I understand that the Genealogical Society does research independently of the research done by members of the Church and that the names thus collected are sent directly to the temple. What does this mean about my responsibility to find my ancestors and prepare names for temple work?

Elder Theodore M. Burton, Assistant to the Council of the Twelve and President of the Genealogical Society

The Genealogical Society does not do genealogical research work, for that is the responsibility of individual Church members as they go about the work of identifying ancestors and charting their family relationships. This is the real meaning of “genealogy work.” We do have the responsibility to assist Church members as they fulfill their obligation to do the temple ordinance work for their ancestors.

With the dedication of the Washington Temple, the Church now has 16 temples in operation. During the year which closed August 31, 1974, there were 2,564,037 endowments for the dead performed. The Brethren would like to see this number doubled, for temple attendance is one of the best methods of increasing our spirituality. It is for this reason that the First Presidency has charged the Genealogical Society to provide enough names to keep the temples in operation. The system we developed in response to the request is called the controlled extraction program. As can be seen from the accompanying graph, the members of the Church today are producing only 34 percent of the names used in temple ordinance work. The remainder are supplied by controlled extraction.

We take the records of individuals which are most readily obtained (these are the parish and vital statistical records) from our library. We extract them twice, using different operators, so that one operator can check the work of the other. If any discrepancies are found, these are resolved and the clean record is fed into the computer for processing for the temple.

We give first priority in processing for the temple to the records submitted by Church members, and we only fill in as needed with society-produced names. Thus, if patrons submit names to be processed through the Society, their names are given preference and society-produced duplicates are rejected.

Of course, many names submitted by the members of the Church are rejected as duplicates because the work has already been done. At the present time the rejection rate for patrons because of duplication is running about 23.9 percent. For names gathered by the Society under the controlled extraction program, the duplication rate is 19.3 percent.

The rejection rate of patron’s names could be reduced if they would consult the Society’s annual publication, Parish and Vital Records Listings, which gives information concerning which records have been processed in the controlled extraction program. In addition, a monthly supplement is printed and is available at Genealogical Society libraries.

In addition to the above loss from duplication, 11 percent of the names submitted by members of the Church are returned without any processing because the proper standards listed in the Record Submission Manual have not been followed.

In choosing registers for controlled extraction, the Society tries to choose those areas (England and New England) where the duplication rate from patron input is very high, in order to save people searching the same records time after time to see if an ancestor’s name appears. By doing the whole record where the rate of duplication is high, all names can be entered and the results printed out in alphabetical order where they can be searched with a minimum of effort.

The Society only handles those registers which are most easily searched. We do not input wills, probate and notarial records, land and military records, census records, etc. These can only be searched by Church members doing thorough genealogical research.

When we take patrons into the archives and show them how to use the family group record forms on file, they are filled with joy to find family members listed. When they discover in the temple records index bureau that the work was done by other members of the family, they are overjoyed to know the work has been done. Why, then, do some Saints feel hurt when they find we are doing work for them that saves them time and money?

Probably the reason is that we haven’t saved them anything. By not following directions, many Church members have already expended time and effort in searching out a name only to find it has already been submitted and temple work completed on it. Had they checked with us first as we ask, they could have saved both time and money. How much easier it is to look up names in an alphabetical list in a minute or so than it is to hire someone to do the work or to sit down yourself and go through a register—name by name and page by page—to see if an ancestor is listed.

Our responsibility before the Lord and to our ancestors is to see that their temple work is done. Whether we do it, or whether someone else does the temple work is immaterial. Our task is to check to see that every one of our ancestors has received these saving ordinances. It takes genealogical research to make this determination. By using the archives, supplemented by the information from the temple records, one can build a pedigree chart of the family and see if the temple work has already been done.

Nothing, then, could be more helpful to the Saints than to have all the tedious spadework in church and vital records done for them at reduced cost through the controlled extraction program. It is not a handicap, but a blessing to the Saints.

Society versus patron input

The goal of the Genealogical Society is to keep the temples supplied with names. As this graph shows, the number of names researched by the Society goes up when the number of names generated by patrons goes down; the number of Society names goes down when the number generated by patrons goes up. The general trend is towards an increase in the total number of names submitted to temples through the Society.