2023-09 Sep - Why Should I Add Sources on Family Search?

Sep 7, 2023 family history sources workflow

Read time: Summary 1.6 minutes | Expanded section: 10.1 minutes | Entire message 15.9 minutes

From your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants:

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. ~ Jesus Christ, Matthew 4:19

• What has the Prophet said?

“Anytime you do anything that helps anyone—on either side of the veil—take a step toward making covenants with God and receiving their essential baptismal and temple ordinances, you are helping to gather Israel. It is as simple as that” ~ President Russell M. Nelson, 2018

Reminder. Current Workflow for Family History:

1. Historical people’s information first has to be digitized (others do this).
2. We index people’s digitized information so the image can be associated with text, which can be found in computer searches.
3. We link families' data together in FamilySearch.org (each member’s initial target is 4-Generations found and linked. Later we work cousin lines too.)
4. We link people’s information (source data) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better.
5. Finally, we can get names to take to the temple and offer them the choice of being linked to their families for eternity in our own pattern of regular temple attendance.

Why Should I Care About Adding Sources to My People on Family Search?

As you respond in faith to this invitation [to do family history work], your hearts shall turn to the fathers. The promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be implanted in your hearts. Your patriarchal blessing, with its declaration of lineage, will link you to these fathers and be more meaningful to you. Your love and gratitude for your ancestors will increase. Your testimony of and conversion to the Savior will become deep and abiding. And I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary. As you participate in and love this holy work, you will be safeguarded throughout your lives. ~ David A. Bednar, Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Oct 2011

Summary

• Why indeed should I care about sources? Each of us will pass away and take our memories with us. Even if you had face-to-face experiences with the person, sources help our other relatives and next generations know the person too. Perhaps not as well as you did in person, but more than just dates allow.
• So what is a “source”? They are analogous to puzzle pieces as we build a “picture” of each of our forefathers and foremothers to know them as people so we can love them.
  • A source is a thing that tells us something about the past, such as physical items, artifacts, digitized records, photographs, articles, books, recorded stories, etc.
  • A source can be a conversation or interview with family members (it’s even better if audio recorded or written down and added to familysearch.org for others; We can show you how.)
• In familysearch.org, we link people’s information (sources) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better, to turn our hearts to them, to love them.
• Using sources is a common pattern in mortal life. Sound knowledge is based on a variety of sources. Multiple witnesses (aka sources) are more reliable than only one
• Sometimes the details of a person’s life are not yet clear. Sources aid reasoning. Let us reason together.
• Sources make it easier for people to collaborate and work together in Family Search.
• Cited sources can settle or prevent disputes.
• Why should I expect a continuing flow of sources on familysearch.org even for relatives whose temple work is done? To help all relatives better know & love them as a person.
  • The church continues to digitize and index records worldwide. Billions of records continue to be processed, so the flow continues.
• Linking sources in familysearch.org is the easiest it has ever been. The technologies in use now make the work much less tedious than 3-4 decades ago. We can show you how easy it is.
• How to review and link a source? Contact a Ward Temple & Family History Consultant for free help to learn HOW, it is our calling and we’re glad to help you.

Expanded Message

• Get to know them better

  • I spent time with my grandfather. I knew him. I loved him. After he passed away, I thought “Why do I need sources for him when I knew him? I don’t need proof he lived." Only later after I realized my children and grandchildren did not know him, did I realize how sources can help them know him a little better. Not as well as I knew him. Not as well as my Dad knew him. But better than just a name and some dates. I have since added his certificates, forms with his signature, photos of him, and stories about him in familysearch.org. I do so in hope. I hope that my progeny won’t forget my grandfather. I want to help them know him too. I miss him. I still love him. For many ancestors whom my granddad knew, whom I never met, I am slowly getting to know them a little better too, from sources. Like my grandchildren, I’m their multiple-great grandchild and I want to know better my people that came before me. Sources help me, like puzzle pieces forming a partial picture of each soul.

    • The Apostle Paul described how we often see an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. He wasn’t talking about family history, but his statement seems to apply here too, I think. In 1st Corinthians 13:12 Paul said, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” It seems that I see my ancestors who came before my grandfather through a glass darkly. Sources help me see them a little more clearly.
    • I am grateful for the sources I can find. For some ancestors and cousins, I have found few or no sources yet. For others many sources. Like artifacts handed down, may this information help my posterity see them a little more clearly too.

  • In addition to helping our ancestors come unto Christ, through offering vicarious ordinances for them to choose whether to accept, we get to know our people.

  • “the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.” Malachi 4:6)

  • “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt. 7:20.) So learning more about their lives, we know our ancestors and cousins by their fruits.

  • “The first step in gaining any kind of knowledge is to really desire to know.” (Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Apr 2008)

  • If I just told you the date of birth for my spouse, how well would you know her? But what if she shared more information about herself? Sources are like that–sources help us get to know people better, when the people are no longer here to spend time with.

  • The better we know a person, the more deeply we can connect with them.

  • I have gained a sense of self by learning about my family’s past—where they came from, who they were, what they did, the trials they overcame, the accomplishments they achieved, the dreams they had.

  • After returning from a work trip to Shanghai, China my Dad sent me some old black & white photographs that Granddad had taken while he was in Shanghai, during WWII. Seeing the same buildings Dad and I had just seen there in my Granddad’s photos was a striking moment of connection for me to my Granddad at his younger age. I get a similar connection feeling when I see ancestors living in areas where I also have lived or visited.

  • For many of us, the other information and record sources may be the only way we get to know our ancestors better.

  • Knowing they overcame so much helps me deal with my challenges now with more resilience.

  • We can make the Sabbath a delight by getting to know our ancestors better and linking sources.

  • “They are mine and I know them” (Moses 1:35). God knows all of His children, us and our ancestors. Can we know them better?

  • When we minister to others, we seek to know them—understand their circumstances, needs, and strengths. We minister to our ancestors taking names to the Temple.

  • Some sources tell me their religious affiliation, and I can add that information to their family search page too.

• Using sources is a common pattern in mortal life.

  • Our legal system uses the principle of multiple witnesses (aka sources) being more reliable than a single witness.

  • The Apostles witness that Christ lives and that through his atonement that we can return unto God. The Holy Ghost witnesses to our spirit of truth. Nature’s glory is a (all things) witness of God.

  • The Book of Mormon is a second witness to the Holy Bible that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Sources are like witnesses of a fact.

  • At high school and university, we were expected to cite sources for our writing assignments to show others (the professor) that we’d done proper research to get to our conclusions. In this context sources reinforced trust.

  • A witness from the Holy Ghost can help us know a truth, providing spiritual knowledge that is spiritually discerned.

    • “When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as scholars and scientists are of the different kinds of knowledge they have acquired by different methods.” (Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Apr 2008)

  • The scientific method has us form a hypothesis (a guess) given what we know, and record results from experiments to refer to in our conclusions. These records of experiments are like sources that people can use to repeat the results themselves, offering another means of knowing.

  • Our sources on familysearch.org reinforce trust in the story as told so far. A person’s familysearch.org page with zero sources will be trusted less by others on the site than a person with 31 sources, for example.

• Let us reason together. Sources aid reasoning.

  • Full time missionaries might reason together with interested people from the scriptures as Paul did in Acts 17:2 to help them come unto Christ.
  • Inductive reasoning is a method of drawing conclusions by going from the specific to the general. From a few clues (sources) to the bigger picture of a person’s life.
  • In family history (aka genealogy), there are fewer information sources the farther back in time we go, so we’re left to inductively reason from the few data points we can find to make conclusions about what that relative was like. It helps us get to know them.
  • For example, some of my relatives moved many times, while others did not move in their life. Census sources and other location change sources tell me a story of where my family member moved over time.
  • I use information I’ve found so far, sources, to form my guess (hypothesis) about what this person was like. Yet I allow for new information. For example, when the readily available data shows one spouse and their children, and then later I find a marriage record of an earlier marriage, I have found out more about this relative than I had realized or that family stories had indicated.
  • If I find sources showing Jane had a child, but then another set of sources show that child would have been born when Jane was 6 years old, then I realize this is not the correct parent-child relationship. Sources aid reasoning.

• Sources make it easier for users to collaborate and work together in Family Search.

  • When we first begin to do family history work, we may not realize (I didn’t) how important sources are.
  • It helps everyone know where you found your information. This really helps when conflicting information arises and you can look at the sources again to help resolve the conflicting information.
  • Others can follow our reasoning by seeing the sources themselves.
  • It may help to consider everything on ancestry.com and familysearch.com as the latest hypotheses about your relative. Sometimes you may find sources that revise what your family thought they knew about that person (i.e., when you find an earlier spouse that died during childbirth).
  • Seeing someone else’s linked sources means I don’t have to go find that same source the hard way. I can click the link and see it for myself.
  • We can add a note acknowledging the causal leap we’re making on someone’s family search page.
  • Some families have stories of their part of the family (in the case of multiple marriages, for example after one spouse died), yet they may not be aware of the details of the other spouse, especially if there were no surviving children from that marriage. Sources help piece together the whole story for descendants to see.

• Cited sources can settle or prevent disputes.

  • I had someone who kept changing my deceased granddad’s information. I asked them to stop because I knew him while he was alive, but they didn’t stop until I linked 23+ sources showing it was not just my opinion. That person assumed I may have been making a logical fallacy of appealing to authority by saying I knew him, but when I showed so many sources as “witnesses” that my account was reliable, they changed their behavior and left my granddad’s information alone after that.
  • I recently invited a person to share their sources for connecting a person with an entirely different last name to our family tree in the mid 1500’s. They don’t have any linked with family search. It is more likely they’re guessing when there are zero sources linked.
  • I want to get to know these, my people. Sources add richness. Information about our ancestors on a record can increase our awareness that our ancestors were real people and that we really are connected to them.
  • I got to see signatures of my family members on the WWII Draft registration card. It also included physical descriptions that helped me better know what they were like.
  • When starved for information about that person, that discovery felt great!

• So what is a “source”?

  • A source is something that tells us something about the past.
  • Sources include physical items, artifacts, records, photographs, articles, books, recorded stories, etc. It includes the tips that family search suggests. We review them, and if it is really about our person, we link that source to them. It may include birth, marriage, and death records. For me I have found other sources more helpful getting to know them.
  • A family story can be a source, though if it is second-hand (a secondary source), it is less credible than a first-hand (primary source) source. For example, my Granddad’s written story of flying his B-17 in WWII is more credible than my Dad’s remembered and verbal story of Granddad’s flying that plane, that he heard from Granddad. For my grandchildren, now that story is 4 generations in the past and Granddad’s version helps them know him better.
  • Other source examples include obituaries, which often summarize a person’s life with details I didn’t yet know.
  • DNA is a biological source rather than an record artifact source (perhaps more on DNA later, because that’s a deep/long subject).
  • I have a copy of my great-granddad’s Bible. This artifact has a missing cover and it is beat up, but seeing where he looked inside helps me know him a little bit better.

• Why should I expect a continuing flow of sources on familysearch.org even for relatives whose temple work is done?

  • This work is continuous. The church continues to digitize and index records worldwide. Billions of records take time to process, so the flow continues.
  • Indexing continually opens up previously unknown sources that were recorded on microfilm and digitized, but which were not findable by text searches until the indexing was performed (more on indexing in another message). Once indexed, they become searchable and then you find them as hints about your relative.
  • Family Search’s technology changes are now constant and incremental. Faster digitization processing. Faster source suggestions for us to review to confirm it is for our relative.
  • Why do newly released sources matter? If you’re only aiming for the start point (temple ordinances), more sources may seem unhelpful. But consider that to getting to know a relative is helped significantly by viewing primary sources. I have often found that the image of the record has more information than was indexed. I have been blessed by spending the extra few seconds to open the source image (when available) and reading what else is there. This has helped me know my relatives better and can help you too. For example, the latest big release is the US Social Security Numeric Identification Files. Most of this release is already waiting for you to review and link them to your people.
  • Some existing sources have mistakes. New sources may provide a larger set of sources that tell the corrected story of your family, and relatives.

• How to review and link a source?

  • Contact one of your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants for free help. We’re happy to show you all you want to know about using sources. The technologies today make reviewing and linking sources easy and sometimes it only takes seconds. If you just want to learn the basics of computers, we can help. You tell us what you want to learn how to do better and we help you one-on-one. Check the hours at the Family Search Center at the Stake Center.

• (repeat) Aspiration & Inspiration, NOT guilt trips.

  • The intent of these messages is invitation, not as a guilt trip. A reminder of the grandeur of the vision and scope of the work God asks of his children now, in this dispensation, as we prepare for the Savior’s second coming, and the urgency our Prophets have indicated. With our hand in the Lord’s hand, all things are possible as we keep trying and practicing Christlike love and service, uniting families through family history and temple work.

Because Temple & Family History work requires skills, ask us and we can show you how so you can grow your skills to meet the Lord’s challenge. We’ll adjust what we show you how to do to what you want or need, one-on-one. See us in the Family Search Center or set an appointment for us to come to your home and show you there. Even we consultants are still learning new skills as God’s kingdom rolls forth and new functionality is released. We’re all learning and practicing so we can better serve in the Gathering of Israel. Thank you for the actions you take in this great work.

Sincerely, Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants,

P.S. - Good News! Thank you!

• Thank you for helping our ward do slightly better in family history than the ward did this time last year. Every bit helps! Thank you for your time & effort tithed in service to the Gathering of Israel.
  • NOTE: To be clear, only you can see your personal contribution statistics on FamilySearch.org. The Berryville Ward report is not by name, but by numbers only. This means that although we’d love to help you start your four generations (for example), we don’t know who needs help. We patiently wait for you to speak up and ask for help.
  • Submitting a name: 17 more people this month over last year at this time
  • First Four Generations in the tree: 51% up from 48%
  • Members logging in (web & mobile): 128, up from 117
  • Adding names to the tree: 41, up from 37
  • Adding memories to the tree: 27, up from 26
  • Indexing: 8 people indexed, up from 5

It is worth repeating what our current Prophet said:

“Anytime you do anything that helps anyone—on either side of the veil—take a step toward making covenants with God and receiving their essential baptismal and temple ordinances, you are helping to gather Israel. It is as simple as that” ~ President Russell M. Nelson, 2018