Integration

We have been on our mission for 7 1/2 months. Each month has led us to new understandings and confidence. The pieces have been collecting. And now we are beginning to experience integration.

One of the beauties of turning 50, I recall, is the feeling that things were beginning to make sense. The parts were starting to add up to a whole. This new mindset resulted in peace as well as a certain headiness around the idea that life could be grasped.

Becoming 60 was like turning a shallow corner. The changes were not abrupt, and the realities of the sixties could be seen from well back in the 50s. The biggest augmentation of 50s life was in realizing we could take control of our affairs when retirement finally became our reality. We figured it would happen when JSL was 67 or 68, but times changed and we were fully retired right after his 66th birthday.

Retirement meant being able to make more choices about our life, such as where in the world to visit, where to settle, when to serve a mission.

The mission came upon us sooner because retirement was sooner. We had been thinking about our mission for years, but by January 2008 we knew we wanted to go to Salt Lake for a family-history mission. One reason was because the economy appeared to be tumbling and house prices were falling, which meant, we felt, that we needed to stay close to home so we could take care of our affairs.

So the events of our 60s started coming at high speed, and we embraced them.

Now, after 7 months of full-time mission life, we find ourselves molding the pieces of our lives - the ones we began to discover as part of a whole more than a decade ago - into just the life we want. Here's where we are today with this creating:

We want to continue to serve in the Family History Library indefinitely. We extended our full-time call until April 30, 2010. But that will hardly be enough.

We could stay here forever - till the end - but we have other work to do. We have books to write, and places to visit, and gardens to plant.

So how to bring it all about...?

By living half a year in Anacortes and half a year in Salt Lake. By having a garden in Anacortes. By living in Anacortes from mid-May to mid-November, or June 1 to November 1, or something like that. By writing books in Anacortes. By indulging widely in the outdoors life. And then by coming back to Salt Lake, serving in the library many days a week, visiting children and grandchildren, enjoying conference and the Choir and evening concerts. And in between by traveling.

It's a beautiful vision to me. I see our moving forward in this dynamic setting for at least another decade.

There is such a balance to this plan! I see a small house in each location. The Anacortes one would have room for a garden, a little greenhouse, and visitors. It would have a view of the sea. The Salt Lake one would be a short bus-ride or walk from Temple Square and would be cozy and have good workspace.

We would write the books we have lined up and continue to be physically active as well as deeply engaged in understanding our kindred dead and helping others to do the same.

This is what the 60s is all about: not only understanding the parts but molding them into a meaningful and dynamic whole.

This understanding is causing a great swell of passion, excitement, rightness, and goodness within us. We will create it, and do it. Amen.

Ironies Of Family Research

Right now, as part of our training, we are spending nearly all our time on our own family research.

And if you look at the logic of it, that means more and more people all the time: each time we find one new person in our family tree, the door is opened to at least two parents. So the list of people we need to investigate increases rapidly: each success means the list grows longer.

It is delightful to discover the parents of an ancestor. Last week I found Elizabeth Wheeler's parents, Joseph and Sarah Wheeler. And then this week I found Sarah's maiden name: Manners.

I also had great correspondence with someone alive today who is descended from my third great grandfather, Alfred Adams. In fact, I found a whole family of descendants. And one, Cousin Helen Leaver from Colorado, has sent me a great deal of information, including a photo of Alfred's daughter Mary Jane Stottlar. She is a sister of our antecedent Augustus Albert Adams. These are the two children of Hannah Scott's four who lived to adulthood.

So where is the irony? While we are searching out our ancestors, we are unable to see many of our own children and grandchildren! We are learning about those who have died but we the living are mysteries to our descendants. That's ironic.

For this moment in our lives we are fully committed to being here, on location at the great Family History Library, an amazing repository of information about those who have lived and died, not only in the US but also in Europe and in many other parts of the world. And it's growing all the time. The library has thousands of microfilms in drawers that take up a huge amount of floor space and that extend so high that a tall person needs a stool to reach the top.

And just one microfilm contains names, dates, and places of thousands and thousands. Just the other day I was reading a film of the parish records made over the past 600 years from one small town in England, the town of Calne where our ancestors hovered for at least many generations. Just picking out the family names from that one town, I have pages of notes in small writing showing the christenings of babies, and their parents' names, and the date. It is possible to build entire families from such a record, ours and others'. That's how I found the names of Elizabeth Wheeler's parents, and verified her maiden name.

Sometimes after work we see our grandkids who live here in Salt Lake. We are not integral with their lives, though we are trying to get to know them and find things to do with them that they would enjoy.

But it may be that the only way our children are going to know us is if we right our own family histories, especially our own personal histories.

That's a project that would require a great deal of attention, and ironically it would come at the expense of actually spending time with our descendants.

There may be no other way. I don't like it. But I don't have a better solution for now. PL

Our kindred dead, newly found, and living people too - Part 1

The first week of training, when we worked intensively on our own family lines, I felt like I was standing still. No one emerged from the shadows. I learned technique, but didn't find a soul. Until that first Friday afternoon. Since then, I've received a torrent of discoveries. I'll post them one by one.

I'll begin with Elizabeth. Here's who she is: my father's mother's father's mother. She was born in Laycock, Wiltshire, England and had a whole family before her husband died and she met and married Charles Wilcox Tanner, in Calne, Wiltshire. They had 3 little boys and came with them to the US in 1853. Their youngest, Charles, was my grandmother's father.

Previously, we (I plus my great researcher-daughter Elizabeth aka Bonnie) knew that her maiden name was Wheeler because we found her marriage certificate for her first marriage, and it was given there. But I didn't know her parents.

So I went to the FHL (Family History Library, here in Salt Lake) and got out a microfilm for Laycock in the early 1800s (actually 1550 to 1900, approx.). I went through painstakingly - the pages were shadowed with age long before they were microfilmed - until I reached approximately the right date. And there she was: Elizabeth, dau of Joseph and Sarah Wheeler, christened 7 Jul 1807.

So now we knew the parents. The natural question was whether they had other children. I plugged the parents' names into ancestry.com's England and Wales Christening Records, and found all 9 of their children.

I've now put them together as a family in PAF and in New Family Search.

I love putting families together! I was able to determine from the dates of their christenings that there were probably no missing children for this family.

Joseph and Sarah are my great great great grandparents. Now I wonder who their parents were? Next step: marriage record in Laycock, around 1805, in the same microfilm.

Training is over...

We have just completed our two weeks of intensive training in the Family and Church History Mission department. It was amazing!

The 34 or so of us met in 4 labs on the third floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The labs were filled with computers, and we met each day, all day long, with a trainer apiece. Each trainee and trainer shared a computer. A written manual guided the way. The trainer pointed at the screen with a soft-tipped stick. Following instructions, the trainee learned all the tricks of using PAF, Family Search, New Family Search, and Ancestry.com.

Some of us had more experience than others. Because we each had our own trainer, though, we were able to go at our own pace.

I have had a lot of experience with computers, some with the various programs - and absolutely no discipline in sourcing the results of my research. That was my biggest lesson: how to source effectively. I now have census record and World War 1 draft card images attached to the people they refer to. It is very satisfying!

One surprise is that we are using PAF (Personal Ancestral File, a free download at http://familysearch.org/) as the main location for all our records. It's easy to create sources in PAF, and an enormous family can fit all its records, including images and photos, on a memory stick. No internet connection is needed, then, to add a fact or a new photo. PAF is easy to use, and I've enjoyed getting to know it again.

Our days consisted of intense instruction, practice, snack breaks, an hour for lunch, more of the same in the afternoon, and trips at times to the Family History Library. The FHL is about 300 steps from our apartment, so it's easy to drop in there and take a look at christening records made nearly 500 years ago that have been preserved on microfilm.

But now training is over. On Friday we had our 'Go Forth' day, a beautiful event filled with inspiring talks, announcement of our assignments, and a trip to the Temple with everyone in our Training Zone.

The Family and Church History Mission is made up of 28 zones, so after training we are assigned to one where we will spend 6 months to a year, or possibly more. Some zones work on the technical side, such as digitizing or repairing books, or entering data. Others are there to help patrons visiting the FHL to find what they're looking for. John and I were assigned to the International Reference zone.

In International Reference, we help people looking for ancestors from countries other than the US, Canada, or the British Isles, which have their own zones (and their own floors of the FHL). International has its own floor, and covers every other part of the world. Some of the patrons are English-speaking, but a large number are not. We need to be able to communicate the basics in foreign languages on a regular basis. Both John and I have studied several languages, so maybe that's why we received this calling. It sounds really exciting, and of course more than a bit challenging!

We have our first meeting in the zone on Monday, when we begin more training and have a new manual to absorb, specific to that zone. I am really excited to learn more about what we'll be doing.

These are all the details of our life, but the bigger work is about finding and linking to our kindred dead. All our training was focused on our own family histories. Our hearts are fully engaged with these loved ones from the past, most of whom we don't know and haven't even heard of. We have had many touching successes during our training period. I will write about these elsewhere.

I have learned so much these past two weeks! We feel it a true blessing to be able to be here at this time. Living on Temple Square is a wonderful experience: we are able to walk to work, and come home for lunch. We have new friends. One son lives 5 minutes away by car, another less than half an hour away. We have friends in the Provo area and also just north of SLC whom we are able to visit. Senior missionaries have a lot of latitude in their after-hours activities, and can travel a radius of 60 miles. We have a small apartment, sufficient for our needs, at a very reasonable price. We walk over to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsals and performances each Sunday morning, and to church at the old and lovely Salt Lake City Stake building half a block away. It is a lovely life. No gardens, of course, and no long trips. But it suits us very well.

And since we can't come to you, why don't you come to us? Or better yet, come be part of this mission? (They need you - they are short 125 missionaries and have projects on hold for lack of faithful servants.)

A Delightful Take On An LDS Ordinance

This Irish journalist has something to say to concerned Catholic bishops:

What if the Mormons were right?

Thanks, Dionni, for sending this to me. PL

PS I have now changed the link to a more permanent location. Try again if it didn't work earlier.

Trouble With Isabelle

For those who have been following my efforts to find the elusive Isabelle Tanner. I've posted on how I found her, and have written about it in detail on Helium.com as an instructional piece for anyone wanting to know how to do family history.

HOWEVER!

Just recently I met a new relative, Fran D'Alessio of Norwalk CT, on a genealogy site. Without going into the details of how I connected with her, I ended up talking with her for quite some time, and discovered that she had had access to a Tanner family Bible at one time. She had copied out all the information and given it back to a family member - and has no idea where it is now.

Many of the 'facts' in the Bible were not correct, and in fact were the cause of much wasted time in my search for the origins of the Tanner family, because my cousin Bennie Tanner, whom I found in 1981 and talked with on the phone, was using that Bible for the information he passed to me about the family, information that was not true.

The bad information could easily be refuted by census records, which I sent to Fran.

A few entries in the Bible concerned Isabelle. Someone had recorded the name of her husband (John Gilbert) and at least one daughter, just the facts I had independently discovered this past Spring. But one fact was entirely different: she was listed as the daughter of Frederick Tanner, not Charles Tanner.

Charles Tanner was my great grandfather, the youngest child of Charles Wilcox Tanner and Elizabeth, formerly married to George Bailey, dec. Frederick was the second son.

Charles W and Elizabeth had brought their family to the US when Charles was 3 years old. They settled in Bristol RI. By adulthood, Charles had made it to Norwalk for some unknown reason, Frederick had disappeared, and so had the oldest son.

The Tanner Bible has Frederick and his wife in Norwalk around 1880, though. Isabelle was born in 1888 there. She is listed in the 1900 census as the daughter of Mary Jane Tanner, Charles's wife.

So either the Bible is wrong again, or Mary Jane had simplified the facts for the census taker! Of course it is possible that Mary Jane and Charles had adopted her, but what I am really interested in is her actual parentage. Well, that and the whole story!

It would be easy to conclude that the Bible was wrong about this as about so many other facts. But the person who probably recorded a great deal that was in the Tanner Bible was Charles Ernest Tanner, son of Charles and Mary Jane. He was my grandmother Ida May's older brother, and supposedly Isabelle's older brother, too. If he recorded that she was the child of Frederick, she could easily have been. It would be an odd thing to make up!

So I am perplexed, and have a great deal more to learn.

We have sealed Isabelle to Charles and Mary Jane Tanner. Mary Jane claimed her as a daughter, and that's what we went by. Time - or Eternity - will tell.

If anyone can shed light on this mystery, or would like to help uncover new facts, please feel free! PL