Discovering a New Cousin

I was attending one of several lectures by D. Joshua Taylor this week at the BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy when up flashed the name of one of my ancestors on the screen.  I spoke to Josh afterward and, lo and behold, we share the same 3rd great-grandfather.  Josh's name has been familiar to me, but I didn't realize that it wasn't just because he is well-known in genealogy circles. In fact, Josh has been a member of the family association that I started, and also a member of my Ancestry.com online family tree, for quite some time now.  I just didn't connect before now that it was the same person.  What's more, he has sent me some of the best stuff that has been shared on the family site.  I have several documents about the family that he mailed to me, including early 19th century land grants signed by President Andrew Jackson as well pension files and other records.  He was finding these and sending them to share on our family site more than 11 years ago--when he was only 14 or 15 years old!  Josh got hooked on genealogy when he was only about 10 and soon after was to be seen frequenting genealogy conferences.  He was presenting lectures while still in his teens, and is now at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, with two masters degrees under his belt, still in his twenties.  As a professional genealogist nearing 40, I was impressed with how much I learned this week from Josh, who has been at this nearly as long as I have, though he is a dozen years my junior.  And here I thought, having started this at age 19, that I was one of the representatives of the young generation of genealogists! It doesn't depress me, though, or make me feel old.  I am just happy to see that this wonderful pursuit of family history is capturing the energy and the passion of each succeeding generation.

Why genealogy libraries are needed

Years ago, when I used to work for FamilySearch at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, there was a lot of discussion about the relevance of the library as a physical space as we moved into the 21st century age of digital media.  With all of the records digitized, would we still need to have a library building?  If everyone could access the records online in their pajamas, what need would there be for a library reference desk?

My initial response to this was to say that we could never digitize everything, due to the sheer cost of it, and to copyright and other restrictions, so we would always need a place for people to access the remaining paper and microfilm materials. I also pointed out the digital divide that would persist, leaving some have-nots without access to online media.  (There are still people in the U.S.A. without phones, after all, let along computers.)  There are also those who would not be able to afford some of the online records exclusively available by subscription, but which the library could subscribe to as an institution and provide for free.

But there is something even more fundamental about library services that I believe will persist even if everything does become available online and everyone is able to afford access to it: it is the synergy of ideas that comes from the human interaction between people searching for information and those who are there to help.

Perhaps the greatest asset of FamilySearch is not its vast holdings of millions of microfilm reels and hundreds of thousands of books, but the collective knowledge that the people in that organization have developed about records: how to find them, how to evaluate them, and how to use them.  This knowledge has developed primarily through those interactions within the library, which serves as a sort of laboratory of learning for the employees as much as the patrons.

This point was brought home to me again recently, as I listened to one of the Genealogy Gems podcasts.  Lisa Cooke, the show host, was speaking with Jason Harrison, one of the U.S. reference consultants at the FHL, about techniques for searching the U.S. census records. Lisa said, "I imagine with all of the patrons you speak to on a daily basis and all the problems you see, you really home in on where the problems lie.  Do you find there are consistent challenges that people run up against when they are dealing with these records?"

Jason's response illustrates the point: "It's the patron experience that really helped me hone in on these techniques that help to find people in the census, just based on their challenges.  It's kind of a fun field to be in and a job to have, where you are having that interaction, and you're trying to help people get past the wall that is there.  So determining a new way to approach the situation makes it fun and passing that on is a great thing to be able to do--to pass that knowledge on to others so that they can take advantage of it." (1)

No matter how much information is available to everyone online, there will always be people in need of help to sort through it all, find what is relevant, evaluate it, and apply it.  And there will always be a need for experts to provide this sort of help.  Libraries benefit both the learner (the patron) and the teacher (the librarian) by providing countless opportunities to confront information problems, and to learn from them, and then to share that knowledge.

I view the Family History Library as sort of the golden goose of FamilySearch.  Remove the library and you lose the source of the organization's true wealth: the wealth of genealogical knowledge that exists there. It is the knowledge that helped them to build such a valuable collection in the first place, and to find innovative ways to facilitate access to it, as well as to use it.

The good news is that the Family History Library is still here, a decade later, and it appears it is here to stay.  Whether or not you ever have the opportunity to travel to Salt Lake City, if you are searching your family history, you will benefit directly or indirectly from the collective genealogical knowledge that has been developed as a result of the existence of the world's greatest genealogical library.

(1) Lisa Louise Cooke and Jason Harrison, "Episode 108 Census Tips and Tricks," interview by Lisa Louise Cooke, host, The Genealogy Gems Podcast, 8 April 2011, Adobe Flash, Genealogy Gems (http://www.genealogygemspodcast.com/episode-108-census-tips-and-tricks: accessed 21 Jun 2011), minutes 40-41.

Forgiving Her Son's Killer: 'Not An Easy Thing' : NPR

Forgiving Her Son's Killer: 'Not An Easy Thing' : NPR

This story on NPR moved me to tears. What a wonderful illustration of the power of the stories we tell ourselves and one another. This woman chose to tell herself a different story than the one the world would expect her to tell, and in doing so, found healing and surprising joy out of the ashes of a tragic tale.  Click to listen, but make sure you have the Kleenex box handy first.

EnlargeStoryCorps

Mary Johnson, 59, spoke with Oshea Israel, 34, at StoryCorps in Minneapolis.

Alien planet? No, Icelandic night sky.

As if I didn't have enough reasons to want to visit the ancestral homeland of my Icelanders.  (I am 1/8th Icelandic.)  The land of fire and ice is full of wonders--and not only natural ones.  They are also one of the world's best at preserving their genealogical records.  That, coupled with a language that has remained largely unchanged for a millennium, and you have a genealogist's dream.  

Irish Connection

I'm very excited to find that I have an Irish connection!  In all my 20 years of doing research on my family history, I had not come across it until now, and am surprised to find that it is not very far back: a 4th Great-Grandmother on my father's, father's side.  I had simply never focused on that line before.  Her name was Eliza Reed and she was born in Carlingford, County Louth, a coastal town in the northeast in 1804.  In 1825, she married an English sailor, James Marchbanks, who was born in Plymouth, Devon.  As he was a mariner (for a time, even a chief boatman in the coast guard), they traveled a lot.  Their children were born in Hampshire, Essex, the Isle of Jersey, and Sussex, before they finally settled in London.  Adding Irish completes my British Isles heritage, which also includes multiple lines of Scottish, Welsh, and of course, English. I'm proud to say that I am 1/64th Irish!

World Memory Project

The World Member Project is a joint effort of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ancestry.com to create the world's largest online resource online for information about individual victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution. I'm honored to have played a small part in helping to making this happen, and grateful to efforts of my team and many other colleagues at Ancestry.com who contributed to the project. I hope that many people will participate in the project, and that as a result, many more will be able to find information about their loved ones.

NARA/Ancestry.com Civil War Press Conference

Þorrablót

I had a wonderful evening at Þorrablót, an Icelandic feast hosted by the Icelandic Association of Utah, with my wife and parents.  (My dad's maternal grandfather was full Icelandic.)  We had a special treat as we heard from BYU Professor Fred Woods, author of Fire on Ice: The Saints of Iceland, and  Dr. Kári Bjarnason, Head of the Public Library of Vestmannaeyjar, my ancestral home in Iceland. They are working on creating a museum exhibit in Vestmannaeyjar on Mormon emigration from Iceland, as over 200 Icelanders emigrated from there to Utah.  I spoke to each of them afterward about contributing material for that exhibit.  I also tried the sampler plate of traditional Icelandic foods--not for the faint of heart.  I confess I passed on the ram's testicles and sheep intestines.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Rosie O'Donnell

Rosie O’Donnell returns to TV by relaunching her talk show, retracing her roots - National Celebrity Q&A | Examiner.com

This is a wonderful, in-depth interview with Rosie O'Donnell about her experience with Who Do You Think You Are? Rosie was deeply affected by her journey to her ancestral past, and the knowledge and perspective she gained about her heritage is transforming her life in positive ways.

What's Your Story?

BYUtv - What's Your Story?: We All Have A Story: The Process This is a great new program showing on BYUtv about storytelling, with master storyteller, Donald Davis.  The show takes you to one of Donald's workshops where everyday people discover their own stories, and how to tell them.