Family History is Fun!

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, This is an exciting time to be doing Family History!   We have been talking about different records being available for our research and how easy it has become to obtain information.   People all over the world are working together on family trees – adding documents, little details, photos and stories.   We may not know these distant family members but we have the blessing of benefitting from their contributions.   Each little added piece of information brings us closer together   -   members and non-members alike building one wonderful family.   We as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, have an additional blessing.   We have the Temple so we can be proxy for those family members on our tree and help them become part of our eternal family!   Before COVID became part of our lives, we could go to the Temple just about any time we wanted.   Now as Temples are slowly opening up ag...

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, This week we will be celebrating Veteran’s Day – a day set aside to honor and celebrate all Veterans of the Military Service –   those who have passed away and those who are still living. As many of you do, Brother May and I have a rich heritage of military service in our family trees.   The more recent heritage includes Brother May’s parents -   his father was in the Air Force, his mother was in the WAC’s.   My father was in the Navy and my sister was in the Army and National Guard.   Brother May, himself, served in the Air Force, following his father’s footsteps, then also served in the National Guard.   (Me?   I am a Navy “Brat” – didn’t serve in the military, but was born while my father was on active duty.   I was probably more “brat” in my teenage years but that is a different story and won’t be told here :-) When we are researching our family’s military records to add information and sources to our tree...

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, A couple of years ago, Brother May and I launched a fun project in the ward to find out if we are more than a ward family but have closer relationships with other ward members.   Many of us found out we are cousins with other ward members….. sometimes several times removed.   Do you get confused with “9 th cousin” or “1 st cousin, 4 times removed” or similar relationship descriptions?   We certainly do! FamilySearch has the answer!   When you log onto your FamilySearch account, the home page has a box on the upper left corner with the wording “What’s a 2 nd Cousin Twice Removed?”   Click on the blue bar with the words “Check the Cousin Chart” and the FamilySearch blog post appears.   This blog post has an excellent explanation of those confusing relationships. It defines a cousin and goes on to describe 2 nd , 3 rd and 4 th cousins.   As you read further, the blog describes the term “once removed, twice remove...

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today as we bring our discussion of Census Records to a close, we will cover Occupation, including Military Service. It appears that for most areas, the 1870 Census was the first to include Occupations.   Just after the Description section is a column titled “Profession, Occupation or Trade of Each Person Male or Female”.   On the line following the individual’s name is their occupation or profession.   On my great-great grandfather’s Census record from Bedford County, Virginia,   most males were listed as Farm Laborer and the females were listed as “Keeping House”,   Children age 10 and older had a question mark in the column while those under age 10 were left blank.   The 1880 Census carried the same format but the question marks were replaced with the words “At Home”. In 1900 many of the enumerators listed only the occupation of the heads of household and the servants or boarders in the home.   Others may have b...

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, We apologize for missing last week.   Time got away from us and then Relative Race was on BYU TV.   We really enjoy this show as the contestants are discovering more family.   What an awesome Family History adventure!   If you have not seen it, check it out!   Sunday nights at 6 PM (Comcast lineup) on BYU TV.   This week we are continuing our discussion of the information you can find on Census records.   The last blog posting covered the names of residents and the personal description that was included in the census form.   The description included parentage, birth place, naturalization, and if they spoke English. Today, before we go further, let’s talk more about naturalization. The Census records prior to 1870 did not usually contain any information on place of birth or if the person was a naturalized citizen.   However, the 1870 Census records include the place of birth (if in the US, the enumerator...

 Dear Brothers and Sisters, As we strive to serve in our covenant duties to gather Israel and seal families together, we often come across various records that help….. some more than others.  One source of information that we use to gather the families is the Census records.  What can they tell us and how can they help?  Over the next couple of weeks, we would like to help sort out the information found on these valuable documents and will be focusing on the Census records from the United States. In the heading section, almost all census records contain the county and state of the area where the census was enumerated. Most also contain the date of the enumeration and the name and title of the enumerator.  Some also contain the city and other governmental jurisdictions such as ward number or name, precinct number or name, etc.  These are very valuable in determining the location of our family members at a certain period of time.  We may have more than o...

  Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today, Brother May and I had the opportunity to fulfil a photo request for Find A Grave.     We have blogged about this service opportunity before, but we thought we might go into a bit more detail on how we do it. The reason we are bringing it up at this time, is that we were impressed with the thought, that we have the opportunity to do this kind of service in our own family history research.     It is a great service project that the entire family can get involved with.   Even toddlers can help!   In addition, you can just take photos, do some cleaning, or go all out and clean the headstones to spit-shine and then photograph.   It is up to you.   So what is our procedure?   We clean the headstones to the best of our ability before photographing.   Over the years we have collected the items we keep in our “cemetery kit”.   It started with a 5-gallon bucket and two Home Depot tool aprons tied a...