I wrote the following in March of 2015.
I was approached and asked
to speak on the topic of “Family History Can Be Fun.”
Many of you may already be thinking, “Oh, no, I don’t really want to hear about this right now,” or something similar. I have learned over time that everything happens for a reason. The reason can be as simple as you made a mistake, or as complex as benefitting future generations. Interest in family history leads to benefitting past generations. Our ancestors did not have access to the necessary ordinances for salvation that we do through the restored Gospel. In order to be able to obtain the highest kingdom, we need to have our ancestors there and they cannot be there without the necessary ordinances.
The scriptures references are:
Moses 5:10:
And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer then firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord.
Moses 7:45:
And it came to pass that Enoch looked; and from Noah, he beheld all the families of the earth; and he cried unto the Lord, saying: When shall the day of the Lord come? When shall the blood of the Righteous be shed, that all they that mourn may be sanctified and have eternal life?
We can be sure that Adam had the necessary ordinances. However, many of his children did not and do not. We cannot impose Heavenly Father’s will on anyone. Some of those that are living have the opportunity to accept the Gospel, but there are many more who still don’t have that opportunity. Our ancestors who have passed on have learned the Gospel in the spirit world. Many, if not most, have accepted it. However, they cannot progress without our help. Some of our ancestors may not accept it. There is nothing that we can do about that.
In the Church handbook, we read:
As part of our Heavenly Father’s plan, we were born into families. He established families to bring us happiness, to help us learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and to prepare us for eternal life.
Now, because we are born into families, that does not allow us to escape responsibilities. As children, we grow and learn; we become adults. As adults, we expect to marry and raise a family. As we grow older, our responsibilities seem to lessen. We usually help our children with their families.
Does this mean that we have no responsibilities to those who came before us? While they are still living, our parents still help us, sometimes to the point of sacrificing all that they have. As they grow older, the tables begin to turn. Often, adult children begin look after the needs of their parents.
In the October 2014 Ensign, Elder Bednar wrote an article titled “Missionary, Family History, and Temple Work”. He starts the article by saying:
At a solemn assembly held in the Kirtland Temple on April 6, 1837, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel.”1
Almost precisely seven years later, on April 7, 1844, he declared: “The greatest responsibility in this world that
God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. The apostle says, ‘They without us cannot be made perfect’ [see Hebrews 11:40]; for it is necessary that the sealing power should be in our hands to seal our children and our dead for the fulness of the dispensation of times—a dispensation to meet the promises made by Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world for the salvation of man.”2
Many of us have been to the Temple to receive our own endowments. Our youth go on Temple trips to perform baptisms and confirmations for the dead. A few of the youth have had opportunities to perform these ordinances for their families and also for the families of other branch members. In order to have family names for temple work, the names need to be cleared through FamilySearch. It is not a difficult process once you know what to do. It can be confusing when you first start, but with guidance, you can become proficient.
When I first retired from the military, the first thing that I did was take a trip to England to visit where some of my father’s ancestors lived. I first spent a few days in London to visit The National Archives, the Maritime Museum, and a couple of churches. One church that I visited was Marylebone Parish Church in London. This was the church that my great-great-grandmother, Catherine Davis Bone, married her first husband, Edward Fielder in 1838. Edward was much older than Catherine died in 1843. They were married only 5 years. Catherine remarried in 1850 to Henry Fielder in St Clements-Danes Church. This church is on Fleet Street and was quite interesting to get to. It was heavily damage during World War II, quite like most of the buildings in the area. After the war, the Royal Air Force requested and received permission to rebuild this church and it became the official church of the RAF. I also included visits to historic sites that I found interesting. One of them was the church built by the Templars in the late medieval times.
During that trip, I then travelled to Cumbria, and visited the church where my great-great-great-great-grandparents were married. This is in Bewcastle parish. Their 12 children were christened there. It’s a small church but this is an important family site for my family. (The rest of my family may not know, but I do.) In its churchyard, my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, Robert and Mary Armstrong, were buried there as well as my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas, and some of his other children.
You may ask how did I know who to look for and how did I know where these events took place. I can tell you in a nutshell. I wanted to work on my family history ever since I joined the Church in 1976 and, off and on through the years, worked to find facts, clues, and information. I can say for certainty that I did not do this alone. The Spirit and my ancestors guided me.
It was when the internet was established and available for people like you and me to use. The information from the 1861 English census was posted online by The National Archives. I had had information from my family regarding this line since the 70s; however, I did not have my great-great-great-grandmother’s name. I was able to find the family as I knew where they lived and the name of my great-great-great-grandfather. In this census, the place of birth and the wives’ maiden names were requested. I found my family! I had a place name! I was then able to start researching my Armstrong ancestors! I began by working through the Church family history website. By this time, the IGI was online and I found the family that I was working on.
It would still be over 10 years before I could spend the time that I wanted to spend on family history. During that time, tremendous strides were made in technology affecting many aspects of our lives. One area greatly affected was family history work.
Working on your family history is in no way as difficult as it used to be. With the current technology and the speed of the internet, family history has become easier, more inexpensive, and more fun to do. The records that are currently online number in the billions. The records that are currently being released for online access count in the millions. Every week, I get a least one notice from FamilySearch about records being released.
Enough about the dry statistics. How can you make your family history research fun? There are a number of ways, but first, there is some work that you have to do.
· Step number 1. You should choose a website to assist you with your search. There are a number of them that allow you to put your tree online and help it to grow. The major sites are: Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find My A Past, and My Heritage amongst others. These sites will allow you to have your tree either public or private. You may not want access to all of these, but I strongly recommend that you should have access to Ancestry at the very least.
· Step number 2 is to start inputting information into the site of your choice and start growing your family tree. (My experience has been that Ancestry had the online records that I needed, so that is the website that I personally prefer.) You don’t have to start a tree; you can just use the search function to find the records that you are looking for. It has been my experience that it is easier to start a tree and to let the program assist you even when you are not there. If you are worried about privacy issues, you can set the privacy settings so that no one can see your tree.
· Step number 3 can be fun. There are a number of ways to become educated for this great work. I find that by belonging to a family history or genealogy organization can be fun and very rewarding. I belong to a number of them. If you can get out to their monthly meetings and yearly conferences, you can learn a great deal. You can also network with other family historians and learn some of the methods that they use. Some of these people put on great presentations. When I hear that certain people are speaking, I try to attend that particular meeting. One lady that gave a presentation about a few years ago in Ottawa had us laughing at her comments. When you present in this way, the speaker and usually the subject matter are enjoyable and memorable. When you attend a conference, you have a choice of topics to choose from.
· Step number 4. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. When I was a family history center director, I was there to make sure that there were resources to assist you with your family history. I am still willing to help you get started with your family history by teaching you the basic tools and then watch your progression, helping you when you are stumped.
· Step number 5. If you receive information from someone else, you should always check the sources yourself. First, ask them where they found the information. Then look for the information in the same source. I have listened to a number of family historians that complain because they come across too many online trees with incorrect information. This is because the people owning those trees have not checked their sources. I had a very interesting thing happen to me some time ago. I received an Ancestry message from John Cook, a researcher working on his English ancestry. This is what he said:
Hi,
I am just writing to say thanks for inputting all of the details of the fairbrass family history. I am a descendent of William Fairbrass 1795-1895.
His daughter Caroline Angelina fairbrass was miss transcribed as Caroline Ann Juliana facerbrass! So I had a bit of a journey getting to fairbrass.
many thanks again as this is the furthest back of any family I have researched.
best regards John Cook
John may very well be related to my husband.
If you are having problems finding the information about your ancestor, put their name along with the year of the event and a place where you know they were located and click on search. You may not find anything, but there will be times when you will be surprised at what you find. This is how I found out an interesting fact about my grandfather’s brother who was killed in WWI.
Sometimes I find something that I feel to be interesting. When I started helping a friend, I saw a surname that I recognized. I traced it back, found incorrect information, but I had seen the same surname a generation down. I traced that one back, found that the information was correct and discovered that I am related to her and her family. When we first moved here, I felt that I had moved into an area where I had no family. The relief that I felt when I discovered this relationship was tremendous. It has made a huge difference in my life to know that I have family here.
Now, you may think that I haven’t said anything about making family history fun. You need to know the basics; otherwise, it won’t be fun.
In the September 2014 issue of the Ensign, there is an article “Put the Family into Family History”. In this article, Sally Johnson Odekirk describes a number of ways to help your family become interested in family history. She had some of the same ideas that I would like to suggest.
You can have a competition with other families to see how many names that you can have prepared for temple work by the time the next temple trip happens.
You can have a competition with family members by giving each member that is old enough a different branch to work on to see how many names you can have prepared for the temple within a certain period of time.
You can assign each family member the name of an ancestor to see how much information that they can find within a certain period of time and have them introduce that ancestor at a family home evening.
Along with finding the information about the ancestor, find out what was happening in the world at that time. Was it during war time? If so, which war and what part did your ancestor play?
Along with the younger children, try doing some role playing about parts of the lives of some of your ancestors.
Take a family trip to a place where some of your ancestors lived. Walk around the community; take a tour of the local church that your ancestors would have attended; visit the cemetery that your ancestors are buried in. If you visit a cemetery, call ahead to find out what section, row and plot that your ancestors now reside in. It will make it easier to find them.
During family home evenings, tell the stories about your ancestors that you know. Your children want to know about them.
Plan or attend family reunions and find out what other members of the family know. They may not have all the correct facts, but they can give you some good leads.
If your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are still living, have them write their life histories. Have them write about the family members that they knew. Also, have them write out the stories that they were told about the family. If they are not willing to write them out, ask if you can record them telling you these things. If they don’t agree to the recordings, ask if you can write them down so that when they are gone, you can still tell the stories for them. Then when you get home, digitize these things and keep them for you and future generations.
Sort out your family pictures, get them digitized, and share them with your family and extended family. You will be astounded at the value that family members put on things like this. My sister had the family pictures after my father had passed on, but did not want to share them. Both my younger brother and I wanted to have copies. I finally managed to convince her that I could do a better job if I could bring them home and scan them using equipment that I have. She finally relented and I produced a digital copy of the pictures that she had. Both my brothers and my sister received a CD with these pictures. I was able to make a label and put a picture of my younger brother on it. It was a picture of him when he was about 12 to 15 months old. My sister and I were to be watching him while we played with the girl from next door. At that time, my brother was the same size as one of our dolls. We dressed him up in one of the doll’s dresses, a warm hat and a muff. We then took him for a short walk in his carriage. When my mother saw him, she ran for the camera and took his picture. It was this picture that I used for the label. When I gave him the CD, I showed his children the picture and asked them if they knew who it was. When I told them that it was their father, they were surprised. I loved the look that I saw on their faces.
In the October 2014 Ensign, there is an article entitled “Family History For the Rising Generation” by Carol Brennan Moss. I am going to quote a portion of that article:
While growing up, Brian Boice of Illinois, USA, never knew he had a half brother. Although as a teenager he learned of his older brother, he didn’t develop a real desire to learn more about him until he attended a family history class in his ward.
“By searching through records on FamilySearch, I was able to get in touch with my half brother,” says Brian. “I believe the spirit that accompanies this work can mendhearts and heal old wounds.”
While working on your family history, you can sometimes find that other people are working on the same line. To my surprise, I received an ancestry message about 2 months before our trip to England in 2011. Basically, the message read: What’s my grandfather doing on your tree? My answer was: Your grandfather’s grandmother is my great-great-great-grandmother’s sister. This was my 4th cousin. She told me that she knew nothing about the family past her grandfather. We made arrangements to meet at her house in Wales when my husband and I were in the Liverpool area. We were fed a beautiful Sunday dinner, then Anne and I sat down and I taught her about her family while my husband and her husband, Steve, cleaned up. Since then, we have kept in touch through Facebook.
When we moved to Petawawa in 2008, I thought that I did not have French Canadian ancestry and that I did not have any relatives in the area. Then, after I started working on my mother’s ancestry in Lanark County, I found that her family extended further back there than what she knew. I also found that her family married into a large number of Irish families in Lanark. Then, I found something that I did not expect. I nearly fell over when I found it. I found that I do have a French Canadian heritage and I was told by a fourth cousin in Toronto whom I never knew existed that the history of this line was the history of Quebec and Canada.
I have learned a great deal on this trip into the past and I know that I have a great deal more to learn. A couple of years ago, Gordon and I went to Education Week at BYU. I took 40 classes in Family History. One of the most important things that I learned was that our direct line does not just consist of our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents and so forth. I also learned that the brothers and the sisters of these ancestors are also our responsibility for temple work. We want our “direct” line to be happy in the Celestial kingdom. In order for that to happen, they want their children to be there. The children won’t be happy without their spouses and children, and the spouses will not be happy without their parents and siblings. This part of your family are called the collateral lines. It is our responsibility that we include the collateral lines in our family tree and make sure that, if you are the only member of the Church in the family, their temple work is also completed.
I have also learned that family history does not end if you cannot find the records. Sometimes the records are not yet available. So, you need to periodically check the work that you have done to see if any more records have surfaced. This will not be finished until sometime towards the end of the Millennium. If there are errors made inadvertently, they will all be corrected during the Millennium.
I find family history fascinating as it is a history of my family. It is part of my life’s work that I am tasked to do by Heavenly Father. I have been blessed doing this work and have learned that I am not just searching out names and dates and places. These are people, my family, and they will be waiting for me to complete their work. They will be waiting for me when I arrive in the spirit world. I want to be able to tell them that I did everything that I could for them. I want to be able to meet Mary Scott and Joseph Armstrong, Matthew Fielder, Bernard Farrell and Mary Todd, John Jackman and Eliza Fournier, John Robert Sanderson and Margaret Nesbitt, Minnie Farrell who was very excited to have her temple work done, Jane Fielder who wanted her children found, and the many ancestors I have yet to meet on this incredible journey.
I want to close with the following quote from Elder Bednar’s article:
The Lord declared, “I am able to do mine own work” (2 Nephi 27:21), and “I will hasten my work in its time” (D&C 88:73). We are witnesses of His hastening of His work.
We live and serve in the dispensation of the fullness of times. Recognizing the eternal importance of the distinctive dispensation in which we live should influence all that we do and strive to become. The work of salvation to be accomplished in these last days is grand, vast, essential, and urgent. How grateful each of us should be for the blessings and responsibilities of living in this specific season of the final dispensation. How humble we should be knowing that “unto whom much is given much is required” (D&C 82:3).
Preaching the gospel and seeking after our dead are complementary parts of one great work—a labor of love intended to change, turn, and purify the hearts of honest seekers of truth. The artificial boundary line we so often place between missionary work and temple and family history work is being erased; this is one great work of salvation.6
Many of you may already be thinking, “Oh, no, I don’t really want to hear about this right now,” or something similar. I have learned over time that everything happens for a reason. The reason can be as simple as you made a mistake, or as complex as benefitting future generations. Interest in family history leads to benefitting past generations. Our ancestors did not have access to the necessary ordinances for salvation that we do through the restored Gospel. In order to be able to obtain the highest kingdom, we need to have our ancestors there and they cannot be there without the necessary ordinances.
The scriptures references are:
Moses 5:10:
And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer then firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord.
Moses 7:45:
And it came to pass that Enoch looked; and from Noah, he beheld all the families of the earth; and he cried unto the Lord, saying: When shall the day of the Lord come? When shall the blood of the Righteous be shed, that all they that mourn may be sanctified and have eternal life?
We can be sure that Adam had the necessary ordinances. However, many of his children did not and do not. We cannot impose Heavenly Father’s will on anyone. Some of those that are living have the opportunity to accept the Gospel, but there are many more who still don’t have that opportunity. Our ancestors who have passed on have learned the Gospel in the spirit world. Many, if not most, have accepted it. However, they cannot progress without our help. Some of our ancestors may not accept it. There is nothing that we can do about that.
In the Church handbook, we read:
As part of our Heavenly Father’s plan, we were born into families. He established families to bring us happiness, to help us learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and to prepare us for eternal life.
Now, because we are born into families, that does not allow us to escape responsibilities. As children, we grow and learn; we become adults. As adults, we expect to marry and raise a family. As we grow older, our responsibilities seem to lessen. We usually help our children with their families.
Does this mean that we have no responsibilities to those who came before us? While they are still living, our parents still help us, sometimes to the point of sacrificing all that they have. As they grow older, the tables begin to turn. Often, adult children begin look after the needs of their parents.
In the October 2014 Ensign, Elder Bednar wrote an article titled “Missionary, Family History, and Temple Work”. He starts the article by saying:
At a solemn assembly held in the Kirtland Temple on April 6, 1837, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel.”1
Almost precisely seven years later, on April 7, 1844, he declared: “The greatest responsibility in this world that
God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead. The apostle says, ‘They without us cannot be made perfect’ [see Hebrews 11:40]; for it is necessary that the sealing power should be in our hands to seal our children and our dead for the fulness of the dispensation of times—a dispensation to meet the promises made by Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world for the salvation of man.”2
Many of us have been to the Temple to receive our own endowments. Our youth go on Temple trips to perform baptisms and confirmations for the dead. A few of the youth have had opportunities to perform these ordinances for their families and also for the families of other branch members. In order to have family names for temple work, the names need to be cleared through FamilySearch. It is not a difficult process once you know what to do. It can be confusing when you first start, but with guidance, you can become proficient.
When I first retired from the military, the first thing that I did was take a trip to England to visit where some of my father’s ancestors lived. I first spent a few days in London to visit The National Archives, the Maritime Museum, and a couple of churches. One church that I visited was Marylebone Parish Church in London. This was the church that my great-great-grandmother, Catherine Davis Bone, married her first husband, Edward Fielder in 1838. Edward was much older than Catherine died in 1843. They were married only 5 years. Catherine remarried in 1850 to Henry Fielder in St Clements-Danes Church. This church is on Fleet Street and was quite interesting to get to. It was heavily damage during World War II, quite like most of the buildings in the area. After the war, the Royal Air Force requested and received permission to rebuild this church and it became the official church of the RAF. I also included visits to historic sites that I found interesting. One of them was the church built by the Templars in the late medieval times.
During that trip, I then travelled to Cumbria, and visited the church where my great-great-great-great-grandparents were married. This is in Bewcastle parish. Their 12 children were christened there. It’s a small church but this is an important family site for my family. (The rest of my family may not know, but I do.) In its churchyard, my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, Robert and Mary Armstrong, were buried there as well as my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas, and some of his other children.
You may ask how did I know who to look for and how did I know where these events took place. I can tell you in a nutshell. I wanted to work on my family history ever since I joined the Church in 1976 and, off and on through the years, worked to find facts, clues, and information. I can say for certainty that I did not do this alone. The Spirit and my ancestors guided me.
It was when the internet was established and available for people like you and me to use. The information from the 1861 English census was posted online by The National Archives. I had had information from my family regarding this line since the 70s; however, I did not have my great-great-great-grandmother’s name. I was able to find the family as I knew where they lived and the name of my great-great-great-grandfather. In this census, the place of birth and the wives’ maiden names were requested. I found my family! I had a place name! I was then able to start researching my Armstrong ancestors! I began by working through the Church family history website. By this time, the IGI was online and I found the family that I was working on.
It would still be over 10 years before I could spend the time that I wanted to spend on family history. During that time, tremendous strides were made in technology affecting many aspects of our lives. One area greatly affected was family history work.
Working on your family history is in no way as difficult as it used to be. With the current technology and the speed of the internet, family history has become easier, more inexpensive, and more fun to do. The records that are currently online number in the billions. The records that are currently being released for online access count in the millions. Every week, I get a least one notice from FamilySearch about records being released.
Enough about the dry statistics. How can you make your family history research fun? There are a number of ways, but first, there is some work that you have to do.
· Step number 1. You should choose a website to assist you with your search. There are a number of them that allow you to put your tree online and help it to grow. The major sites are: Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find My A Past, and My Heritage amongst others. These sites will allow you to have your tree either public or private. You may not want access to all of these, but I strongly recommend that you should have access to Ancestry at the very least.
· Step number 2 is to start inputting information into the site of your choice and start growing your family tree. (My experience has been that Ancestry had the online records that I needed, so that is the website that I personally prefer.) You don’t have to start a tree; you can just use the search function to find the records that you are looking for. It has been my experience that it is easier to start a tree and to let the program assist you even when you are not there. If you are worried about privacy issues, you can set the privacy settings so that no one can see your tree.
· Step number 3 can be fun. There are a number of ways to become educated for this great work. I find that by belonging to a family history or genealogy organization can be fun and very rewarding. I belong to a number of them. If you can get out to their monthly meetings and yearly conferences, you can learn a great deal. You can also network with other family historians and learn some of the methods that they use. Some of these people put on great presentations. When I hear that certain people are speaking, I try to attend that particular meeting. One lady that gave a presentation about a few years ago in Ottawa had us laughing at her comments. When you present in this way, the speaker and usually the subject matter are enjoyable and memorable. When you attend a conference, you have a choice of topics to choose from.
· Step number 4. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. When I was a family history center director, I was there to make sure that there were resources to assist you with your family history. I am still willing to help you get started with your family history by teaching you the basic tools and then watch your progression, helping you when you are stumped.
· Step number 5. If you receive information from someone else, you should always check the sources yourself. First, ask them where they found the information. Then look for the information in the same source. I have listened to a number of family historians that complain because they come across too many online trees with incorrect information. This is because the people owning those trees have not checked their sources. I had a very interesting thing happen to me some time ago. I received an Ancestry message from John Cook, a researcher working on his English ancestry. This is what he said:
Hi,
I am just writing to say thanks for inputting all of the details of the fairbrass family history. I am a descendent of William Fairbrass 1795-1895.
His daughter Caroline Angelina fairbrass was miss transcribed as Caroline Ann Juliana facerbrass! So I had a bit of a journey getting to fairbrass.
many thanks again as this is the furthest back of any family I have researched.
best regards John Cook
John may very well be related to my husband.
If you are having problems finding the information about your ancestor, put their name along with the year of the event and a place where you know they were located and click on search. You may not find anything, but there will be times when you will be surprised at what you find. This is how I found out an interesting fact about my grandfather’s brother who was killed in WWI.
Sometimes I find something that I feel to be interesting. When I started helping a friend, I saw a surname that I recognized. I traced it back, found incorrect information, but I had seen the same surname a generation down. I traced that one back, found that the information was correct and discovered that I am related to her and her family. When we first moved here, I felt that I had moved into an area where I had no family. The relief that I felt when I discovered this relationship was tremendous. It has made a huge difference in my life to know that I have family here.
Now, you may think that I haven’t said anything about making family history fun. You need to know the basics; otherwise, it won’t be fun.
In the September 2014 issue of the Ensign, there is an article “Put the Family into Family History”. In this article, Sally Johnson Odekirk describes a number of ways to help your family become interested in family history. She had some of the same ideas that I would like to suggest.
You can have a competition with other families to see how many names that you can have prepared for temple work by the time the next temple trip happens.
You can have a competition with family members by giving each member that is old enough a different branch to work on to see how many names you can have prepared for the temple within a certain period of time.
You can assign each family member the name of an ancestor to see how much information that they can find within a certain period of time and have them introduce that ancestor at a family home evening.
Along with finding the information about the ancestor, find out what was happening in the world at that time. Was it during war time? If so, which war and what part did your ancestor play?
Along with the younger children, try doing some role playing about parts of the lives of some of your ancestors.
Take a family trip to a place where some of your ancestors lived. Walk around the community; take a tour of the local church that your ancestors would have attended; visit the cemetery that your ancestors are buried in. If you visit a cemetery, call ahead to find out what section, row and plot that your ancestors now reside in. It will make it easier to find them.
During family home evenings, tell the stories about your ancestors that you know. Your children want to know about them.
Plan or attend family reunions and find out what other members of the family know. They may not have all the correct facts, but they can give you some good leads.
If your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are still living, have them write their life histories. Have them write about the family members that they knew. Also, have them write out the stories that they were told about the family. If they are not willing to write them out, ask if you can record them telling you these things. If they don’t agree to the recordings, ask if you can write them down so that when they are gone, you can still tell the stories for them. Then when you get home, digitize these things and keep them for you and future generations.
Sort out your family pictures, get them digitized, and share them with your family and extended family. You will be astounded at the value that family members put on things like this. My sister had the family pictures after my father had passed on, but did not want to share them. Both my younger brother and I wanted to have copies. I finally managed to convince her that I could do a better job if I could bring them home and scan them using equipment that I have. She finally relented and I produced a digital copy of the pictures that she had. Both my brothers and my sister received a CD with these pictures. I was able to make a label and put a picture of my younger brother on it. It was a picture of him when he was about 12 to 15 months old. My sister and I were to be watching him while we played with the girl from next door. At that time, my brother was the same size as one of our dolls. We dressed him up in one of the doll’s dresses, a warm hat and a muff. We then took him for a short walk in his carriage. When my mother saw him, she ran for the camera and took his picture. It was this picture that I used for the label. When I gave him the CD, I showed his children the picture and asked them if they knew who it was. When I told them that it was their father, they were surprised. I loved the look that I saw on their faces.
In the October 2014 Ensign, there is an article entitled “Family History For the Rising Generation” by Carol Brennan Moss. I am going to quote a portion of that article:
While growing up, Brian Boice of Illinois, USA, never knew he had a half brother. Although as a teenager he learned of his older brother, he didn’t develop a real desire to learn more about him until he attended a family history class in his ward.
“By searching through records on FamilySearch, I was able to get in touch with my half brother,” says Brian. “I believe the spirit that accompanies this work can mendhearts and heal old wounds.”
While working on your family history, you can sometimes find that other people are working on the same line. To my surprise, I received an ancestry message about 2 months before our trip to England in 2011. Basically, the message read: What’s my grandfather doing on your tree? My answer was: Your grandfather’s grandmother is my great-great-great-grandmother’s sister. This was my 4th cousin. She told me that she knew nothing about the family past her grandfather. We made arrangements to meet at her house in Wales when my husband and I were in the Liverpool area. We were fed a beautiful Sunday dinner, then Anne and I sat down and I taught her about her family while my husband and her husband, Steve, cleaned up. Since then, we have kept in touch through Facebook.
When we moved to Petawawa in 2008, I thought that I did not have French Canadian ancestry and that I did not have any relatives in the area. Then, after I started working on my mother’s ancestry in Lanark County, I found that her family extended further back there than what she knew. I also found that her family married into a large number of Irish families in Lanark. Then, I found something that I did not expect. I nearly fell over when I found it. I found that I do have a French Canadian heritage and I was told by a fourth cousin in Toronto whom I never knew existed that the history of this line was the history of Quebec and Canada.
I have learned a great deal on this trip into the past and I know that I have a great deal more to learn. A couple of years ago, Gordon and I went to Education Week at BYU. I took 40 classes in Family History. One of the most important things that I learned was that our direct line does not just consist of our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents and so forth. I also learned that the brothers and the sisters of these ancestors are also our responsibility for temple work. We want our “direct” line to be happy in the Celestial kingdom. In order for that to happen, they want their children to be there. The children won’t be happy without their spouses and children, and the spouses will not be happy without their parents and siblings. This part of your family are called the collateral lines. It is our responsibility that we include the collateral lines in our family tree and make sure that, if you are the only member of the Church in the family, their temple work is also completed.
I have also learned that family history does not end if you cannot find the records. Sometimes the records are not yet available. So, you need to periodically check the work that you have done to see if any more records have surfaced. This will not be finished until sometime towards the end of the Millennium. If there are errors made inadvertently, they will all be corrected during the Millennium.
I find family history fascinating as it is a history of my family. It is part of my life’s work that I am tasked to do by Heavenly Father. I have been blessed doing this work and have learned that I am not just searching out names and dates and places. These are people, my family, and they will be waiting for me to complete their work. They will be waiting for me when I arrive in the spirit world. I want to be able to tell them that I did everything that I could for them. I want to be able to meet Mary Scott and Joseph Armstrong, Matthew Fielder, Bernard Farrell and Mary Todd, John Jackman and Eliza Fournier, John Robert Sanderson and Margaret Nesbitt, Minnie Farrell who was very excited to have her temple work done, Jane Fielder who wanted her children found, and the many ancestors I have yet to meet on this incredible journey.
I want to close with the following quote from Elder Bednar’s article:
The Lord declared, “I am able to do mine own work” (2 Nephi 27:21), and “I will hasten my work in its time” (D&C 88:73). We are witnesses of His hastening of His work.
We live and serve in the dispensation of the fullness of times. Recognizing the eternal importance of the distinctive dispensation in which we live should influence all that we do and strive to become. The work of salvation to be accomplished in these last days is grand, vast, essential, and urgent. How grateful each of us should be for the blessings and responsibilities of living in this specific season of the final dispensation. How humble we should be knowing that “unto whom much is given much is required” (D&C 82:3).
Preaching the gospel and seeking after our dead are complementary parts of one great work—a labor of love intended to change, turn, and purify the hearts of honest seekers of truth. The artificial boundary line we so often place between missionary work and temple and family history work is being erased; this is one great work of salvation.6
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