Doctrinal Basis For Family History

As I was preparing to write this post, I was reading Henry B. Eyring's "Hearts Bound Together."  It struck me as so perfect, that I will write more about the doctrines later, but just share this with you today:

"Many of your deceased ancestors will have received a testimony that the message of the missionaries is true. When you received that testimony you could ask the missionaries for baptism. But those who are in the spirit world cannot. The ordinances you so cherish are offered only in this world. Someone in this world must go to a holy temple and accept the covenants on behalf of the person in the spirit world. That is why we are under obligation to find the names of our ancestors and ensure that they are offered by us what they cannot receive there without our help. …
“Remember that the names which will be so difficult to find are of real people to whom you owe your existence in this world and whom you will meet again in the spirit world. When you were baptized, your ancestors looked down on you with hope. Perhaps after centuries, they rejoiced to see one of their descendants make a covenant to find them and to offer them freedom. In your reunion, you will see in their eyes either gratitude or terrible disappointment. Their hearts are bound to you. Their hope is in your hands. You will have more than your own strength as you choose to labor on to find them.”

How do I know what family history needs to be done?

Hello everyone!  Today's question is: How do I know what family history needs to be done?

There are two answers to this question, depending on if you want temple work, or research work.  There are two ways to find the temple work.  If you go onto New FamilySearch, you can look at your family history and if they need to go to the temple, a little green arrow will pop up next to the temple icon.  Or, if you have RootsMagic, there is a button under the FamilySearch tab (the little tree on top), where it has a list of temple ordinances needed.

To look for family work, the best thing to do is to find where the line stops.  If you have some skeleton family history that goes far back, click on the names.  Do we have complete dates for all important lifemarks (birth, death and marriage)?  Do we have complete birthplaces?  How many children are in the family? If there's only one child in the family, get some backup on that, because in the past only-child families were very rare, even if only one child lived to adulthood.

So, look for the unfinished stuff within the known people, or start that the line stops.  Then search using what you do know.  The best way to find a parent is to find the parents' names on the child's records.

Provo YSA 18th Ward Family History Committee Signing Off.  Next week's question:  "What are some of the doctrines behind family history?"  It will be a motivation week.

What is the best way to straighten out sloppily done family history

And we're back!   Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  Today's question comes from a ward member:

"What is the best way to straighten out sloppily done family history?"

This is a big problem in pioneer lines.  A lot of people have merged files that shouldn't be, duplicated files that shouldn't be and put wrong relationships in willy-nilly.  Frankly, this is one of the things that family historians hate most about family history: dealing with these things.  But this is part of what is addressed by the new Family Tree program. It is easier to deal with these problems with the new software.

However, if you want to go in and repair those things, many people don't want to mess with it, so they just roll their eyes at the mess.  Actually, if you want to do a service to the rest of the family history world, repairing that mess is a great one.

I know that this one wasn't a very long answer.  If you're not into fixing it, just deal with it and have it correct on your own personal records.

Provo YSA 18th Ward Family History signing off, check back next week.  The topic is TBD