SOMZ

SOMZ: Saviors on Mt Zion

The Second Rescue: A Plan to “rescue” our relatives and friends mentioned in our history books to ensure all of them have received all temple blessings.

Temple Project 23 April 2014                                                                                       LaRae Free Kerr, M ED

itsallrelatives@sfcn.org      801.885.8468        2969 East Somerset Drive, Spanish Fork, UT 84660

This is an invitation to all family members to complete and correct temple work for all relatives and friends found in our history books:

Dollie

Find Your Actual, Factual Ancestors [There are relatives mentioned throughout.]

George Allen Wadsworth – Pilley to Panaca 30^th anniversary edition

Hollingshead/Rollins Family

It’s All Relatives Columns [There are relatives mentioned throughout.]

Pulsipher Family History Books

Rachel Dibley Wheeler Free

Samuel Lee Family History and Genealogy

Thomas Sirls Terry Family

The inspiration to make sure all the people named in the above books have temple privileges, along with their families, came about in this way: 

Some years ago a Stake President in Wyoming was inspired to “rescue” the members of the Willie and Martin Handcart companies a second time by making sure their temple work was done. Several times in the last months, and then again during a particular conference April 2014 conference talk, I felt very strongly that the temple work for these people needed to be completed.

“Rescuing” the above books and making them available to all was a tremendous endeavor I believe will save our families. But have all  the temple ordinances been done for every name in every one of those books?  I know that the Lory and Myrtle Joy Free family did much temple work for relatives. But the procedures and possibilities have changed several times over the years.  The extraction program, for example, made no effort to seal families together, only providing baptisms and endowments for those found in parish registers.  I do not know if any effort was made to provide temple ordinances for those in the Hollingshead, Pulsipher, Lee and Terry books.  In addition, I have made some major corrections in the Wadsworth and Broadbent pedigrees in the last two years.  I know those sealings have not yet been done. 

Therefore, there will be corrections to make in the temple work.  People will be sealed to the wrong parents, for example.  And though that cannot be undone, we can, at the very least, also offer sealings to the correct parents.  We can make sure all known children are sealed into families and do whatever temple work has been left undone.

The protocol for these temple ordinances would be as follows:

1.       Accept an assignment for one or more families out of one or more books. And let the administrator of this project know exactly which family from which book you will be working on.

2.       Take that information to the local family history center [or do it at home if you have the resources] and ask the kind people there to help you discover first what legitimate temple work has been done for each person in that family and add it to the database, and second, if anything is left undone:

3.       Prepare that name for temple work. Then arrange for the temple work to be done.

4.       Search the digitized documents on familysearch.org [and other sites you may have access to] for true sources on each family.  Digitized documents are as good as the originals. Such documents as birth and death certificates are primary sources [because they are original] and can generally be believed. Obituaries and censuses are actually secondary sources [because they are retold], but are often fairly factual. The published pedigrees found at familysearch.org and ancestry.com and on other such sites are not sources at all but guesses, and often very poor ones so should not be believed at all. Use these only as guides to prove or disprove.

5.       I highly recommend finding the family in one or more censuses at the family history library or on familysearch.org or another online source to double check the members of the family. [See census summary below to know some of the facts censuses do NOT provide.]

Further, there is a group of about 96 people who, similar to the handcart pioneers who were “rescued” a second time in Wyoming, were members of the Church in Pilley, England when Uncle James Wadsworth was the Branch President.  They were baptized, though for some the dates have been lost, so that ordinance will need to be repeated. But it looks to me like many of them never received temple blessings.  Only a few, apparently, crossed the plains. These early church members need to be “rescued” again by having their temple work done.

 [Part of our Wadsworth family was in the Hunt Baggage Train which was directed to follow the Martin and Willie handcart pioneers and help them. Annie Hicks who eventually married Absalom Pennington Free was in the Martin Company. Our Evans family was in a handcart company just preceeding these ill-fated companies.] 

You MUST know, understand and believe the following in order to prepare these names for salvation:

1.       The digitized documents found at familysearch.org and on other genealogical sites are as good as the originals. Use them.  Such documents are actual records recorded when the person lived by people who actually knew them.  Please get the difference between actual documents [which the Church has been indexing] clearly separated from lists and non-documents such as published pedigrees. Published pedigrees are NOT documents. They are NOT sources. See item 2 next.

2.       Published pedigrees such as those found on familysearch.org and ancestry.com are incorrect. Yes, they are. Do not ever cut and paste them or add their info to your databases. Use them as guides to research only.  Look at any given family in these internet pedigrees, and you will find children born many years after either the mother or father died. You will find children listed by their given names AND their nicknames as though they were two children. You will find grandparents listed as children. Yes, you will. So whoever takes on these projects will have to base their family data on the info in the books. True, the books are secondary unless the documents are included in the books. But the pedigrees are about tentiary.

For example. I had just done extensive research in parish records in the Family History Library in SLC on the wife of a John Wadsworth in England. I had found the correct wife and gone to a great deal of effort to remove the wrong wife from John’s family group record and pedigree.  In the same trip, I ran into a relative messing around in the library. She came up to me all excited to tell me she had found this John Wadsworth’s wife. You know what happened: She was excited about this wife I had just spent hours and dollars proving was the wrong wife - with documentation. And she had added the wrong wife back in. YIKES

THE DATA IN PUBLISHED PEDIGREE CHARTS SUCH AS THOSE FOUND ON FAMILYSEARCH.ORG AND ANCESTRY.COM AND OTHER BIG DATABASES IS WRONG!

3.       Read all names phonetically. Standardized spelling is a very recent phenomenon.  I’ve got many records where the person himself spelled his name several different ways in the same document. So Wadsworth is Wordsworth, Waddysworth, Waswort, even Asworth, etc. depending on the education of the writer and person, the accent of the area, etc.

4.       The Church standards prevent temple work being done for anyone less than 110 years old unless a death record is present.  This means that there should be many names in these books that were written in the 1950s and 1960s who did not meet that requirement but will be old enough now to be able to get their temple work done.

5.       Here is a wonderful and very brief description of what census records do and do not show.

1940 is the last available census at this time.

Facts you should know about the early census records -

All census records [1790 - 1840] prior to the 1850 census ONLY listed the head of household; whether male or female.

NO specific age was stated for any family member

NO place of birth was stated - city, state, or country

NO city, town, or village is stated - only the county; however some census takers listed the township

NO street address was stated

NO marital status was stated - single, married, widowed, or divorced

NO family relationship was stated - brother, sister, cousin, son, daughter, wife, inlaw, etc.

NO occupation was stated

NO parental birthplaces are stated

NO race was stated [but assume "white"]

1850, 1860 & 1870 census records do not show family relationships, marital status or parental birthplaces.

Step children are not enumerated as "step" children

Adopted children are not enumerated as "adopted"

Grand children are not enumerated as "grand children"

Orphaned children were not enumerated as "orphan"

Immigration date is not recorded

1850 is the 1st census that shows all family members with their birthplaces

1880 is the 1st census that shows parental birthplaces and family relationships

The above summary of census records is from thomasker2.

6.       Much more information is available in the Find Your Actual, Factual Ancestors ebook available at www.freefamilyhistorybook.com. The first part of the book is free whether you buy the rest or not. But the whole thing is under $10.  I will be revising it soon because the technology has changed mightily since I wrote it. But the genealogical how tos are still spot on.

It is my hope that we will find and record whatever temple work has been done for those mentioned in these history books, that we will complete the work not yet done, and thereby bless our whole family, living and dead.

Thank you and God bless us every one, LaRae Free Kerr