Temple and Family History Lesson 10: Descendancy Research

 

Temple and Family History

Lesson 10

Descendancy Research

 

In our last lesson we looked at how to find and submit ordinances for temple work.  In that lesson we introduced the concept of Descendancy Research.  In this lesson we will look more closely at this activity and how to apply it to bless thousands of our relatives with ordinances of salvation.

There are still members of the church who, when asked if they would like help with their family history work, will say that their work is “all done”.  I’m not sure what the expression “all done” really means and I’m sure the members who uses those words to describe their family-history status don’t know either. 

It is plainly impossible, even with today’s unprecedented information availability, for all of the temple ordinances for all of one’s relatives back to Adam to be “all done”.  What the expression usually means is that all of the obvious, easy to find, direct ancestors and some of their families back maybe 300 years have had their temple ordinances completed.  That would be an amazing accomplishment but it may be possible.

Years ago the church instructed us to see that the work was done for four generations of our ancestors, meaning our parent’s family in which we are a child, our grandparents families, in which our parents were children, our great grandparent’s families in which our grandparents were children, and our great-great grandparent’s families.  In each generation we were to see to the temple ordinances for our direct-line ancestors and their immediate siblings only.

Then about 15 years ago, and my memory is not too good on this time frame, the Brethren asked us to expand our efforts to include all of the descendants of all the persons include in the above-mentioned families.  This new effort was called “Descendancy Research”, and it enlarged all of our research horizons substantially.

I mentioned in the last lesson that I once created a spreadsheet to calculate an estimated number of relatives one could have assuming certain conditions of procreation.  My reason for doing this was to emphasize the basis for Descendancy Research.  We have millions more aunts, uncles, and cousins than we do direct ancestors, giving us much more research space than if we are just looking for direct line families.

The numbers go something like this.  If we assume that each of our direct ancestral couples had three offspring that reached maturity and had three offspring of their own and that this fertility rate continued constant down to the present generation; and if we also assume that there were no instances of cousins marrying cousins at any generation level, or pairs of sisters marrying pairs of brothers, because these situations eliminate one or more sets of grandparents, and if we further assume that each generation is 25 years long, then the following results follow.

If we go back 10 generations, and starting our count in the year 2021, and counting ourselves as the first generation, that takes us back to the year 1771 with 512 ancestral couples in that year.

Given these assumptions the number of relatives we have today would be 48,372,941. This is the number of direct ancestors, their three married children, and all of the descendants of those children counting at the continuous reproduction rate of three per family.  The thought of identifying that many persons is, of course, overwhelming, and these conditions are conservative! 

But we mustn’t forget that we cannot submit ordinances for persons born within the last 110 years unless we are the closest living relative, which is not likely to be the case as we have mentioned before.  If we stop our count of relatives at the generation just before 1911 (110 years ago), we have only 1,790,000 relatives to be responsible for, a much more manageable number!  It is also a certainty that there are many other members of the church with these same relatives, so we are not alone with this task.  We can see from these numbers that it is quite impossible for anyone’s work to be “all done”.

With that introduction to the exciting possibilities of Descendancy Research, let’s take a look at how to start.

 

Records that Reveal Families

One of the best sources of genealogical information tying families together is the census.  Many countries started taking a national census with names of all family members shortly after the 1836 visit of the Prophet Elijah who restored the keys and power for sealing families together.  In the USA that first census was in 1850.  The earlier censuses, starting in 1790, enumerated only the heads of households by name, followed by a count of persons corresponding to 5-year ranges of age.  These are helpful censuses but hardly decisive in establishing family units.

Figure 1 is a valuable example of a census entry from 1850, the first year that names of wives and children were included.  It is the record of my third great grandfather Amos Carter and his wife, Nancy, who were living in upstate New York in that year with their 9 children.  We would not know the names of these children if it were not for this census record.

Figure 1.  1850 Census of Argyle, New York.  Family of Amos Carter

Other records that often reveal the names of siblings in a family are obituaries, which typically list the names of both surviving and predeceased siblings, and, where a family remains in one location for many years, birth records may record the births of several children to the same parents, usually one birth about every two years. 

Under the premises of Descendancy Research I can now not only submit ordinance requests for Amos’s nine children, but also for all of the descendants of these children down to the last generation born before 1911.  Fortunately there are others also working on this family.

 

The Descendancy Tree

Family Search offers a quick way to see which of all of Amos Carter’s descendants are currently included in the data base.   This tool is called the Descendancy Tree.

The Descendancy tree is reached from the Person Page by first clicking on the “View Tree” link at the upper right corner of the page as indicated in Figure 2.

Figure 2.  The “View Tree” link on the Person Page opens the tree menu for the person.

That link will open the Tree Menu as shown in Figure 3.  The bottom selection in the Tree Menu is “Descendancy” and, clicking on that link opens the Descendancy Tree a portion of which is also shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.  “Descendancy” menu selection and the screen that it opens.

This screen, the “Descendancy” tree, not only shows all of the recorded descendants of Amos Carter, but also their ordinance status as indicated by the colored tiles to the right of each name.  Notice that on this tree, which shows only the first 10 of 87 descendants that are recorded in Family Search for Amos Carter, three have ordinances that can be requested.  In this case there are many more available ordinances showing as you scroll down through the tree.  As we mentioned in the previous lesson this optional form of the tree diagram is a valuable tool for finding ordinances that can be requested.

Notice that for each name that has a spouse or children attached there is a small arrow shown (> or ˅).  Clicking on this arrow will either open more of the person’s family or close them.

Clearly there are many other members of the church who are descendants of Amos Carter, because neither I nor any of my siblings submitted most of the 87 names on this tree.

By clicking on any name on this tree you can go to the Person Page for that person, and from there you can pursue research on that person, and their siblings, as discussed in Lesson 8.

What we have introduced in this lesson is the notion that we can seek out all of the descendants of all the children of all our direct-line families.  The research to uncover the vital facts for these relatives will be the same as presented previously, as will be the process of requesting and submitting ordinances for these people as discussed in Lesson 9.  The message for us in this is that when we run into a difficult research problem with one individual, we can pick up the trail for one of his or her siblings and try to work that line for a while, maybe finding some hints that will take us back to the difficult brother or sister.  Descendancy Research opens thousands more names that we can now seek out and submit ordinances for.

In our next lesson we will look at the ubiquitous problem of finding and correcting errors in Family Search facts.