Turn Our Hearts Series - a Guest Post from Lisa Larson
I LOVE family history! For me, it’s as addicting as chocolate – but with fewer calories and more eternal blessings!
I think my great interest in family history began when I visited my grandmother about 16 years ago and she brought out this huge box of old pictures and began sharing stories about the people in those pictures. Then she shared a family Bible and there were names and dates in there that went back for more than 200 years. Those pictures and those names were part of who I am! They were real people with real stories and I wanted to find out everything I could about them. It’s been a great adventure with many amazing stories along the way. My grandmother passed away not too long after that visit and how I wish I could share all that I have learned with her and ask her more questions. I wish I had taken more opportunities to ask questions from her and from others who have since left this earth.
I have truly felt over the years a turning of my heart towards my fathers. Even as I sit here and should be writing this article for the blog, I opened up my Family Tree on FamilySearch and started looking around at my ancestors to decide what story I might share. I stumbled upon a great-great-great-great-great grandfather and thought I’d look at the record hints that were listed. I was led to Find A Grave and there was a picture of him on it! And it’s a picture I have never seen. He was born in 1794 and just looking at his picture makes me want to learn as much as I can about him. Two and a half hours later and I’m back to writing this post again. See - addicting!!!
I don’t have any amazing stories to share. But I have had some cool experiences and have learned much about how to do the research. Earlier this month I even discovered a missing child. My grandmother’s family is from Canada and I was able to find birth records on FamilySearch. I could have stopped by just seeing that there were records and attaching them to the individuals in my tree, but I chose to look closer at each record. I noticed at the top of the record that it was listed which number child it was for my great-great grandmother. The last child was listed as child #12. I looked at my tree - I only had 11 children. There’s a missing child. I tried to find the child in the birth records, but had no luck. I went to Find a Grave and found the cemetery where some of the family was buried and discovered a child buried there with the right last name. I was able to take his name and I did eventually discover his birth record and his death record with the names of my great great grandparents listed as his parents. Here was my missing child. He died when he was only 1 year old. My heart broke for his mother. To lose a child so young must have been difficult. But he is no longer missing from my family tree and my husband and I will go to the temple and have him sealed to his family soon.
I am a true Maryland native. I was born and raised here – but so were so many of my ancestors. I find ancestors that date back to the 1700s here in Maryland – and some were right here in Howard County. Sometimes I wonder why the Lord has kept me here – but maybe it’s because I have work still to do right here for my family. And I feel so blessed to be able to walk around the places that they once lived and to be able to show my children so that their hearts can also turn to their fathers. As I have searched for my ancestors I have learned about their lives, who they were, where they lived, what they did for a living, and even what they looked like. As I have learned about them, they have become real people to me and I have grown to love them and appreciate them. President Monson has said, “We discover something about ourselves when we learn about our ancestors.”
Technology has advanced so much and the records provided from the Indexing program have really helped to move the work of family history along. My grandfather (my dad’s dad) was born in Italy in 1909 and then came to the US with his parents when he was a year old. He passed away 25 years ago and I never really had a chance to get to know him. My father’s mother passed away when my dad was only 2 years old, so I also never knew her. And my father passed away 20 years ago, so he is no longer available here to help answer my questions. I feel such a desire to learn as much as I can about my grandparents. With the release of so many records to FamilySearch, I have been able to piece together so much about their lives and the lives of their families. For so many years we were at a brick wall on the Italian line, but just in the last few years, my brother and I were able to find all kinds of records from Italy and have now been able to take my father’s line back to Italy to the 1700s.
Last fall, we took a trip to Connecticut for the Hartford Temple open house. My dad’s side of the family is from that area, so we were able to visit several cemeteries around the area, the Catholic church where many weddings and funerals took place, and we ended our adventure with a trip to Ellis Island, where my grandfather and his parents arrived over 100 years ago. It was a great experience for my kids and for me.
I know that as we turn our hearts toward our fathers, the Lord will bless us in our efforts to seek and find and discover our ancestors and their stories and that we will be able to keep our promises to them and provide them with the saving ordinances they have been waiting to receive.
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| This is a picture from my trip to Connecticut and Massachusetts last fall. |
