definetly want to check on that.
A new set, with seven volumes, called Property Transactions in Nauvoo. If you where to say, why would I do that. Some of you have been to Nauvoo, I think there is salvation without seeing Nauvoo, but maybe not. In other words I really like Nauvoo. In the Lands and Records office a lot of people go there and they just can’t wait to find out where their ancestors lived. As you go into that office you get those great missionaries and they’ve got these little squares as the town was plotted out. Suddenly they mark square 152 and you go to stand on that site only to find that another person is standing on the site, and another person is on the same site, and they are all saying my ancestors name was this but their names are all different.
I concluded there was a great woman named Wowena Miller who was the secretary to this Nauvoo Restoration Inc. She had done some beginning work on like 3x5 cards. She had gone through and identified much of that property tranactions. She didn’t have a computer, she was doing a lot by hand and then she would come back and type them on these cards, obviously with some errors. Since I was better since my first 50 volumes. Harvey and I are at Carthage Court House, our lives pass before us as we mention now Carthage Court House. The result is you can in these volumes and it is now searchable, but now literally trace your ancestor who lived here first at a starter home in Nauvoo, then they lived here, and their farm was out here, and they had investment property.
You can literally with these books look at your favorite date, one you will remember like the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, June 27, 1844, with these books in searching them you could develop the town. You would know exactly where everybody lived, what property they owned when Joseph died. If you favorite date in May 4, 1842 the first day the endowment is given in this dispensation, you could put everybody where they lived. They would say oh that’s Joseph property, oh that’s just a part. Wait till you see in here. Some of you might be interested that when you look into these property books you will able to say, here’s my ancestor, but when they left Nauvoo did they sell their property, was it sold in a sherriff sale, or did they give it to Emma Smith, because they knew she was remaining behind, did they give it to Emma Smith in memory of Joseph for $1.00. Wouldn’t you be interested to know that? Wouldn’t you be interested in the buy and sell? That would be in these books.
Harvey Black
When I was trying to persuade Susan to be interested, May 4th was our day. She said everything of important in our family happens on a church history day. So I asked her to marry me on Valentines it wasn’t until May 4th she said now I can answer. She said because this is Elijah day when all these important things happened. She told me since you are older than me I don’t want to be left alone, you have to out live me. So I am buy books like “Healthy at 100”. My favorite icon is Moses and I have pictures of him in my office. Guess what age Moses was when he was called on his ministry? He was 80 when he was called. I just turned 80, and he spent the next 40 years writting. He lead the children of Israel and did all kinds of wonderful things.
Susan is talking about all these things that are blessing the lives of research people. People that are already addicted. People that come in volunteerly to your family history center. Nobody has to push them in the door. They already love this stuff. But what about little Josh, I mentioned earlier. Maybe he would love it if he knew about it or knew anything at all. What if somebody told him you now have the Aaronic Priesthood and somebody on your priesthood lineage was named Martin Harris. Anyone here that has any priesthood ordinance done we trace our line directly back to Martin Harris. What an amazing semi-crazy person he was most of his life. He belonged to all kinds of different groups. The Parrish Group 1837, that tried to kill Brigham Young. The Strang Group 1844, he was killed on Beaver Island after he had been crowned. Joseph Smith’s surviving family followed him for a while. The Whitmer Group 1847, David Whitmer who was his fellow testifier of the Book of Mormon, he went to Richmond and got involved with them. Gladden Bishop, 1851, who we hardly ever hear of, but he had a little group. Martin Harris, why should my little grandchild care about Martin Harris? He is on his line of authority. He has got to turn his heart to this person. Quess what my wife is doing right now? She is writting a great book on Martin Harris so that maybe his heart sometime someday will turn. To this man that went through all kinds of interesting things, who was a very human being, but was a great chosen soul in the kingdom and did very key important things. Turning Josh’s heart to his spiritual fathers, one of the many reasons why you and I and all of us are engaged in this work.
Harvey Black is creating a historical fiction about George Black. Will that “turn heart of Josh” to first baptized genetic “father”? George Black came from Ireland to Nauvoo and lived on the outskirts of town on the Skunk River. He helped to build the one and only ship in Nauvoo the Maid of Iowa. He was in the Nauvoo temple and Brigham Young was his mission president when he was there. He dearly loved the prophet and was asked on one occasion to row the prophet to safety because the mob was closing in. He saved money and bought a little lot on Mulhullen. They had the perfect spot to be on the front line of the Battle of Nauvoo. How do we turn the hearts of the children with their fathers. Maybe if I could sit down with little Josh and talk to him about this person who he has no idea who he is maybe he would start feeling something that he doesn’t feel now.
There was a person in my life by the name of Louie Smith, I grew up in Wyoming. In Wyoming we had kind of creative programs in the Church. I was about Josh’s age, 12, and Louie Smith didn’t have any children but something he loved family. He loved genealogy. He wanted to get all of us young kids excited about it. We had these Books of Rememberances. We just thought those were the most wonderful things we ever heard about. Especially because Louie was so excited about it. So he got us writing little journal things, writing little family histories. I wrote to a great uncle down to the Manti temple who had some family records. My heart, something happened. I didn’t continue for the next about 60 years until I met Susan, but the spark was there, and the excitement was there. My heart somehow because of Louie was turned. Maybe somebody could do something like my project for Josh. We are trying to work somewhat with World Vital Records. They are trying to combine maps with genealogical data. It is really fun for me, I don’t know if you are a map person, to kind of see where the thing is.
I have another little grandson that comes over and what he wants to do is get on the computer. He would rather do that then play blocks or read books or play ping pong. When I was trying to work on the computer he wanted me to get off so he could play. One of the fun things he has is a little simulation, and he loves that, it is a pioneer village. I thought that is great if we were to simulate his ancestors we could add somethings that would grab the younger generation and get them involved in what is exciting about what happened 100 or 500 years ago. There is a a whole list of things and the Church is doing somethings to make it so much more accessible, more fun, more options, pictures, biographies, we can submit things and make all these sites a lot more exciting then they already are. We can help with the conversion and light the fire.
You are dealing mostly with people that are converted to doing genealogy. The people in St. George come into the family history centers and need help, but they are already converted. I’m talking about my 60 descendants who aren’t converted. Maybe somehow some of us can be inventive and creative and come up with ways.
What Susan and I have been mostly working with is how do they find it? It used to be not to long ago, at least in my life spand, you would have to spend weeks, months, years trying to search out these records. Our collection of works in these boxes is some of the foot work so you can find it more readily. You can get a little more information than you might of otherwise got.
Great and noble souls like Don and Diane Snow have made a huge investment in time and energy, and a lot of time money, many times at their own expense, created the www.earlylds.com website out of Nauvoo. I don’t know where they get the money to keep it going. Some how somebody lends them a little this and somebody lends them a little of that, and they spend day and night and make these things beautiful.
Is hard copy so important? There is something about great about books. Electronic copy are awesome you can do random search. With Susan’s volumes you can do random searches with a little CD that is available through Ancestry. (LDS Vital Records Library) The excitment for me is the internet.
Susan and I have both spent time in Latin America. Our hearts go out to those people that now form more than half the membership of the Church. How are any of them ever going to get to these records? They aren’t, unless they go down to the family history center in their little ward in Chile and get on the internet and find Martin Harris, who is there spirital ancestor. Those of you that have spent time working with those in Latin America know why I feel a very special love and special concern. Of all these volumes that we have been talking about not one of them is in spanish. Not one of them is in Portuguese. Half the membership of the Church can’t read one word of any of this. Yet these people are their spiritual ancestors too.
The Assisted Conversion
Grandparents: Search FUN
e.g. Virtual neighbors [Nauvoo land records]
e.g. Find Nauvoo family [all Nauvoo databases] earlylds.com
Parents: Stories FUN
e.g. Daughters of the Utah Pioneers files for over 100,000 pioneers
Kids: Games FUN
To be created e.g. simulated pioneering
I am convinced to do something. Maybe some of you here are talented or gifted in this area. We can do things that will grab the people who are not here today and get them involved and interested. One of the things we are trying to do, a long term project, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers files. If you had the time and the resources and not afraid of the traffic, you could go up there by the state capital and if you are a descendant of one of those folks you can look at that file that is in the DUP office and you can find all kinds of exciting things. All the way from pictures to obituaries, little histories. WPA projects.
Back in the 1930s people went around and collected stories of the pioneers and put them in these folders. I think Josh might get interested in that. He might like to see the little historical on them. He might not get very excited about the born, died, mother and father part, but he might really get excited about the little story that is there. How is he going to get into the DUP file? We are hoping that it is going to be scanned. At least they are motivated to do that, because they had someone break in there recently and take some of their early copies of the Book of Mormon. They realize how vulnerable those files are. That a fire or any kind of damage those files would be gone forever. So they are going to be scanned.
What is the next step? People have to give permission it’s a long term project. But maybe it would be made available, it could be searchable, it could be available on a website. How can they make money? They just make the few pennies that they need to keep that place going by xeroxing and charging you .15 cents a page. They could do the website thing by allowing a few advertisers to appear on the same page and they could get some money for every access to the page. Then the sweet ladies that are up there instead of xeroxing they could be doing archival things and saving the stuff and making it available for years to come.
Here is some of the stuff we have been working on:
Church
1. Branch/Ward rosters
-Greater Nauvoo [-20 units]
@Greater Winter Quarters [-50 units]
2. Ordinances
-Baptisms
@Proxy Baptisms
-Endowments
3. Quorums and Relief Society
@Seventy [35 units]
#Nauvoo Relief Society
4. Emigrant – Wagon train
#Mormon Overland Rosters
5. Newspapers
-Times and Seasons
- Neighbor, Wasp
@Frontier Guardian
Civil
1. Census
-1842 Nauvoo
-1850 Pottawattamie
-1850 Utah
2. Land Records
-Tax Lists
@Deeds
-Sexton records
-Parley
@Winter Quarters
3. Military militia
@Nauvoo Legion
@Mormon Battalion
4. Government Petitions
-Missouri
-Kanesville
5. Immigrant –Ship lists
Family
1. Family Group sheets
2. Family Histories
3. Biographies
The items in bold we have worked on. Everyone of them Susan has used as a source for her 50 volumes plus works. Some other folks have done some exciting things. The Nauvoo Relief Society is searchable online about several hundred of the first members of the Relief Society. The Immigration list you can find that online. Some of it is in her book on Scandinavian saints. Times and Seasons is on the Nauvoo Databank. It is in the local area at larger family history centers. Some of it is on www.earlylds.com. Some of these records are getting in some of it is in process of still being created.
Susan Easton Black
The Frontier Guardian is a major project. You realize for Harvey and me, Nauvoo has been everything. I actually had someone that viewed it say to me “You know Susan, I think most of the Church thinks that the saints were in Nauvoo and the next season they were out in Utah.” Everybody forgets Iowa. With that I got a little bit of an assignment to see what we could do to discover what is up with Iowa.
So you realize that Brigham Young, 1847, he is coming into the Salt Lake Valley. But he is sending word back to the people, well even he does come back himself to the people in Iowa. He is saying hold up in other words we’ve gone out to a desert, we’ve got thistles, sago lillies, but we need to be able to get food to feed the thousands of people that would come. The result was, we literally had a presence longer in Iowa than we had a presence in Kirtland, in Missouri, an Illinois. What kept Iowa together was were you keep informed. Who’s to head out now, what should you plant, what do you need for your wagon. They literally set up, we now identified a hundred and two little communties. You realize they are all farmers. So they can’t crowd in together. So they go up and down the Missouri River and then heading along what we call today Highway 2.
So they established a newspaper. The leader of the newspaper was Orsen Hyde, 1849. He owns that newspaper until 1852. In this newspaper it lists literally thousands and thousands of names. It lists ever emigrant train that is on it’s way to California, to Oregon. This Council Bluffs becomes a pretty much a trail head. It’s been very exciting to find out about this. Soon BYU studies will publish a DVD of this Frontier Guardian. It will be annotated, were it will tell you something about the people, about the places.
In addition we have got a website out there. It’s called Winter Quarters at http://winterquarters.byu.edu/. If you ancestors say died in Winter Quarters you can go right to the person, you can learn about the disease that took their life, you can also find where they are buried and at which plot at Winter Quarters. In addition it has a map that shows you all of these many, many communities and has a little dot by its name. Say you want to know where you ancestor stayed after they left Nauvoo, because actually they didn’t end up west in 1847. You could punch on a little dot that says Harrisburg, Iowa or the Bluffs and any of these other of names of communties and suddenly it would come up with a description of the community. The original founders, what were the stores in town, what were the illnesses that took lives, and then would also then list ancestry.
We’re trying to make a bigger deal about Iowa. If you were to still say is it fun? Not this morning. I would say most days it is still fun. It’s odd for me when I’m in the middle of a project you can just hardly talk about it. When it’s over and you give yourself a break and you get in touch with people again then all of a sudden you go hey that was really great, what’s next.
The latest book that has come out that is a genealogical resource is called Legacy of Sacrific, the Missionaries to Scandinavian from 1872 to 1894. If you have Scandinavian ancestry its the one to go with the one that shows the 14,000 people that crossed on a boat from Copenhagen to Hull, England. These are the missionaries that were their shepards or guides.
For Harvey and I we actually like being in the trenches. We actually love research. It’s crazy that we can actually find each other. I just can’t tell you how many people don’t like it, including family members as he has revealed. We’ve like it. There is an old saying “What should you do before you die?” There are three things that will cause you to be remembered. One is you plant a tree, so we are always planting trees, I think you can still see the house but I don’t know, we just got another tree the other day. We like trees. The other thing is the birth a child. It’s sounds like we’ve done more than our share. The other one is to write a book. We have tried to do all three in our lives we hope we are not just reduced to books. There still is something out there for us.
We hope that these books will be of benefit to you as you help others. I think Harvey is very strong on we’ve got to figure out a way to really capture the hearts of people. Not just us, we’ve already have our heart into it. It’s our prayer that perhaps you’ll think of a way. We’ve thought and thought and we can tell the story just how do you grab someone else with it. Think for us, that is our latest thought.
You realize you are much loved, if you were to say to me has your patriachial blessing come true? Has great joy extended beyond what I did as a child for my own ancestors? I’ve had incredible joy in this life. If you were to say, have I missed some sunsets and sunrises? I think I have been up for every sunrise, but actually a lot of sunsets the beauty I’ve missed. I love Utah we just need an ocean here. Then it would be perfect. There are all kinds of things I think you miss when you become book people. But, there is something really sacred, something really wonderful about uncovering somebody that lived in the past that would of been forgotten. So that part has brought incredible joy.
We thank you for who you are. I especially thank the Snows for asking us. You know they are about to leave on a mission. Going to England to continue to spread the good word. Their whole lives they have both been professors and they have been people that love people, living and dead. They have done much to assist us in getting out from where we live this information to the world. I am very grateful, thank you.
Accessibility of their volumes
They mostly write for libraries. You can contact the Religious Studies Center at BYU. Property transactions are at the Church History Dept at BYU, also on World Vital Records. The Annotated Baptismal Records is throught the Genealogical Center at BYU. All of these books you can get at BYU, some on WorldVitalRecords.com and some on the Family History Suite CD put out by Ancestry.com years ago. Don still sees them at the DI for $2.00. Ancestry.com gave the CDs out years ago for free. You can call Ancestry and unlock them. The Family History Library in Salt Lake also has them available on hard copy.
This presentation is available on DVDs #112 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Family History Consultant Training by D. Merrill White
10 March 2007
Introduction to Speaker by Don Snow
Main Presentation: D. Merrill White – Family History Consultant Training
We are fortunate to have Brother D. Merrill White with us today. He went down to the St. George FH Jamboree last month and gave a total of a six hour presentation. He is condensing parts of that for us. His presentation will continue into the Q&A session of our meeting. He has brought us copies of the booklets he handed out in St. George. They have pictures of the new Power Point presentations. This is very helpful information. He is going to be talking today on understanding your calling and role as a family history consultant and how you help fulfill the three fold mission of the Church. Including determining the members needs and how you can assist them.
D. Merrill White was born in Sparks, NV. Graduated from BYU with a degree in History and a minor in music. He has lectured on various genealogical practices and software at many FH conferences. Including the BYU Computerized Genealogy Conferences, the big summer BYU Genealogy Conferences and this last October the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Conference. He’s work for the Family and Church History Dept. of the LDS Church for seven years. He currently serves as a specialist for FH Consultants in the FHL in Salt Lake and the Joseph Smith Memorial building.
D. Merrill White – Family History Consultant Training
A manual was handed out that contained all three Power Point presentations along with all the handouts they give. He also had cards with a link to give feedback on the presentation or anything dealing with family history consultant training. If it deals with something else, i.e. new FamilySearch then don’t use this website. This is for consultant training or this presentation only. It will take you to an online survey where you can give your comments and suggestions. The manual given out in the meeting only gives quotes to talks; the copy you get from Salt Lake will give you the actual talks.
The Church decided a few years ago that with “new FamilySearch” that it would be a good idea than we actually train family history consultants on how to do their callings. We thought it good for FHC to know how to work with members, what the responsibilities were. To let Priesthood leaders know what consultants should do. So we began to work on some training. We are creating a consultants guide, an actual manual for consultants to have to help them with their calling and also be a reference that they can turn to with their calling. Everything is written for an individual that has never been a consultant before. It has to start at that level and then it works up from there.
The Church decided to help dissimilate this training they would starting doing e-learning or online learning. So we started our LDS Net dimensions website for e-learning courses. We have been testing all of this information so that the content we are talking about today is what’s in that manual. But it is not THE manual because the manual is contently changing. We are actually testing it in a few selected temple districts right now to get their feedback. We are even testing different sized versions. We have one that is really thick it’s quit intimidating. We have one that is very thin that is not intimidating but it doesn’t tell you very much. We have to see what people like to use and do they prefer to go get the rest on the internet and those kinds of things.
Lesson Objectives
1. Family History and Temple Work
2. Seek the Spirit and Guidance
3. Your Primary Responsibilities
4. Additional Ways to Serve
5. Priesthood Guidance
6. Consultant Training
7. Resources for family history consultants
8. Stake and Ward Family History Organizations
Family History and Temple Work
All of our vast family history endeavor is directed to temple work. There is no other purpose for it. The temple ordinances become the crowning blessings the Church has to offer. [President Gordon B. Hinckley, New Temples to Provide ‘Crowning Blessings’ of the Gospel. Ensign, May 1998, 87]
The key to a successful family history program is family history consultants who meet with members and families individually to help them begin and continue their temple and family history work.
Called to Serve
Someone in your own ward or branch of the Church has been called to help you prepare those names for the temple. There they can be offered the covenants which will free them from their spirit prisons and bind them into families – your family – forever. [Elder Henry B. Eyring, “Hearts Bound Together”, Ensign, May 2005, p. 77]
Seek the Spirit for Guidance
Some of you may be shy by nature or consider yourselves inadequate to respond affirmatively to a calling. Remember that this work is not yours and mine alone. It is the Lord’s work, and when we are on the Lord’s errand, we are entitled to the Lord’s help. Remember that whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies. [Pres. Thomas S. Monson, “Duty Calls”, Ensign, May 1996, p. 44]
There is a way to reach every human heart, and it is your business to find the way to the hearts of those to whom you are called [to serve]. [Pres. Lorenzo Snow, “Instructions for Missionaries”, Improvement Era, Dec. 1899, p. 128]
Primary Responsibilities
Reach out to help members individually to begin and continue their family history and provide ordinances for their ancestors. You are the members’ principal source for family history help.
To fulfill your responsibilities:
1. Reach out to members in your ward a few at a time.
2. Focus on those suggested by the High Priest Group Leader
3. Meet with new members of the Church
Family History Consultants should become knowledgeable about:
1. Temple and family history work
2. Using family history computer programs
3. Seeking for and providing temple ordinances for their own ancestors.
Additional Ways to Serve
1. Teach a Family History Class – Under the direction of the bishopric, family history consultants may teach a family history class during Sunday School time:
-supplement class time with individual visits
-recommend who might attend your class
Right now there is no FH Sunday School class manual, eventually there will be.
Serve in a Family History Center
You may be asked to serve in a family history center supported by your stake.
-The center director will provide training
-This will help you become familiar with the family history resources that are available in centers.
Priesthood Guidance
Family History Consultants are:
-called and set apart by the bishopric
-supervised by the High Priests Group Leader
The high priest group leader in your ward oversees your service as a family history consultant and provides you guidance in fulfilling your calling.
The high priest group leader should ensure that you understand your responsibilities and are able to fulfill them. If you need help or have questions about your responsibilities, work with your high priests group leader.
It doesn’t mean your high priest group leader will train you, just that he will help you receive it.
1 Nephi 16: 23 “ And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow; wherefore, I did arm myself with a bow and an arrow, with a sling and with stones. And I said unto my father: Whither shall I go to obtain food?
This is a handout with the PowerPoint presentations in the manual.
Priesthood Guidance
My Training Plan: Getting Started as a Family History Consultant
Work with your high priests group leader (or assigned member of the elders quorum presidency) to develop your training plans. Check the box when have completed an item on your training plan.
Responsibilities
My Responsibilities ________________________________________________
What the bishop would like me to accomplish ____________________________
Priesthood Supervision
The priesthood leader that I report to: __________________________________
Contact information in: _____________________________________________
Priesthood Guidance
Priesthood leaders can:
-Call one or more family history consultants in each ward.
-Teach members regularly the principles of temple and family history work.
-Report on temple and family history work as a standing agenda item in Ward Council or PEC meetings.
-Establish stake or ward temple and family history goals.
If I were a bishop again… [I would] charge the high priest group leader with this responsibility to lead out in the ward council on this subject. I would ensure that we had one or more ward family history consultants who were ‘people persons’ who could work under his direction. [Elder D. Todd Christofferson]
I imagine that in the course of a year we could help at least ten families. In five years, we could have a corps of fifty families active at some level in family history and its attendant temple work. That to me would be a successful, well-run program [Elder D. Todd Christofferson]
Leaders should encourage members to determine, according to the promptings of the Spirit, what temple and family history work they can do ‘in wisdom and order’ and consistent with their own ‘strength and means.’ (see Mosiah 4:27, D&C 10:4) [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
Consultant Training
Dec 7, 2007 a letter went out to the whole church signed by the First Presidency. Asking consultants to register, even priesthood leaders if they want to.
Family History Consultant Support News and Training:
http://consultant.familysearch.org
http://priesthood.familysearch.org
You will need your membership number, which you can get off your temple recommend, or on your individual summary from your ward clerk. You will also need your ward unit number, which is on that individual summary about you. Some people have been putting in their family history center unit number, which is not the right number.
By registering you will get:
-early access to systems to be released in the future
-access to training
-regular updates and information
-access to resources to answer questions and provide help
We are assume, because we don’t know how many consultants we have, we’re guessing that there are about 40,000 consultants in the world. Just by how many wards and branches there are. We’ve had 24,000 register, in various languages around the world, that’s not bad. Guess how many have done anything after they have registered? About 6,000.
We start to wonder; maybe they don’t want to learn how to do their calling. We are trying to figure out what is the best way to motivate because it is a new concept. We’re sending you training through the internet, people aren’t used to that. The other reason we are doing that is because things are constantly changing and we want to update that. Printing materials that go out of date really doesn’t work right now. We have been pushing things through the internet and maybe that’s why people haven’t been doing it. Maybe perhaps people aren’t doing it is perhaps they look at the lessons and they say, I already now how to do that. Maybe they can’t get in once they got there. We’re not sure what the reasons are. So I am going to talk about how you can contact support to get help with that. We really are encouraging you to register. Start using the training and if you have feedback, I will give you that link for you to give feedback on that.
On-Line Training – https://lds.netdimensions.com/
Once you have registered they will send you an email back. One thing that we know for sure has been happening is that the Church replies and the email goes to people’s junk mail. People have filters and the Church isn’t in their friendly list. The email gets filtered into their junk mail and they never know the Church has replied. If you are not getting email memos all the time from the Church on training, check your junk mail.
The email sent to you will give you your user name and password. You will be able to access this training and they will continue to add and update and develop further training. Right now we have some basic courses for consultants and priesthood leaders. If you do “new FamilySearch” this is where the new FamilySearch training will be.
The first time you log in as a consultant it makes you reset your password. The password by default is 123456. Some people set up there new passwords and then don’t remember them. You would have to call support then.
You are able to print off the lessons, they are in PDF format. You can click the PDF version, download it and save it to your computer, a disk or print it off. One of the problems we are seeing is that people are printing these off and part of the online system was to track people usage of the system. We are unable to track that when you are viewing the information off line. Now we are trying to figure out how to track people that print, because now it doesn’t look like they did anything. We have things we have to figure out. People learn things in different ways and we understand that. We are trying to deliver content in different methods. We want to be able to help everyone in their learning abilities. This is just the beginning but something is better than nothing. We are just getting started. For the first time since Adam and Eve consultants can actually get some training.
Local Training
An assigned family history consultant
-In many stakes, a family history consultant is assigned by the high council advisor to provide training to new family history consultants.
Family history center
-Centers usually offer training classes in how to use Church family history resources and how to do family history research.
If you want to work as a FHC the FHC director will teach you how. I love all these directors that say – with what? Just be aware that we are also aware of this and we are creating center materials as well. We are also creating materials so centers if they want to can take some of their current training or training they would like to develop; and use our website where they can develop their own training using our templates. We are working at helping centers as well.
Because priesthood leaders are busy and the Church knows they are busy the Church has created training for those that are high priest group leaders or high council advisors in terms of how to administer family history and how it works. It is up to the leaders if they want to take the training. It is not required that they do but it is hoped they will. Consultants are told they must register.
Consultant Resources
1. The Spirit
The Spirit of Elijah is the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of the family. [Elder Russell M. Nelson]
2. Support
-Family History Support – 1-866-406-1830 (6 April 1830) – this site is a one shop for all, regardless of what FH need you have you can call this number for support. It is now coming up in multiple languages.
-Fill out the web form on familysearch.org – http://productsupport.familysearch.org
-Email: familyhistory@support.familysearch.org
3. Manuals and Guides
-Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 2 Section 9, “Temple and Family History Work” (35709).
-A Member’s Guide to Temple and Family History Work (34697)
-How Do I Start My Family History? (32916)
-Welcome to the Family History Center (35753000)
-Training for Family History Leaders DVD (00410090) also in Spanish and VHS.
4. Lessons
-Personal Ancestral File -Built in PAF Lessons & User’s Guide
-A Guide to Research (30971) The book was updated in 2005 and released in 2006. No one knows it has been updated because it looks exactly the same.
What’s online for Priesthood Leaders?
www.lds.org you need to click on link to “Serving in the Church”, many people think it is under “Family History and Temples” it is not. Click “Serving in the Church”, and then click “Family History”. If you go there here is your portal for everything about administrating, for consultants, for indexing and for family history centers. If you want to look at the online guide for directors you can go right to the link for Family History Centers and there is the online guide. It you want to register as a consultant it takes you right to that. If you want to look at the priesthood lessons they are right there. Your priesthood leader can take the lesson right there through lds.org. There are even some recommend talks. If he is not into computers and you don’t think he will do it you can go right to the lessons, click on the PDF, print them off and in a very good nice spiritual way you can give them to him.
Consultant Resources
5. FamilySearch.org
-Research Helps & Research Guidance. People don’t realize or forget that these guides are there. They just look up their ancestors’ names on the website; if they are not there they just go to Ancestry. We have some of the best helps and guidance there is for doing family history online. Just be sure you are using that with the people you are helping. Most of them are PDFs and you can download them and give them to the people you are helping.
-The scriptures
-Talks and articles by general Church leaders.
6. The new missionary guide, “Preach My Gospel”, includes suggestions on how missionaries can use family history to find people interested in learning about the gospel.
7. Other Resources
-Center for Family History & Genealogy at BYU – http://familyhistory.byu.edu/
-BYU PAF Tutorial – http://paftutorial.byu.edu/
-BYU Religion 261 – http://261.byu.edu
-BYU Department of Independent Studies offers two free online family history courses:
--“Finding Your Ancestors”
--“Providing Temple Ordinances for Your Ancestors”
-- http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/special_offers/famhist.cfm
-Keith Erekson, Teaching Family History: A Resource Guide for Family History Teachers – http://familyhistory.byu.edu ($4.00)
-Ohana Software Consultant Training: http://www.ohanasoftware.com We let consultants know you don’t have to start from nothing. You can go see what others have done until the Church gives you something.
-Genealogy Resources on the Internet: http://www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail_lds.html
-Your Family History Area advisor. Up in Salt Lake City, because we teach this at the library we recommend that they use the Westra, because they are the area advisors under Merrill J. Batman for that Salt Lake Area - Newsletter email: FamilyHistory-Westra@snapwood.com to be added to the list. There are area advisors all over the United States, most are being called, there are a few that don’t have them yet. That way area advisors are working area presidencies and all those directors and family history centers, helping to set goals and determine things. So if you don’t know who your area advisor is find out.
-The Family History Library Computer and Research Classes – We know that some of you can’t get there. We are really looking at becoming a library without walls. As the Church starts to expand and put things out on the internet our goal is to literally put our current curriculum out there on the internet. In the form of online lessons, web-inars, webcasts we can all participate in. So you can be part of those classes and not take a trip to Salt Lake City. We don’t know how soon that is going to happen, we’re getting there. This is the beginning of that with me coming out here and doing stuff like this.
-The Family History Library Catalog
-Family History Library Internet Explorer Favorites
-Ward or Stake Family History Excursions
-Consultant & Priesthood Email: FHL-FHConsultant@ldschurch.org
Family History Organization
Stake Callings
-Stake Presidency
-High Council Advisor
-Family History Center Directors and the FamilySearch Indexing Director
Ward Level
-Bishopric and High Priest Group Leader coordinate with the High Council Advisor
-Family History Consultants, they could also be asked to serve in a FHC.
This new organization was to break down buriers, to break down the levels. Because what we tended to have was stake consultants going on and doing a lot of stuff that ward consultants didn’t typically know. We tried to kind of merge those together to make a very fluid organization. It also made it so the priesthood had to communicate; because the FHC director goes to the high council advisor, who goes to his high priest group leader to get staff. If that communication doesn’t happen your family history center isn’t open very often.
The following callings have been discontinued:
-Stake family history consultant
-Ward family history consultant
-Family history center staff
They have now been combined into a single calling:
-Family history consultant
We did not discontinue the call of Family History Center Directors. Because we didn’t include that position in the handbook many were released, even though we refer to them multiple times in the manual.
A family history consultant may be asked to:
-be a staff member of the stake family history center
-provide training to other consultants in the stake
New emphasis is placed on:
-Encouraging consultants to reach out to every individual and family in the ward, a few families at a time.
-Encouraging new members of the Church, 12 years of age and older, to obtain Limited-Use Temple Recommends so they can go to the temple to be baptized and confirmed for their own ancestors as soon as possible after baptism.
Handout
Stake and Ward Family History Callings
-A double sided handout was given to audience. It listed all family history callings and responsibilities.
Review – Check Your Learning
1. What is the key to a successful Family History Program? Consultants
2. What is a Consultant’s primary responsibilities? To help individuals do temple work.
3. What additional ways can Consultant’s serve? Work in centers, be an instructor, indexing, etc.
4. Where can Consultant’s receive guidance? Internet, booklets, family history center, priesthood leaders, the spirit, etc.
5. Where can a Consultant obtain and receive training? Online, from each other
Lesson Assignments & Goals
It is faith as the principle of action that is so central to the process of learning and applying spiritual truth. [Elder David A. Bednar]
Assignments:
-Register
-Learn responsibilities
-Meet with High Priest Group Leader
-Receive and participate in necessary training
--E-learning lessons:
---Understanding Your Calling for Consultants
---Administering Family History Work
---Encouraging Members to Participate
Goals:
-Set 2 goals for yourself
Family History Consultant Training – Part 1 – Helping Family History Happen
Working with Members
-Members’ FH Responsibilities
-Overview of Temple & FH Work
-Finding Members to Help
-Prepare for Your Visit
-Visit with and Teach Members
-Helping Members with Different Needs
Blessings of Family History
I have the feeling…that those who give themselves with all their might and main to this work receive help from the other side, and not merely in gathering genealogies. Whoever seeks to help those on the other side receives help in return in all the affairs of life [Elder John A. Widtsoe]
When you ask most individuals, even children what the blessing is Heavenly Father gives you if you pay you’re tithing? Most people know and give the answer: I got fire insurance. But if you ask them what are the blessings for doing family history and temple work most people really give you varied answers. This is really it the continually talk about that you are receiving help in all the affairs of your life.
1. Members’ Family History Responsibilities
Members should identify their kindred dead; request temple ordinances if needed, and provide these ordinances by proxy if possible. As a beginning, members should try to identify four generations of their ancestors. [Church Handbook of Instructions: Book 2, Section 9, 262]
2. Family History Overview
Members follow four basis steps to do their family history and provide ordinances for their ancestors. The Family History Process: 1. Gather Information, 2. Record Information, 3. Perform temple ordinances, 4. Do it again. When starting to work with members give them the four steps, keep it very basic so it doesn’t over-whelm them.
When is new FamilySearch going to be available – don’t know. I currently have three children I will have a fourth in July. Let’s go back to when Merrill had only two and new FamilySearch was supposed to come out. I used to tell missionaries I am absolutely positive by the time I have three kids new FamilySearch will be there. That third one is now almost three and my wife is due in July. So when, soon, that’s our favorite word. But be encouraged, many of you have been involved in beta testing it; it’s come a long way. It is getting very close. They are testing it now actually in temple districts and things, so it’s the closest it’s ever been. Because new FamilySearch has taken longer than it was suppose to it has actually helped us to get our training done. When new FamilySearch actually comes out the training will have been created. We are actually testing it now. There will be training on how to use new FamilySearch on day one of its release. Because it has taken so long to develop new FamilySearch and we have had time to develop training materials with it, it might be that this is one of the better Church experiences in doing family history.
3. Finding Members to Help
Our efforts to promote temple and family history work should be such as to accomplish the work of the Lord, not impose guilt on his children. [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
In the people and families I have seen and helped over the past few years at the library, family history causes more guilt than I think anything else. Because it is very easy not to do, yet you feel very guilty when anyone ever talks about it, because you are not doing it. Just like it is easy to not physically work out, today it might not matter, but someday it will. With family history if your not doing it may not matter, but when you get to the other side it will matter. We are always making people feel guilty when we talk like that. Don’t make them feel guilty. Focus on the blessing, focus on the temple, don’t focus on how you are going to feel because you are not doing it. Motivate with the blessings.
All members should participate by prayerfully selecting those ways that fit their personal circumstances at a particular time. Our effort is not to compel everyone to do everything, but to encourage everyone to do something. [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
Much of your success will come from your own efforts and willingness to contact members. Members usually will respond positively to a personal invitation from a family history consultant to help them get started.
Family History Consultants should pray for guidance to know:
-which families in the ward to help
-how to assist these families
-how to overcome obstacles in their research
The bishopric and members of the priesthood executive committee or ward council may identify a few individuals or families at a time that you should contact to offer family history help.
Work with new converts:
-to help them identify ancestors and, where possible, to go to the temple soon after their baptism to be baptized for their own ancestors.
-they are more likely to be retained by having a family history and temple experience soon after their own baptism.
Church Survey Results:
-Only 23% of converts baptized without an understanding of family history stay active in the Church.
-75% of converts who do become involved in family history activities stay active in the Church.
Getting youth involved in family history might help them stay active in the Church. A good way to have people get started with family history work is by Indexing. We have been bringing Church youth groups down to the family history center and the Indexing group has been coming down and teaching them, and it has taken off like wildfire. The youth have loved the Internet Indexing. We’ve had multiple wards come down and had them taught and get excited and they start doing it. We have a computer lab set up there and we have seen great success.
We are putting very clearly that after baptism new converts should be obtaining a limited use temple recommend. Basically a new member experience could be something like this… I’m baptized, a very nice individual in the ward comes up and said, Hi, I’m a family history consultant, I had no idea who they were or what they did. They let me know they are the person in the ward that helps us find our ancestors, like the missionary talked about when they told us about temple work. They came to my home they met with me and the talked to me a bit about family history, maybe some of the doctrine it with a little booklet they brought, Called a Members Guide to Family History. They talked to me about my family. They had me get out the family information I had. Then I got a call from someone in the ward to meet with the bishop. I met with the bishop and I got a limited use temple recommend. About a week after that I was at the temple and someone had cards with my family’s names on them. That’s what they want their experience to be. They literally might not be sure how it happened but all of a sudden they are at the temple and they got names and it’s their families and it happened very easily. So then when you go back to them after that temple experience as a consultant, even though you did a lot of leg work to start with, you can say would you like me to show you how I did that so you can do it for yourself? You know what answer you are going to get. They are going to be so excited to learn how to find their ancestors, to do these things to prepare their own names.
Many people have heard about the missionary program “A Gift of Family History”, that happens in California. That has spread to other places. That is not a Church sponsored program. The Church didn’t’ create it a mission did. The Church has never said you can’t do it, but the Church is never going to send it church-wide. Because the principle is use family history as a missionary tool as a mission, ward or person decides to do it. If a mission decides to do it they can contact a mission in California for information. It’s not a Church program per say it’s a church principle.
We have a base line of what we want family history consultants trained in before new FamilySearch. We will be tracking how many consultants we have and what they have trained in. We will let the leaders know who we have registered and what future training they need. We have a 90 day roll over period before new FamilySearch is released to make sure people are trained in it. The consultant will teach and train members at their own pace how to use new FamilySearch until they become independent. If you need help you could use Family History Support for assistance.
Less active members:
-may be reached through family history activities
-may respond to an invitation to attend a family history class.
An individual in Murray was trying to get her family history program doing. She went to her bishop and said may I have more consultants here’s the things we would like to do. The bishop said I am sorry, I cannot call more people. We just don’t have the resources to do that in the ward. So she decided to build her own staff. She started to go out and work with less active members in the ward and got them involved in family history. Guess who got active because they were doing family history? When she left the ward she had sixteen family history consultants. She moved out to Kerns. They were all less actives that became active because of family history. She went to the bishop and then said here’s my person and he gave them the calling. So she built her own staff.
More Ways to Find Members to Help
1. Work with priesthood and auxiliary leaders:
-these could be the first families or individuals you assist in your calling
If you are working with that priesthood group and encouraging them to give you names maybe some of those are the first members that you help. Maybe you work with the ward leaders because then they would know, oh this is what it means to be a family history consultant and to work with them. When it comes around the table as an agenda item then they know that’s what family history means. I can definitely recommend my friend for that. It’s no different than when you have missionaries in your ward. You sometimes what for the missionaries you feel comfortable with to recommend your friends, because you want them to feel comfortable with the missionaries. That is why the Church now is looking at keeping missionaries for sometimes in areas and ward for up to a year. So that members can be comfortable, and friendly enough to recommend your friends to the missionaries.
2. Teach about temple and family history work
-quorum and auxiliary lessons
-fifth Sunday presentations
-enrichment activities
-firesides
-Sacrament meeting talks
3. Work with the Youth
-Help youth complete family history activities to fulfill requirements for Duty to God, Scouting, and Personal Progress awards.
-Help youth and their families find the names of ancestors who need ordinances for temple excursions.
We have experienced a youth group coming to the FHC and saying I am going to the temple tomorrow and I have to have some names. I love that, but that is not how it works. So if you are working with them make sure they are aware of that too.
In the next hour I am going to discuss:
-Prepare for Your Visit
-Visit with and Teach Members
-Helping Members with Different Needs
-Temple policies
This presentation is available on DVDs #109 & 110 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
Introduction to Speaker by Don Snow
Main Presentation: D. Merrill White – Family History Consultant Training
We are fortunate to have Brother D. Merrill White with us today. He went down to the St. George FH Jamboree last month and gave a total of a six hour presentation. He is condensing parts of that for us. His presentation will continue into the Q&A session of our meeting. He has brought us copies of the booklets he handed out in St. George. They have pictures of the new Power Point presentations. This is very helpful information. He is going to be talking today on understanding your calling and role as a family history consultant and how you help fulfill the three fold mission of the Church. Including determining the members needs and how you can assist them.
D. Merrill White was born in Sparks, NV. Graduated from BYU with a degree in History and a minor in music. He has lectured on various genealogical practices and software at many FH conferences. Including the BYU Computerized Genealogy Conferences, the big summer BYU Genealogy Conferences and this last October the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Conference. He’s work for the Family and Church History Dept. of the LDS Church for seven years. He currently serves as a specialist for FH Consultants in the FHL in Salt Lake and the Joseph Smith Memorial building.
D. Merrill White – Family History Consultant Training
A manual was handed out that contained all three Power Point presentations along with all the handouts they give. He also had cards with a link to give feedback on the presentation or anything dealing with family history consultant training. If it deals with something else, i.e. new FamilySearch then don’t use this website. This is for consultant training or this presentation only. It will take you to an online survey where you can give your comments and suggestions. The manual given out in the meeting only gives quotes to talks; the copy you get from Salt Lake will give you the actual talks.
The Church decided a few years ago that with “new FamilySearch” that it would be a good idea than we actually train family history consultants on how to do their callings. We thought it good for FHC to know how to work with members, what the responsibilities were. To let Priesthood leaders know what consultants should do. So we began to work on some training. We are creating a consultants guide, an actual manual for consultants to have to help them with their calling and also be a reference that they can turn to with their calling. Everything is written for an individual that has never been a consultant before. It has to start at that level and then it works up from there.
The Church decided to help dissimilate this training they would starting doing e-learning or online learning. So we started our LDS Net dimensions website for e-learning courses. We have been testing all of this information so that the content we are talking about today is what’s in that manual. But it is not THE manual because the manual is contently changing. We are actually testing it in a few selected temple districts right now to get their feedback. We are even testing different sized versions. We have one that is really thick it’s quit intimidating. We have one that is very thin that is not intimidating but it doesn’t tell you very much. We have to see what people like to use and do they prefer to go get the rest on the internet and those kinds of things.
Lesson Objectives
1. Family History and Temple Work
2. Seek the Spirit and Guidance
3. Your Primary Responsibilities
4. Additional Ways to Serve
5. Priesthood Guidance
6. Consultant Training
7. Resources for family history consultants
8. Stake and Ward Family History Organizations
Family History and Temple Work
All of our vast family history endeavor is directed to temple work. There is no other purpose for it. The temple ordinances become the crowning blessings the Church has to offer. [President Gordon B. Hinckley, New Temples to Provide ‘Crowning Blessings’ of the Gospel. Ensign, May 1998, 87]
The key to a successful family history program is family history consultants who meet with members and families individually to help them begin and continue their temple and family history work.
Called to Serve
Someone in your own ward or branch of the Church has been called to help you prepare those names for the temple. There they can be offered the covenants which will free them from their spirit prisons and bind them into families – your family – forever. [Elder Henry B. Eyring, “Hearts Bound Together”, Ensign, May 2005, p. 77]
Seek the Spirit for Guidance
Some of you may be shy by nature or consider yourselves inadequate to respond affirmatively to a calling. Remember that this work is not yours and mine alone. It is the Lord’s work, and when we are on the Lord’s errand, we are entitled to the Lord’s help. Remember that whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies. [Pres. Thomas S. Monson, “Duty Calls”, Ensign, May 1996, p. 44]
There is a way to reach every human heart, and it is your business to find the way to the hearts of those to whom you are called [to serve]. [Pres. Lorenzo Snow, “Instructions for Missionaries”, Improvement Era, Dec. 1899, p. 128]
Primary Responsibilities
Reach out to help members individually to begin and continue their family history and provide ordinances for their ancestors. You are the members’ principal source for family history help.
To fulfill your responsibilities:
1. Reach out to members in your ward a few at a time.
2. Focus on those suggested by the High Priest Group Leader
3. Meet with new members of the Church
Family History Consultants should become knowledgeable about:
1. Temple and family history work
2. Using family history computer programs
3. Seeking for and providing temple ordinances for their own ancestors.
Additional Ways to Serve
1. Teach a Family History Class – Under the direction of the bishopric, family history consultants may teach a family history class during Sunday School time:
-supplement class time with individual visits
-recommend who might attend your class
Right now there is no FH Sunday School class manual, eventually there will be.
Serve in a Family History Center
You may be asked to serve in a family history center supported by your stake.
-The center director will provide training
-This will help you become familiar with the family history resources that are available in centers.
Priesthood Guidance
Family History Consultants are:
-called and set apart by the bishopric
-supervised by the High Priests Group Leader
The high priest group leader in your ward oversees your service as a family history consultant and provides you guidance in fulfilling your calling.
The high priest group leader should ensure that you understand your responsibilities and are able to fulfill them. If you need help or have questions about your responsibilities, work with your high priests group leader.
It doesn’t mean your high priest group leader will train you, just that he will help you receive it.
1 Nephi 16: 23 “ And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow; wherefore, I did arm myself with a bow and an arrow, with a sling and with stones. And I said unto my father: Whither shall I go to obtain food?
This is a handout with the PowerPoint presentations in the manual.
Priesthood Guidance
My Training Plan: Getting Started as a Family History Consultant
Work with your high priests group leader (or assigned member of the elders quorum presidency) to develop your training plans. Check the box when have completed an item on your training plan.
Responsibilities
My Responsibilities ________________________________________________
What the bishop would like me to accomplish ____________________________
Priesthood Supervision
The priesthood leader that I report to: __________________________________
Contact information in: _____________________________________________
Priesthood Guidance
Priesthood leaders can:
-Call one or more family history consultants in each ward.
-Teach members regularly the principles of temple and family history work.
-Report on temple and family history work as a standing agenda item in Ward Council or PEC meetings.
-Establish stake or ward temple and family history goals.
If I were a bishop again… [I would] charge the high priest group leader with this responsibility to lead out in the ward council on this subject. I would ensure that we had one or more ward family history consultants who were ‘people persons’ who could work under his direction. [Elder D. Todd Christofferson]
I imagine that in the course of a year we could help at least ten families. In five years, we could have a corps of fifty families active at some level in family history and its attendant temple work. That to me would be a successful, well-run program [Elder D. Todd Christofferson]
Leaders should encourage members to determine, according to the promptings of the Spirit, what temple and family history work they can do ‘in wisdom and order’ and consistent with their own ‘strength and means.’ (see Mosiah 4:27, D&C 10:4) [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
Consultant Training
Dec 7, 2007 a letter went out to the whole church signed by the First Presidency. Asking consultants to register, even priesthood leaders if they want to.
Family History Consultant Support News and Training:
http://consultant.familysearch.org
http://priesthood.familysearch.org
You will need your membership number, which you can get off your temple recommend, or on your individual summary from your ward clerk. You will also need your ward unit number, which is on that individual summary about you. Some people have been putting in their family history center unit number, which is not the right number.
By registering you will get:
-early access to systems to be released in the future
-access to training
-regular updates and information
-access to resources to answer questions and provide help
We are assume, because we don’t know how many consultants we have, we’re guessing that there are about 40,000 consultants in the world. Just by how many wards and branches there are. We’ve had 24,000 register, in various languages around the world, that’s not bad. Guess how many have done anything after they have registered? About 6,000.
We start to wonder; maybe they don’t want to learn how to do their calling. We are trying to figure out what is the best way to motivate because it is a new concept. We’re sending you training through the internet, people aren’t used to that. The other reason we are doing that is because things are constantly changing and we want to update that. Printing materials that go out of date really doesn’t work right now. We have been pushing things through the internet and maybe that’s why people haven’t been doing it. Maybe perhaps people aren’t doing it is perhaps they look at the lessons and they say, I already now how to do that. Maybe they can’t get in once they got there. We’re not sure what the reasons are. So I am going to talk about how you can contact support to get help with that. We really are encouraging you to register. Start using the training and if you have feedback, I will give you that link for you to give feedback on that.
On-Line Training – https://lds.netdimensions.com/
Once you have registered they will send you an email back. One thing that we know for sure has been happening is that the Church replies and the email goes to people’s junk mail. People have filters and the Church isn’t in their friendly list. The email gets filtered into their junk mail and they never know the Church has replied. If you are not getting email memos all the time from the Church on training, check your junk mail.
The email sent to you will give you your user name and password. You will be able to access this training and they will continue to add and update and develop further training. Right now we have some basic courses for consultants and priesthood leaders. If you do “new FamilySearch” this is where the new FamilySearch training will be.
The first time you log in as a consultant it makes you reset your password. The password by default is 123456. Some people set up there new passwords and then don’t remember them. You would have to call support then.
You are able to print off the lessons, they are in PDF format. You can click the PDF version, download it and save it to your computer, a disk or print it off. One of the problems we are seeing is that people are printing these off and part of the online system was to track people usage of the system. We are unable to track that when you are viewing the information off line. Now we are trying to figure out how to track people that print, because now it doesn’t look like they did anything. We have things we have to figure out. People learn things in different ways and we understand that. We are trying to deliver content in different methods. We want to be able to help everyone in their learning abilities. This is just the beginning but something is better than nothing. We are just getting started. For the first time since Adam and Eve consultants can actually get some training.
Local Training
An assigned family history consultant
-In many stakes, a family history consultant is assigned by the high council advisor to provide training to new family history consultants.
Family history center
-Centers usually offer training classes in how to use Church family history resources and how to do family history research.
If you want to work as a FHC the FHC director will teach you how. I love all these directors that say – with what? Just be aware that we are also aware of this and we are creating center materials as well. We are also creating materials so centers if they want to can take some of their current training or training they would like to develop; and use our website where they can develop their own training using our templates. We are working at helping centers as well.
Because priesthood leaders are busy and the Church knows they are busy the Church has created training for those that are high priest group leaders or high council advisors in terms of how to administer family history and how it works. It is up to the leaders if they want to take the training. It is not required that they do but it is hoped they will. Consultants are told they must register.
Consultant Resources
1. The Spirit
The Spirit of Elijah is the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of the family. [Elder Russell M. Nelson]
2. Support
-Family History Support – 1-866-406-1830 (6 April 1830) – this site is a one shop for all, regardless of what FH need you have you can call this number for support. It is now coming up in multiple languages.
-Fill out the web form on familysearch.org – http://productsupport.familysearch.org
-Email: familyhistory@support.familysearch.org
3. Manuals and Guides
-Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 2 Section 9, “Temple and Family History Work” (35709).
-A Member’s Guide to Temple and Family History Work (34697)
-How Do I Start My Family History? (32916)
-Welcome to the Family History Center (35753000)
-Training for Family History Leaders DVD (00410090) also in Spanish and VHS.
4. Lessons
-Personal Ancestral File -Built in PAF Lessons & User’s Guide
-A Guide to Research (30971) The book was updated in 2005 and released in 2006. No one knows it has been updated because it looks exactly the same.
What’s online for Priesthood Leaders?
www.lds.org you need to click on link to “Serving in the Church”, many people think it is under “Family History and Temples” it is not. Click “Serving in the Church”, and then click “Family History”. If you go there here is your portal for everything about administrating, for consultants, for indexing and for family history centers. If you want to look at the online guide for directors you can go right to the link for Family History Centers and there is the online guide. It you want to register as a consultant it takes you right to that. If you want to look at the priesthood lessons they are right there. Your priesthood leader can take the lesson right there through lds.org. There are even some recommend talks. If he is not into computers and you don’t think he will do it you can go right to the lessons, click on the PDF, print them off and in a very good nice spiritual way you can give them to him.
Consultant Resources
5. FamilySearch.org
-Research Helps & Research Guidance. People don’t realize or forget that these guides are there. They just look up their ancestors’ names on the website; if they are not there they just go to Ancestry. We have some of the best helps and guidance there is for doing family history online. Just be sure you are using that with the people you are helping. Most of them are PDFs and you can download them and give them to the people you are helping.
-The scriptures
-Talks and articles by general Church leaders.
6. The new missionary guide, “Preach My Gospel”, includes suggestions on how missionaries can use family history to find people interested in learning about the gospel.
7. Other Resources
-Center for Family History & Genealogy at BYU – http://familyhistory.byu.edu/
-BYU PAF Tutorial – http://paftutorial.byu.edu/
-BYU Religion 261 – http://261.byu.edu
-BYU Department of Independent Studies offers two free online family history courses:
--“Finding Your Ancestors”
--“Providing Temple Ordinances for Your Ancestors”
-- http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/special_offers/famhist.cfm
-Keith Erekson, Teaching Family History: A Resource Guide for Family History Teachers – http://familyhistory.byu.edu ($4.00)
-Ohana Software Consultant Training: http://www.ohanasoftware.com We let consultants know you don’t have to start from nothing. You can go see what others have done until the Church gives you something.
-Genealogy Resources on the Internet: http://www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail_lds.html
-Your Family History Area advisor. Up in Salt Lake City, because we teach this at the library we recommend that they use the Westra, because they are the area advisors under Merrill J. Batman for that Salt Lake Area - Newsletter email: FamilyHistory-Westra@snapwood.com to be added to the list. There are area advisors all over the United States, most are being called, there are a few that don’t have them yet. That way area advisors are working area presidencies and all those directors and family history centers, helping to set goals and determine things. So if you don’t know who your area advisor is find out.
-The Family History Library Computer and Research Classes – We know that some of you can’t get there. We are really looking at becoming a library without walls. As the Church starts to expand and put things out on the internet our goal is to literally put our current curriculum out there on the internet. In the form of online lessons, web-inars, webcasts we can all participate in. So you can be part of those classes and not take a trip to Salt Lake City. We don’t know how soon that is going to happen, we’re getting there. This is the beginning of that with me coming out here and doing stuff like this.
-The Family History Library Catalog
-Family History Library Internet Explorer Favorites
-Ward or Stake Family History Excursions
-Consultant & Priesthood Email: FHL-FHConsultant@ldschurch.org
Family History Organization
Stake Callings
-Stake Presidency
-High Council Advisor
-Family History Center Directors and the FamilySearch Indexing Director
Ward Level
-Bishopric and High Priest Group Leader coordinate with the High Council Advisor
-Family History Consultants, they could also be asked to serve in a FHC.
This new organization was to break down buriers, to break down the levels. Because what we tended to have was stake consultants going on and doing a lot of stuff that ward consultants didn’t typically know. We tried to kind of merge those together to make a very fluid organization. It also made it so the priesthood had to communicate; because the FHC director goes to the high council advisor, who goes to his high priest group leader to get staff. If that communication doesn’t happen your family history center isn’t open very often.
The following callings have been discontinued:
-Stake family history consultant
-Ward family history consultant
-Family history center staff
They have now been combined into a single calling:
-Family history consultant
We did not discontinue the call of Family History Center Directors. Because we didn’t include that position in the handbook many were released, even though we refer to them multiple times in the manual.
A family history consultant may be asked to:
-be a staff member of the stake family history center
-provide training to other consultants in the stake
New emphasis is placed on:
-Encouraging consultants to reach out to every individual and family in the ward, a few families at a time.
-Encouraging new members of the Church, 12 years of age and older, to obtain Limited-Use Temple Recommends so they can go to the temple to be baptized and confirmed for their own ancestors as soon as possible after baptism.
Handout
Stake and Ward Family History Callings
-A double sided handout was given to audience. It listed all family history callings and responsibilities.
Review – Check Your Learning
1. What is the key to a successful Family History Program? Consultants
2. What is a Consultant’s primary responsibilities? To help individuals do temple work.
3. What additional ways can Consultant’s serve? Work in centers, be an instructor, indexing, etc.
4. Where can Consultant’s receive guidance? Internet, booklets, family history center, priesthood leaders, the spirit, etc.
5. Where can a Consultant obtain and receive training? Online, from each other
Lesson Assignments & Goals
It is faith as the principle of action that is so central to the process of learning and applying spiritual truth. [Elder David A. Bednar]
Assignments:
-Register
-Learn responsibilities
-Meet with High Priest Group Leader
-Receive and participate in necessary training
--E-learning lessons:
---Understanding Your Calling for Consultants
---Administering Family History Work
---Encouraging Members to Participate
Goals:
-Set 2 goals for yourself
Family History Consultant Training – Part 1 – Helping Family History Happen
Working with Members
-Members’ FH Responsibilities
-Overview of Temple & FH Work
-Finding Members to Help
-Prepare for Your Visit
-Visit with and Teach Members
-Helping Members with Different Needs
Blessings of Family History
I have the feeling…that those who give themselves with all their might and main to this work receive help from the other side, and not merely in gathering genealogies. Whoever seeks to help those on the other side receives help in return in all the affairs of life [Elder John A. Widtsoe]
When you ask most individuals, even children what the blessing is Heavenly Father gives you if you pay you’re tithing? Most people know and give the answer: I got fire insurance. But if you ask them what are the blessings for doing family history and temple work most people really give you varied answers. This is really it the continually talk about that you are receiving help in all the affairs of your life.
1. Members’ Family History Responsibilities
Members should identify their kindred dead; request temple ordinances if needed, and provide these ordinances by proxy if possible. As a beginning, members should try to identify four generations of their ancestors. [Church Handbook of Instructions: Book 2, Section 9, 262]
2. Family History Overview
Members follow four basis steps to do their family history and provide ordinances for their ancestors. The Family History Process: 1. Gather Information, 2. Record Information, 3. Perform temple ordinances, 4. Do it again. When starting to work with members give them the four steps, keep it very basic so it doesn’t over-whelm them.
When is new FamilySearch going to be available – don’t know. I currently have three children I will have a fourth in July. Let’s go back to when Merrill had only two and new FamilySearch was supposed to come out. I used to tell missionaries I am absolutely positive by the time I have three kids new FamilySearch will be there. That third one is now almost three and my wife is due in July. So when, soon, that’s our favorite word. But be encouraged, many of you have been involved in beta testing it; it’s come a long way. It is getting very close. They are testing it now actually in temple districts and things, so it’s the closest it’s ever been. Because new FamilySearch has taken longer than it was suppose to it has actually helped us to get our training done. When new FamilySearch actually comes out the training will have been created. We are actually testing it now. There will be training on how to use new FamilySearch on day one of its release. Because it has taken so long to develop new FamilySearch and we have had time to develop training materials with it, it might be that this is one of the better Church experiences in doing family history.
3. Finding Members to Help
Our efforts to promote temple and family history work should be such as to accomplish the work of the Lord, not impose guilt on his children. [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
In the people and families I have seen and helped over the past few years at the library, family history causes more guilt than I think anything else. Because it is very easy not to do, yet you feel very guilty when anyone ever talks about it, because you are not doing it. Just like it is easy to not physically work out, today it might not matter, but someday it will. With family history if your not doing it may not matter, but when you get to the other side it will matter. We are always making people feel guilty when we talk like that. Don’t make them feel guilty. Focus on the blessing, focus on the temple, don’t focus on how you are going to feel because you are not doing it. Motivate with the blessings.
All members should participate by prayerfully selecting those ways that fit their personal circumstances at a particular time. Our effort is not to compel everyone to do everything, but to encourage everyone to do something. [Elder Dallin H. Oaks]
Much of your success will come from your own efforts and willingness to contact members. Members usually will respond positively to a personal invitation from a family history consultant to help them get started.
Family History Consultants should pray for guidance to know:
-which families in the ward to help
-how to assist these families
-how to overcome obstacles in their research
The bishopric and members of the priesthood executive committee or ward council may identify a few individuals or families at a time that you should contact to offer family history help.
Work with new converts:
-to help them identify ancestors and, where possible, to go to the temple soon after their baptism to be baptized for their own ancestors.
-they are more likely to be retained by having a family history and temple experience soon after their own baptism.
Church Survey Results:
-Only 23% of converts baptized without an understanding of family history stay active in the Church.
-75% of converts who do become involved in family history activities stay active in the Church.
Getting youth involved in family history might help them stay active in the Church. A good way to have people get started with family history work is by Indexing. We have been bringing Church youth groups down to the family history center and the Indexing group has been coming down and teaching them, and it has taken off like wildfire. The youth have loved the Internet Indexing. We’ve had multiple wards come down and had them taught and get excited and they start doing it. We have a computer lab set up there and we have seen great success.
We are putting very clearly that after baptism new converts should be obtaining a limited use temple recommend. Basically a new member experience could be something like this… I’m baptized, a very nice individual in the ward comes up and said, Hi, I’m a family history consultant, I had no idea who they were or what they did. They let me know they are the person in the ward that helps us find our ancestors, like the missionary talked about when they told us about temple work. They came to my home they met with me and the talked to me a bit about family history, maybe some of the doctrine it with a little booklet they brought, Called a Members Guide to Family History. They talked to me about my family. They had me get out the family information I had. Then I got a call from someone in the ward to meet with the bishop. I met with the bishop and I got a limited use temple recommend. About a week after that I was at the temple and someone had cards with my family’s names on them. That’s what they want their experience to be. They literally might not be sure how it happened but all of a sudden they are at the temple and they got names and it’s their families and it happened very easily. So then when you go back to them after that temple experience as a consultant, even though you did a lot of leg work to start with, you can say would you like me to show you how I did that so you can do it for yourself? You know what answer you are going to get. They are going to be so excited to learn how to find their ancestors, to do these things to prepare their own names.
Many people have heard about the missionary program “A Gift of Family History”, that happens in California. That has spread to other places. That is not a Church sponsored program. The Church didn’t’ create it a mission did. The Church has never said you can’t do it, but the Church is never going to send it church-wide. Because the principle is use family history as a missionary tool as a mission, ward or person decides to do it. If a mission decides to do it they can contact a mission in California for information. It’s not a Church program per say it’s a church principle.
We have a base line of what we want family history consultants trained in before new FamilySearch. We will be tracking how many consultants we have and what they have trained in. We will let the leaders know who we have registered and what future training they need. We have a 90 day roll over period before new FamilySearch is released to make sure people are trained in it. The consultant will teach and train members at their own pace how to use new FamilySearch until they become independent. If you need help you could use Family History Support for assistance.
Less active members:
-may be reached through family history activities
-may respond to an invitation to attend a family history class.
An individual in Murray was trying to get her family history program doing. She went to her bishop and said may I have more consultants here’s the things we would like to do. The bishop said I am sorry, I cannot call more people. We just don’t have the resources to do that in the ward. So she decided to build her own staff. She started to go out and work with less active members in the ward and got them involved in family history. Guess who got active because they were doing family history? When she left the ward she had sixteen family history consultants. She moved out to Kerns. They were all less actives that became active because of family history. She went to the bishop and then said here’s my person and he gave them the calling. So she built her own staff.
More Ways to Find Members to Help
1. Work with priesthood and auxiliary leaders:
-these could be the first families or individuals you assist in your calling
If you are working with that priesthood group and encouraging them to give you names maybe some of those are the first members that you help. Maybe you work with the ward leaders because then they would know, oh this is what it means to be a family history consultant and to work with them. When it comes around the table as an agenda item then they know that’s what family history means. I can definitely recommend my friend for that. It’s no different than when you have missionaries in your ward. You sometimes what for the missionaries you feel comfortable with to recommend your friends, because you want them to feel comfortable with the missionaries. That is why the Church now is looking at keeping missionaries for sometimes in areas and ward for up to a year. So that members can be comfortable, and friendly enough to recommend your friends to the missionaries.
2. Teach about temple and family history work
-quorum and auxiliary lessons
-fifth Sunday presentations
-enrichment activities
-firesides
-Sacrament meeting talks
3. Work with the Youth
-Help youth complete family history activities to fulfill requirements for Duty to God, Scouting, and Personal Progress awards.
-Help youth and their families find the names of ancestors who need ordinances for temple excursions.
We have experienced a youth group coming to the FHC and saying I am going to the temple tomorrow and I have to have some names. I love that, but that is not how it works. So if you are working with them make sure they are aware of that too.
In the next hour I am going to discuss:
-Prepare for Your Visit
-Visit with and Teach Members
-Helping Members with Different Needs
-Temple policies
This presentation is available on DVDs #109 & 110 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
Discovering Lost and Hidden Relationships: Using DNA in Family History Research by Sacha Masek
10 February 2007
Introduction to Speaker by Gerhard Ruf
Main Presentation: Sacha Masek – Discovering Lost and Hidden Relationships: Using DNA in Family History Research.
Sacha Masek has worked for Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation for several years and is a Project Coordinator. A native of Columbia, Missouri, she began her studies at the University of Missouri (MIZZOU) and ended up at Utah State University where she earned her degree in Family and Human Development. Her responsibilities with the Foundation include collecting DNA samples and pedigree information from volunteer participants, both nationally and internationally, and educating the public about genetic genealogy.
Sacha Masek – Discovering Lost and Hidden Relationships: Using DNA in Family History Research.
If you donated your blood as a DNA sample five years ago you are our pioneers. We have switched from a blood sample to a simple mouthwash rinse. The reason we have done that is that it actually allows us to collect more samples from all over the world.
Our Chief Scientific Officer Scott Woodward beginnings are quit interesting. He actually did his graduate work at the University of Utah. He is part of the group of scientist that found the first gene that was linked to a disease, cystic fibrosis. It was a monumental discovery in about 1985. Genetics is a young science and it’s exciting to be a part of the evolving science of genetics in genealogical research.
Dr. Scott Woodward has a passion in ancient DNA. He went to Peru and Egypt and started working with mummies. Started excavating mummies and looking at their DNA that they had and their relationship that they had with those they were buried with. Then the idea came about to take these pieces of DNA and link them to the individuals that are living in that area and they found relationships. They started see that people that were living at the time they were taking these samples were actually linked genetically to the people they were looking and excavating.
Then the idea came about that if we could do this minimally with the people that are buried to those that are living, what could the living tell us about our past as well as our future. That’s were the idea was taken to our benefactor James Lavoy Sorenson. He took this information and decided to create the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. Our desire is to change the way that we think about each other, and hopefully the way act towards each other, by showing that we are really one great human family.
How many of you have had the opportunity to put yourself out in the internet and say I am looking for an ancestor? Does anyone know any information about this person? And you get someone that actually writes you back. How exciting is that! What happens when you start to share the information that you have? You start finding out that the person that contacted you has that same ancestor and that you are family. We start going to family reunions that you never knew about. People are coming together in honor of this ancestor. That is the desire of the project, to change the way people think about each other on a very large scale, to show that we are really one great human family.
How are we doing this?
1. We all carry DNA in our cells.
2. We have inherited DNA from our ancestors. (You are a walking filing system of all your
ancestors DNA.)
3. We can use DNA from living people to reconstruct genetic information about our ancestors. Specific regions of DNA have properties that can:
Steps to create Molecular Genealogy Databases
Number of possible ancestors
Generations Ancestors Years
1 - 2 - 25
2 - 4 - 50
3 - 8 - 75
4 - 16 - 100
10 - 1024 - 250
15 - 32768 - 375
20 - 1,048,567 - 500
25 - 33,554,432 - 625
30 - 1 billion - 750
35 - 30 billion - 875
40 - 1 trillion - 1000
Problems with the numbers
30 generations = 750 years = 1 billion possible ancestors
World population 750 years ago: 450 million
Total humans ever to live on earth: 70 billion
(i.e. everybody is potentially related to a large proportion of the earth’s population that lived within the last 500-750 years.)
We probably share common ancestors within the past 15 to 20 generations in the past. We are trying to even look at closer relations 8 to 10 generations in the past. How many of you are from Charlemagne? How many of you hook up to those royal lines and go back to Adam and Eve? Your genealogy is not your own. This is such a great project we know that genealogist are very generous. They know they have to share to gain what they need.
Coalescence
As we traverse back in time through a genealogy, we would expect the number of ancestors to increase exponentially. However, genealogies actually coalesce.
Why would families marry relatives – they were trying to keep the money within the family. Cousins were marrying cousins. Those were the associations they had back then as well. So well within your own genealogies they coalesce or collapse. So what we know is that the potential ancestors vs. the actually number of ancestors, is our number of ancestors are much less. There are not that many ancestors in the past.
DNA – A Historical Record
DNA is a record of the past because it contains information that is transmitted from parents to children at each successive generation. This is preserved even if the names…
…are changed
…are missing
Patronymic Surname Problem
Sample A born in Brazil in 1982, he had at least four generations. On his fourth generation level, his great-great grandfather he only had Gumercindo Correa b. abt 1894. We had another Sample that we connected in Uruguay. This man was born in Uruguay in 1947. His father was Cumercindo Correa Serpa b. 1898 and his grandfather was Antonio Corress b. 1858. They tag on the mother’s maiden name to the fathers to make the family name. Can you see that Sample A’s great-great grandfather and Sample B’s father could be the same people. Would you as a genealogist connect them? NO, good answer. You would want to do more research. In this genetic research these two male Y Chromosomes showed they were an exact match.
The Big FOUR of Molecular Genealogy
Currently Available
On the pedigree chart the top portion is the Y Chromosomes (only Males) and the mtDNA is the bottom (under the females) The Autosomol is a combination of all you end line ancestors.
Y-Chromosome connections
Sample A – Sample contributed in the USA. Line goes as far back as L Martin b. 1870.
Sample B – Sample contributed in France. His line goes farther back his grandfather was born in Belgium in 1874 – Louis Martine
Both Samples Y-chromosome haplotype: 12-15-9-11-22-14-10-15-6-8 – they are exactly alike. So as we go back in their genealogies we can give a lot more information on their lines. Using genetic information to assist in your research you are going to probably find that you have common individuals with others further back.
Mitochondrial DNA Inheritance Pattern
mtDNA is passed almost unchanged from the mother to her children. However, only daughters will pass it along to their children.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre: A Synopsis
Family Haplotype Indicate Membership In A Family (4 Markers)
Autosomal DNA – How multiple members of a family can help us look at past ancestors. Showed a man with three wives and their descendants. We looked at their DNA. We found that they shared pieces of Autosomal DNA in common. We combine sequences to build a Haplotype of their Autosomal DNA and see if it is found in the descendants of a common ancestor. They are pieces of a puzzle that we are putting together. What we are finding is that some descendants are having sequences of this Autosomal DNA. We are able to give a unique genetic signature to someone that lived in the past and did not contribute their DNA sample.
The SMGF Database and Commercial Companies
SMGF
-You pay a fee to receive back results
-Tests available on:
Y-Chromosome (paternal line)
mtDNA ( maternal line)
Extended family testing
Native American, African Ancestry, Ancestral Origins
-You can use Y-Chromosome and MtDNA data that you receive back to search online databases.
For each person that donates to SMGF project you will receive as a thank you online a coupon that is discounted testing at a commercial company of you DNA. You take the coupon to the company. You can get a 26 marker Y-Chromosome test for $95 or an MtDNA test for $95. That coupon can be passed on to anyone in your family.
Four Steps to Using Genetic Genealogy
1. Look over your pedigree to find genealogical lines you would like to know more about.
-What do I know about DNA testing?
-Do I want to do a Y Chromosome or MtDNA test? What will that tell me about these lines?
2. Find a living descendant to be tested.
-Who pays for the test?
-What test are they going to take?
3. Purchase a test with a commercial company and get your results back.
Relative Genetics, Oxford Ancestors, DNA Heritage, FamilyTree DNA, Trace Genetics, etc.
4. Use your results to compare with other results:
a. Compare your results with another study (i.e. surname studies)
b. Compare your results with online DNA databases (i.e. SMGF databases, yhrd, ybase, easy mito-match, easy y-match, etc.)
c. Compare your results with someone you know who also did a test.
How to Search the SMGF Databases
Step 1: Purchase Y-Chromosome or mtDNA test results from a commercial lab. **ALL SMGF participants receive a discount coupon for a 26 marker Y-chromosome Paternal line analysis or a mtDNA Maternal line analysis with Relative Genetics for $95. You must go on the www.smgf.org website and click on the link to fill out a request for the coupon.
On the SMGF website www.smgf.org there are links to the Y-Chromosome database (males) and the MtDNA database (maternal line). If you have your markers you can put them into the database and search it. You can also search by surname. You can view the information that an individual has donated. No living individual’s information is showing it is protected.
We need a lot of people from the same family lines to donate for the Autosomal research. Children above the age of seven with parental consent can donate their DNA.
The Demographics page on the website shows are the countries represented in the database.
If you want contribute to the project you can request a kit on line at their website. It is free to donate. You need at least four generation to contribute.
This presentation is available on DVD #106 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
Introduction to Speaker by Gerhard Ruf
Main Presentation: Sacha Masek – Discovering Lost and Hidden Relationships: Using DNA in Family History Research.
Sacha Masek has worked for Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation for several years and is a Project Coordinator. A native of Columbia, Missouri, she began her studies at the University of Missouri (MIZZOU) and ended up at Utah State University where she earned her degree in Family and Human Development. Her responsibilities with the Foundation include collecting DNA samples and pedigree information from volunteer participants, both nationally and internationally, and educating the public about genetic genealogy.
Sacha Masek – Discovering Lost and Hidden Relationships: Using DNA in Family History Research.
If you donated your blood as a DNA sample five years ago you are our pioneers. We have switched from a blood sample to a simple mouthwash rinse. The reason we have done that is that it actually allows us to collect more samples from all over the world.
Our Chief Scientific Officer Scott Woodward beginnings are quit interesting. He actually did his graduate work at the University of Utah. He is part of the group of scientist that found the first gene that was linked to a disease, cystic fibrosis. It was a monumental discovery in about 1985. Genetics is a young science and it’s exciting to be a part of the evolving science of genetics in genealogical research.
Dr. Scott Woodward has a passion in ancient DNA. He went to Peru and Egypt and started working with mummies. Started excavating mummies and looking at their DNA that they had and their relationship that they had with those they were buried with. Then the idea came about to take these pieces of DNA and link them to the individuals that are living in that area and they found relationships. They started see that people that were living at the time they were taking these samples were actually linked genetically to the people they were looking and excavating.
Then the idea came about that if we could do this minimally with the people that are buried to those that are living, what could the living tell us about our past as well as our future. That’s were the idea was taken to our benefactor James Lavoy Sorenson. He took this information and decided to create the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. Our desire is to change the way that we think about each other, and hopefully the way act towards each other, by showing that we are really one great human family.
How many of you have had the opportunity to put yourself out in the internet and say I am looking for an ancestor? Does anyone know any information about this person? And you get someone that actually writes you back. How exciting is that! What happens when you start to share the information that you have? You start finding out that the person that contacted you has that same ancestor and that you are family. We start going to family reunions that you never knew about. People are coming together in honor of this ancestor. That is the desire of the project, to change the way people think about each other on a very large scale, to show that we are really one great human family.
How are we doing this?
- By operating a comprehensive database of the families of the world, using correlated genealogical and genetic information.
- And proving the tools needed to reconstruct genealogies using DNA.
1. We all carry DNA in our cells.
2. We have inherited DNA from our ancestors. (You are a walking filing system of all your
ancestors DNA.)
3. We can use DNA from living people to reconstruct genetic information about our ancestors. Specific regions of DNA have properties that can:
- Identify an individual (You are unique, one of a kind)
- Link them to a family
- Identify extended family groups (You share DNA in common with descendants of a common ancestor.)
- Tie the individual to their ancestral populations. (Because your ancestors have come from regions in common with other people you have DNA that will be more similar with those groups of people than with other groups of people.)
Steps to create Molecular Genealogy Databases
- Extensive research is needed to translate the information contained in DNA into an understandable language, so that it can be converted into practical applications (IE searchable databases)
- First, we use traditional genealogies to calibrate the genetic data. Then, we will use the genetic data to extend traditional genealogies beyond available written information.
Number of possible ancestors
Generations Ancestors Years
1 - 2 - 25
2 - 4 - 50
3 - 8 - 75
4 - 16 - 100
10 - 1024 - 250
15 - 32768 - 375
20 - 1,048,567 - 500
25 - 33,554,432 - 625
30 - 1 billion - 750
35 - 30 billion - 875
40 - 1 trillion - 1000
Problems with the numbers
30 generations = 750 years = 1 billion possible ancestors
World population 750 years ago: 450 million
Total humans ever to live on earth: 70 billion
(i.e. everybody is potentially related to a large proportion of the earth’s population that lived within the last 500-750 years.)
We probably share common ancestors within the past 15 to 20 generations in the past. We are trying to even look at closer relations 8 to 10 generations in the past. How many of you are from Charlemagne? How many of you hook up to those royal lines and go back to Adam and Eve? Your genealogy is not your own. This is such a great project we know that genealogist are very generous. They know they have to share to gain what they need.
Coalescence
As we traverse back in time through a genealogy, we would expect the number of ancestors to increase exponentially. However, genealogies actually coalesce.
Why would families marry relatives – they were trying to keep the money within the family. Cousins were marrying cousins. Those were the associations they had back then as well. So well within your own genealogies they coalesce or collapse. So what we know is that the potential ancestors vs. the actually number of ancestors, is our number of ancestors are much less. There are not that many ancestors in the past.
DNA – A Historical Record
DNA is a record of the past because it contains information that is transmitted from parents to children at each successive generation. This is preserved even if the names…
…are changed
…are missing
Patronymic Surname Problem
Sample A born in Brazil in 1982, he had at least four generations. On his fourth generation level, his great-great grandfather he only had Gumercindo Correa b. abt 1894. We had another Sample that we connected in Uruguay. This man was born in Uruguay in 1947. His father was Cumercindo Correa Serpa b. 1898 and his grandfather was Antonio Corress b. 1858. They tag on the mother’s maiden name to the fathers to make the family name. Can you see that Sample A’s great-great grandfather and Sample B’s father could be the same people. Would you as a genealogist connect them? NO, good answer. You would want to do more research. In this genetic research these two male Y Chromosomes showed they were an exact match.
The Big FOUR of Molecular Genealogy
Currently Available
- Y Chromosome – passed down from father to son.
- Mitochondial DNA – inherit from mother to children, only females pass it along.
- Autosomol DNA – inherited from all of one’s ancestors. 50% from your mom, 50% from your dad. It recombines in each generation – this is the one we are doing a lot more construction work on.
- X Chromosome – past down from both parents, its passed uniquely, it’s a little bit different.
On the pedigree chart the top portion is the Y Chromosomes (only Males) and the mtDNA is the bottom (under the females) The Autosomol is a combination of all you end line ancestors.
Y-Chromosome connections
Sample A – Sample contributed in the USA. Line goes as far back as L Martin b. 1870.
Sample B – Sample contributed in France. His line goes farther back his grandfather was born in Belgium in 1874 – Louis Martine
Both Samples Y-chromosome haplotype: 12-15-9-11-22-14-10-15-6-8 – they are exactly alike. So as we go back in their genealogies we can give a lot more information on their lines. Using genetic information to assist in your research you are going to probably find that you have common individuals with others further back.
Mitochondrial DNA Inheritance Pattern
mtDNA is passed almost unchanged from the mother to her children. However, only daughters will pass it along to their children.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre: A Synopsis
- September 7-12, 1857 Baker-Fancher Wagon Train from Arkansas and Missouri to California
- Ca. 120 people killed in Southern Utah
- At least 18 children were spared and given to local LDA families
- Only 17 were later delivered to the government officers to be returned to relatives in the Midwest.
- Rumors of a little girl secretly kept by Philip Klingensmith’s family, who grew to maturity and married a man named John Urie. The family claimed this was their own child.
- This woman was identified as Priscilla Klingensmith, born March 20, 1855.
Family Haplotype Indicate Membership In A Family (4 Markers)
Autosomal DNA – How multiple members of a family can help us look at past ancestors. Showed a man with three wives and their descendants. We looked at their DNA. We found that they shared pieces of Autosomal DNA in common. We combine sequences to build a Haplotype of their Autosomal DNA and see if it is found in the descendants of a common ancestor. They are pieces of a puzzle that we are putting together. What we are finding is that some descendants are having sequences of this Autosomal DNA. We are able to give a unique genetic signature to someone that lived in the past and did not contribute their DNA sample.
The SMGF Database and Commercial Companies
SMGF
- Participants donate their DNA and Genealogies for research that contributes to a large genetic genealogy database.
- Anyone that can provide 4 or more generations of pedigree information can participate in the SMGF database.
- It is free
- The SMGF database is open to the public and accessible on our website at www.smgf.org
- You need to know your own unique genetic signature to query the database
- Y-Chromosome and MtDNA databases are now available.
-You pay a fee to receive back results
-Tests available on:
Y-Chromosome (paternal line)
mtDNA ( maternal line)
Extended family testing
Native American, African Ancestry, Ancestral Origins
-You can use Y-Chromosome and MtDNA data that you receive back to search online databases.
For each person that donates to SMGF project you will receive as a thank you online a coupon that is discounted testing at a commercial company of you DNA. You take the coupon to the company. You can get a 26 marker Y-Chromosome test for $95 or an MtDNA test for $95. That coupon can be passed on to anyone in your family.
Four Steps to Using Genetic Genealogy
1. Look over your pedigree to find genealogical lines you would like to know more about.
-What do I know about DNA testing?
-Do I want to do a Y Chromosome or MtDNA test? What will that tell me about these lines?
2. Find a living descendant to be tested.
-Who pays for the test?
-What test are they going to take?
3. Purchase a test with a commercial company and get your results back.
Relative Genetics, Oxford Ancestors, DNA Heritage, FamilyTree DNA, Trace Genetics, etc.
4. Use your results to compare with other results:
a. Compare your results with another study (i.e. surname studies)
b. Compare your results with online DNA databases (i.e. SMGF databases, yhrd, ybase, easy mito-match, easy y-match, etc.)
c. Compare your results with someone you know who also did a test.
How to Search the SMGF Databases
Step 1: Purchase Y-Chromosome or mtDNA test results from a commercial lab. **ALL SMGF participants receive a discount coupon for a 26 marker Y-chromosome Paternal line analysis or a mtDNA Maternal line analysis with Relative Genetics for $95. You must go on the www.smgf.org website and click on the link to fill out a request for the coupon.
On the SMGF website www.smgf.org there are links to the Y-Chromosome database (males) and the MtDNA database (maternal line). If you have your markers you can put them into the database and search it. You can also search by surname. You can view the information that an individual has donated. No living individual’s information is showing it is protected.
We need a lot of people from the same family lines to donate for the Autosomal research. Children above the age of seven with parental consent can donate their DNA.
The Demographics page on the website shows are the countries represented in the database.
If you want contribute to the project you can request a kit on line at their website. It is free to donate. You need at least four generation to contribute.
This presentation is available on DVD #106 for UVPAFUG members to borrow or purchase.
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