Family History Moment: Descendancy Research
Contributed By Barbara Hiatt, Church News contributor
Thanks to a little extra descendancy research, Sister Hiatt was able to find many ancestors who needed their temple work done.
Article Highlights
- Even if you think all the temple work has been done on your family tree, there could be more names found through research.
Related Links
I often heard of the blessings of doing temple work for a family member but thought I’d never have the experience because I have a different blessing. All of my great-grandparents were early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, providing me a great heritage, and I have many cousins who have made sure that temple ordinances have been made available for every person found on my family tree.
After learning about descendancy research, I thought I’d try it. In January I actually found a few people who needed temple ordinances, but most of them were born less than 110 years ago, which meant that I had to have permission from their closest living relatives. The relationships were so distant that I didn’t know their closest living relatives. However, I noticed one woman whose birthdate would be 110 years ago in March and who could be sealed to her parents. I wrote her name on my calendar.
I checked back in March. She still needed to be sealed to her parents, but there was another icon by her name indicating a possible source of information. I discovered that someone had indexed her christening record that gave me her mother’s maiden name. I tried to reserve the sealing ordinance but found there was a possible duplicate record now that we knew her mother’s maiden name. I merged the duplicates, which led me to other records. By the time all the merging was done, I was able to reserve temple ordinances for her and for some brothers and sisters as well.
I am grateful for the people who kept records, those who digitize them, those who index them, and those who create computer programs that allow people like me to find the records easily. I am looking forward to participating in temple ordinances for family members.
—Barbara Hiatt, Murray 16th Ward, Murray Utah Parkway Stake
