You Don’t Have to Know What You’re Doing

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Over the course of the past several months as a new family history consultant in my ward I have engaged in a lot of conversations with my neighbors about the state of their family history and how they feel about doing it. Almost without exception I hear “If I only knew what I was doing I’m sure the work would be further ahead.”

I can certainly understand that sentiment. When I took it up a little more than four years ago our family history seemed an impossible hill to climb. And, to be honest, as I’ve worked on it I have come to the conclusion that it is work that will never truly be done. It’s just so much.

But as members of the Church we have expanded understanding thanks to both ancient and modern revelation. As I’ve considered my experience these past four years I have to admit that I’ve felt that “Spirit of Elijah” to the extent that my fears of doing family history work have all but vanished and the miracles I experience just keep happening.

That hasn’t happened because I know what I’m doing. It’s happened because I simply have tried, at last, to be obedient in this area of my life.

Perhaps Elder Bednar explains it better —

“These four words—‘Receive the Holy Ghost’—are not a passive pronouncement; rather, they constitute a priesthood injunction—an authoritative admonition to act and not simply to be acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:26). The Holy Ghost does not become operative in our lives merely because hands are placed upon our heads and those four important words are spoken. As we receive this ordinance, each of us accepts a sacred and ongoing responsibility to desire, to seek, to work, and to so live that we indeed ‘receive the Holy Ghost’ and its attendant spiritual gifts.

I feel the Holy Ghost as I work on my family history. Doing my best is enough when I have the guidance of the Holy Ghost. Doing family history work is an act of obedience. And obedience unlocks the intelligence, revelation and miracles you need to get the work done.

In studying the loving doctrine of redeeming the dead which is our real reason for these efforts I have come to study the life and mission of Elijah more in order to understand this “Spirit of Elijah” that we speak about.

I found this curious exchange between Elijah and Elisha in 2 Kings Chapter 2: “And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me…And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.”

Scholars describe the “mantle” of Elijah like a coat. Today we understand it as a calling, most closely associated with that of a prophet.

Elijah never tasted of death. And there is a very real reason for that.

He was the key holder of the sealing power through the Melchizdek Priesthood. Malachi the Prophet said that Elijah would return to “turn the hearts” and that happened in 1836 when he appeared to Joseph Smith in the Kirkland temple. Since no one could be resurrected until Christ came forth from the tomb Elijah was translated — meaning that he kept his body in a suspended state that left him protected from sickness and harm — so that he could physically lay his hands upon the Prophet’s head in 1836 and restore the keys of sealing.

Since that time you can mark the interest and the progress in the field of family history.

I’m sure Joseph Smith was overwhelmed by not only his experiences but also the scope of the work in front of him. His nephew, Joseph F. Smith, was given a revelation that we now know as Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It sheds light on the spirit world that awaits us all after we die. It also lovingly explains even better the doctrine of redeeming our kindred dead through the work we do in temples.

All of this is beyond our abilities in a singular sense. But given that its foundation is pure love — and given that we only require an obedient act of work — we have all the qualifications we need to get the work started and to get it done. Family History work is an act of faith, an action of love, and a way for us to prove our obedience. Nowhere in that does it say anything about expertise.

Of course, the more you work it the more expertise you will gather. That is just one of its many blessings.

For me, the lessons of revelation and the reality that we have others on the other side working these things with us and beside us are powerful enough evidences for me to work to qualify myself. I don’t know what I’m doing…but I’m getting there. And I’m being greatly blessed in the process.

Scouring the History of Others to Tell the Story of William and Ruth

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We’re soon to release a new video telling the story of William and Ruth Westover.

In truth, all of our other efforts have led us to this point.

William and Ruth are kind of a focal point for the many modern generations of Westovers due to the Westover Ranch in Rexburg, Idaho. The ranch was the homestead for William and Ruth and became central to the lives of their children.

Researching William and Ruth has been frustrating.

Although their history is relatively recent as compared to others we have profiled in the videos we produce there is actually very little left or recorded to share of their story.

In many ways they led tragic lives. William as the eldest son of Edwin and Ann was called upon to perform a long family service from around the age of 8.

He stayed in Mendon until he was well beyond the age of being an adult and I am certain it was to support the Findley family property and that of his mother in Mendon.

He delayed his marriage to Ruth by seven long years. Ruth was a local girl, herself a child of pioneer parents. Ruth and William were close to the same age.

While they did forge a life together and grew a large family they didn’t live long enough to see most of their children mature.

William died at the age of 42 of cancer and Ruth died 10 years later – far younger than most of their parents and grandparents.

All this has been known about William and Ruth. I’ve wanted to know more.

I’ve searched everything I can think of. The Church has no record of patriarchal blessings for them. The Rexburg ward records and those in Mendon don’t even mention them. Court and probate records are silent. Other than the few written histories about them that have existed for years and the few pictures we have of them I can find nothing more.

But where I have found some information that I didn’t know before came from indirect sources – through the histories of others who knew them and who associated with them.

I will save it for the video to showcase. But there is one bit of information I want to get out there now about William in particular.

He felt very, very strongly about the land that the Westover Ranch sits on.

How he came to acquire it, what he had to do to work it, and how long it took to happen is a real story that we’re yet to fully uncover.

But what we do know is that he desperately worked to complete his claim and put the property in the name of his family before he died. He filed the last of the paperwork just 8 days before he passed.

Perhaps this is why I heard my grandfather speak with such passion about the ranch.

I never understood it as a kid.

After all, I grew up in California. The ranch was a place from the imagination of my grandfather – a place where his memories had huge significance to him. He mentioned to us many, many times how much he wanted us to go to the ranch and make it a part of our lives.

My Uncle Darrell was no less passionate about it.

I can understand why for them it was important.

The children of William and Ruth – the parents and uncles and aunts to my grandfather and my great uncle – had to stay and fight for that place after their father died.

The family all invested many years and lots of sacrifice for that piece of property – and in the process they became beloved to each other.

I don’t know the history of that land completely since the days of that generation of the children of William and Ruth. I know the property that we call the ranch is now just a part of what it once was to William.

But I know that a later generation of Westovers came together in the 1970s to preserve it as a family gathering place where the legacy of the family could be celebrated and remembered.

I find it inspiring that the great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren of William and Ruth on many sides work to continue to keep the ranch in the family.

I often wonder what William thinks of all this.

Many of his grandchildren and great grandchildren have now passed over and they can no doubt converse. He knows what they did. He is likely aware of what we are doing now in relation to the ranch.

To me, these generations of William and Ruth’s posterity have been wise. Their efforts to keep that piece of dirt in a remote place as a means of remembering who we are and where we come from resonates loudly with me. In many ways, what they have done there is what we’ve tried to do here on this little website.

The ranch helps us to remember who they were. It bears testimony of their goodness, their service and their sacrifice. It is a witness to all that they believed.

Rexburg is an area rich with history of families who staked a place of love and devotion. Many families have their stories rooted there. The Westovers are just one of many.

We have had to delve a little into the histories of others to find more of the story of William and Ruth. They didn’t have the time and they died too young to write much of their story themselves.

But their story has survived, just as the ranch has somehow survived.

We’re finishing that video soon. If you have anything we can add to it – pictures, old letters, journals, any kind of memory of record – I plead with you to contact me so that we can include it.

I think William and Ruth’s story is important to know and to share.

Memorial Day and Family History

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What a gratifying thing it was to experience the things we did in the week leading up to Mother’s Day. My thanks to all family members who could participate. We asked a lot of people and actually the response we got was better than we anticipated. I know I put many on the spot and even took them out of their comfort zone by asking. I know for many the request just came too late for you to act.

And for that I apologize. But guess what? We’re going to do it again for Father’s Day. Now that we’ve done this once you get the idea of what we were trying to do.

What was accomplished was family history. As the pictures and the videos and now the audio stories attest to is that family history is so much more than names and dates.

But before we get to Father’s Day we want to encourage all families to make some serious family history plans for Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is, by design, meant to remember our dead. I know for some folks it has instead become the first great weekend of summer. And that’s fine as a means for gathering the family. But we advocate putting some thought into this weekend and not only visiting the graves of loved ones lost but also sharing their stories.

The Prophet Joseph, in attempting to teach “turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to their fathers” described the doctrine as a “welding link”. Nothing brings us closer to our kindred dead than contemplating the message and missions of their lives. If possible, we hear their testimonies through the record of what they left behind. We learn their lessons.

These things have an impact not because we archive these stories on a website. This things have an impact when — just like the scriptures — we tell those stories over and over again.

My goal for my family this Memorial Day is to challenge my children to tell a favorite story of a family member, past or present. Let’s make Memorial Day more than a BBQ and flowers. Let’s make it a genuine memorial.

Perhaps this will give you some inspiration for when we ask for, share and tell the stories of our fathers and grandfathers next month. We hope you will participate!

Family History through the Lens of the Temple

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Well, it finally happened: I received a call to be a Family History Consultant.

It will be my responsibility now to help my neighbors work with Family Search and learn the art of family history.

While that doesn’t come packaged with any fear for me I am concerned about doing it right.

I felt a little panicked as I thought about it a little bit when I considered that I myself have really just plowed my way through working on family history – I haven’t really been trained.

So I was relieved to almost immediately receive an email from the Church inviting me to a website to receive some training not only on my new responsibilities but also with resources for doing family history. I have been working that training through this week.

Also on my mind had been the prodding from my Dad about preparing more names for the temple. On my mother’s birthday this year he challenged us to work her lines to prepare more names and make them temple ready. I was able to score about 20 names to give to him.

Last night I figured the best way to put all my new training to work was to put more effort into that. After all, Mother found better than 20,000 names and how hard could it be for me to get them ready?

So I sat down and started at the very beginning – auditing individuals, couples and families for all their ordinance work.

This finely focused temple-view of family history surprised me a little bit. In fact, it kind of changed the way I was looking at these names. Through the lens of the temple you see your family quite differently.

Normally as we focus on family lines we are naturally interested in the linear succession of names – child, parent, grandparent, etc. But through the lens of the temple you see those names as couples with children – and you are concerned with each one of them and for them as a unit.

For example, I was working the family of my 3rd-great-grandparents on my Mother’s side – Egbert and Susan Groom. I don’t have any information on their story but I know they had five children and I recognized their names as among the temple sealings Mother had performed in Nauvoo in 2007.

It pleased me to see my Mom’s Family Search username next to some of the data that has been input over time in Family Search. But I immediately saw that while Egbert and Susan had been sealed to each other none of their children were sealed to them.

That meant I needed to go through each child and attach as many sources to their names as I could to prove they belonged to Egbert and Susan.

The world of Family Search has changed a lot since mom last worked on these names. Right within the frame of this family listing I could link to source information that had been indexed by someone making their records viewable online to me.

One by one I looked them up, attaching census and marriage license records and seeing the flow of their lives. The children of Egbert and Susan lived as we all do – they grew up, married, moved away, had children and then had grandchildren.

Within a couple of hours I connected proof of their existence to Egbert and Susan sufficiently where all the names were temple ready – their work could be done.

I almost thought it was too easy. I felt “Gee, I did that without a problem. Will it be this easy for everyone?”

What happens if I work with someone who cannot uncover all that as quickly as I just did? Would I know what I needed to do if that happened?

But then I noticed something.

I was working on their last child, whose name was Francis and whose birth information was verified by the 1870 Federal Census. Francis, according to what mother had input on Family Search years ago and had verified in the 1870 census – was a girl.

But in validating another child – William – I had to go to the 1880 census. In that census everything matched except one thing: in the family there was no Francis but only Frank, who was most definitely NOT female.

So, I had a problem.

I began an intense search to find the life path of my Great, Great, Great Uncle Frank Groom.

Sure enough, every record going forward confirmed that Francis was Frank – all boy and all wrong in Family Search.

My first instinct was to just go to where it listed gender and just change it.

It wouldn’t let me do that because the original submitter of the information – my Mother – had documented proof, the 1870 census, that Francis was a girl.

So I was stuck. How could I make Francis-the-girl into Frank-the-boy so that this family could be sealed?

I almost felt panicked about it. I HAD to figure it out. This wasn’t a question of what data was right or wrong – this was a question of how to get it all right in Family Search so the children of Egbert and Susan could be sealed to them.

I knew I could ask for help. But I didn’t want to do that. This couldn’t be the first time a gender was mixed in 19th century records.

I wanted to solve it on my own and sure enough, within minutes, I found my answer. I had to add a new child with all the subsequent records I found on his life…and then I had to delete baby Francis and the record with my Mother’s name attached to it.

I’m not going to lie – that bothered me a little bit. But as I thought of Mom and remembered her that day in Nauvoo I recalled her joy at doing the work. I was overwhelmed almost immediately with my Mother’s presence as I sat at my computer. Odd as it sounds, I could feel her approval.

I felt so much better knowing that when we take these children of Ebert and Susan to the temple to be sealed to their parents they will be a complete family, just as they were growing up.

It took me a couple more hours to get this all straightened out. But within minutes of completing this task I had their names all reserved for completing their ordinance work.

It was maybe three in the morning when I got it all done. I was spent — both from the effort of doing this and from my emotion tied to it all. It was, as they promise, a joyous thing filled with love and revelation. There’s nothing like that in the world, at least to me. It only comes from working on family history.

As I contemplated it all I marveled at my change in emotions in doing this kind of work.

I had questions, as I always do, about who these people were and what they did and where did their travels take them. I probably will never learn that part of their story. But in a greater sense I felt I knew them and that I loved them – and that I was doing what was right for them.

Besides, imagine how embarrassing it would have been to get to the other side and have my Uncle Frank tell me, “Dude, I’m a guy.”

Finding Family Through Strangers Online

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We have enjoyed KBYU’s new reality series called Relative Race, on every Sunday night now. The premise of the show is that four couples compete for a cash prize as they travel from San Francisco to New York over ten days, searching for family members through DNA matches. My favorite part of each episode is when they actually get to meet their mystery relative they never knew they had. They meet a new one every day during the race.

It’s fun to see that moment they meet as total strangers — and how quickly they realize they are family. Truth be told, we have more cousins out there than we really know.

Case in point: we’re close to wrapping up our video about Ann Findley Westover. I’ve delayed this project because I’ve had a nagging feeling there was something more about her to uncover. Since coming to that conclusion I’ve found LOTS more about her that I didn’t know a year ago. And some of those new details have come from total strangers I have contacted either via FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com.

On either site you can see who has contributed information about any given person. I have learned to seek out siblings and children of people I am researching and contact others who have either obtained the same info I have or have contributed something new. In the case of Ann Findley Westover, I’ve been contacting the great grandchildren of Ann’s children.

It’s a little nerve wracking reaching out to total strangers online. “Hi, don’t think I’m a weirdo but give me everything you got on Grandma…”

But in every case I have run into people just as anxious to learn from me as I am to learn from them. And the information has been so very much appreciated.

For example I found an individual who did some research on my wife’s paternal Grandfather. This grandfather is the brick wall in that family line — there’s little information to be had about him and we don’t know who his parents are or where he was born.

But I’ve got his death certificate and this individual on Ancestry had the same information.

I wondered what else he had so I just clicked on his name and asked him. He was so very helpful. He was able to give me where this grandfather is buried and how to find him. Since there are no known pictures of his grave I plan to stop by this cemetery on our trip this fall. Who knows where that road will lead?

In the case of Ann Findley Westover I’ve found other great-great descendants who are just like me — wanting to know more.

They each have had something just a little different that has added to Ann’s story and made it even more compelling. Both of these contacts were found through Family Search.

I have found it very useful to every few weeks take a good look at the “Gallery” feature on Family Search to see what new photos people have added. I usually find one or two I don’t already have — and many times those photos contain information about an individual I did not have before. Every picture has a link to the person who uploaded it so that you can contact them.

I love the information I get from doing family history in this fashion. But I love even more the joy of discovery of family members I didn’t know I had. And I don’t have to go on a reality TV show in order to do it.

emmadora

About the picture with this post: Ann and Edwin’s eldest daughter was named Emma Jane, born in 1858 in Big Cottonwood, Utah. (She is William R. Westover’s big sister). Emma Jane was about 12 years old when Ann moved to Mendon, Utah and years later Emma Jane married a man from nearby Hyrum, Utah named Walter Paul. Emma had 11 children and, in fact, died several months after her 11th child was born in Rexburg, Idaho. You thought the William Westovers were the only family in Rexburg? You may already know that when Emma Jane passed away Grandmother Ann Westover took two of Emma Jane’s children into her home. One of them was Dora, pictured above — Emma on the left and Dora on the right. That picture of Dora was taken around 1916 when she was about 18 years old — and not long before Dora died. She lived in Rexburg and HER story dovetails with the hardship story of the Westovers of Rexburg around the same time. I learned all this — and more — by just asking about Dora’s growing up years with Grandma Ann of one of Dora’s grandchildren via Family Search. Dora’s story is compelling and we’ll tell it as soon as we complete telling Ann’s story. The Westover cousins in Rexburg cast a wide net — and pioneer Grandma Ann, as miraculous as it seems — was a frequent visitor to her many grandchildren in Rexburg.