How a Record Helped Me Uncover a Family Story

One of the things that stood out in my mind was when I actually found my family on a ship’s manifest! I couldn’t believe it! Here was my great-great-great-grandfather and wife with their 13 children and several grandchildren, one of whom was my great-grandmother Louisa whom I actually knew in this life. She was 4 at the time of their arrival according to the record.

My great-grandmother was one of 12 children, and over the years, I have come to know all her siblings through census, birth, marriage, and death records. However, Janet, her older sister, eluded me for 18 years! I had her birth date in Scotland where they were all born and then on a census record at age 14. After that, nothing. It seemed she disappeared off the face of the earth. One day, about two years ago, I got a hint of a marriage record for Janet in Quebec, Canada. On FamilySearch.org, I could go into the original marriage record, and I verified the parents of Janet and that this was indeed her marriage certificate. From there, I found her moving to Canada in her 20s and marrying Edward. A year later, she had a son, Albert, who lived for only a few minutes and died. I was able to complete the whole family’s story through many more hints, all with the help of indexers and FamilySearch.org.

I was doing indexing of immigration records through FamilySearch. I ran across a family name—Jack Caston—but thought there must be thousands with the same name. Then as I noted further he came into the United States shortly after my paternal grandparents, who were Sephardic Jewish immigrants coming out of Turkey during the Balkan conflicts and World War I. Then I noticed in fact it was my grandmother’s cousin. The record used her address as the address he was moving to in the Sephardic community in Seattle, Washington. Of course, I learned much more about physical features and so on that were on the document.

One day while teaching a patron how to do family history, I decided to use my own dad as an example of what was in FamilySearch.org. I did a search for my dad and discovered a gold mine of information because someone had indexed his ship's manifest, where he was one of many missionaries who were being evacuated from Eastern Europe because bombs were being dropped on England. We had grown up with stories of dad being sequestered with Hugh B. Brown during an air raid. We knew he came back and was reassigned to Pennsylvania. Reading the manifest for the first time, I saw the names of at least 300 missionaries who were on that boat. It gave their names, ages, and their hometowns. I was sharing this experience with my friend as we were working in the family history center. Unknown to me, I had just found a connection to her. I was showing her the ship's manifest and told her the dates of the evacuation. Then she pulled up the obituary of her grandfather Ralph Griffin. He was in England at the same time my dad was. We found him on the boat, and she had access to his journal. Not only was her grandfather on the boat my dad was on, he was actually my dad’s mission companion at the time of the evacuation. In my dad’s pictures were pictures of her grandfather. In her grandfather’s journal were pictures and stories of my dad that I did not have. The magnitude of my discoveries were made possible because someone indexed those records.

Thanks be to God—I am so grateful to Heavenly Father, the General Authorities, and the Family History department of the Church for the indexing program and to the thousands of indexers all over the world. Even after 45 years of searching my roots, I still have new documents to be discovered and attached to my ancestors. Just in the last year, my great- grandparents’ residence was revealed in the Georgia 1900 census; whereas they were residents of Barton County, Kansas, for the 20 years prior. This is something I could not have found on my own. And because of that census having been indexed, the location of the cemetery of his burial was discovered. This program is surely inspired! Thanks be to God!

We always wondered where the name “Nudis” came from. My grandfather named my dad Nudis, and my brother, cousin, and nephew share this name. After reviewing several records, I discovered that his name was actually "Newtie," after his sister’s husband Newtigate Folds. Too late for my brother.

I have been able to find many family members through indexed records, but I’ll never forget finding the ship record of my ancestor Isabella Peet Clayton. I had just been to the Albert Docks in Liverpool, England, and found out that she left for America through that same boat dock. It was so neat to read about her experience, and I’ll never forget the feeling I had that night. I’m so grateful indexers made it possible for me to make that connection with my ancestor.

My maternal grandmother searched her whole life for her husband’s (my grandfather’s) maternal grandfather. The baton was passed to me when she passed away a number of years ago. I searched in vain until Christmas Day 2015, when I opened FamilySearch.org and started looking on his line once again. To my astonishment, there was Daniel A. Isenhour, my great-great-grandfather! Finding him and this connection opened up many connections and opportunities for temple work. I realized that someone must have indexed a record that established the connection. Having seen firsthand the joy of finally finding this connection, I realized that I needed to become an indexer also that I might help others make these joyful connections in their families. I am so thankful to those who did this work that at times can almost seem thankless but a certain something just keeps them going as it does me. Thank you!

I was raised in Mesquite, Nevada, as a child. I had been doing indexing on the computer for the 1910 census records when Nevada came up for the first time. I had done lots of states back East, but very few in the West, so I was really excited. I was given one that said Nevada, Clark County. I looked for the city name, and guess what it was—Mesquite Precinct! I was elated. I started to index entries of Spragues, Abbotts, Leavitts, Poters, and then I came to Tobler—can you believe it? My own Grandpa and Grandma Tobler and three of their children, Deliah, Gurda, and Erlin. Grandpa John Alfred Tobler was 26 at the time of this census, and Grandma Delma Knight Tobler was 22. Erlin was 11 months old. That was so wonderful to me! My dad was born in 1912, so he wasn’t born yet. I felt so great. In all the times I have done this, what is the chance that I would have that opportunity to enter my own family? I felt like they were all around me, pleased with my efforts, and I cried. It was a very choice feeling that I will treasure forever. God is good to let that happen. He is there. I love this feeling. I know God is aware of the smallest, tiniest thing and can handle those small things just as majestically as the big. He does care for each blade of grass, why not me?

The family legend was that my great-uncle Frank had left Ohio to go the gold fields in Alaska to find his riches around the turn of the 20th century. My great-aunts always lamented that they did not know what happened to their brother. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father would look in telephone directories whenever they traveled to see if they could find him. I took up the challenge too but was never able to find anything until the indexers had done the World War I draft registrations and those records were put online. I found him there as Charles Frank. I then searched by that name and found him in a 1920 census from Oregon and a 1930 census in Utah. As more records were indexed, I found his death record in Salt Lake City, Utah. Now we know where he ended up thanks to all of the indexers who did those various records.

I sat with my grandmother before she died and recorded everything she remembered about her family. She had never known her birth father. Her mother and father did not stay together. Her mother married again and moved from Missouri to Texas, and my grandmother remained in Missouri and was raised by her grandparents. I knew her father’s name and had found a family that I believed could be him and his parents, but I had no documents to support the identification. I had searched for 20 years to find any record of marriage or divorce for her parents. One day, about two years ago, I opened her father’s details page and saw a record hint for the marriage. They had met in St. Louis but had gone to western Indiana for work. The marriage record was in eastern Illinois, across the border from the town listed on the record as the place of employment. The record listed the parents of the bride and groom, and I was able to verify that I had the correct man for my grandmother’s birth father. An indexing miracle!

The 1940 census that I assisted in indexing helped me find the middle names and number of marriages of my cousins. I discovered children not entered in the family Bible. These discoveries led me to do other research to find marriage and tombstone inscriptions that I had missed in 35 years of searching. The World War I and World War II draft registrations helped me get complete birth dates and names for my cousins, in-laws, and my own grandfather. Knowing their whole names helped me find other records and other relatives. These records have been invaluable to me. They are responsible for about 150 names I added to my family tree and completed data I needed to submit them for temple ordinances. I have shared the family group sheets and pedigree charts with nieces, nephews, and their children who have become interested in genealogy.

My indexing revealed a story about someone else’s life who is well known to all of us. In the fall of 2016 as I was indexing names from New York passenger ships’ manifests, a long list of passengers from Europe bound for New York revealed a "Prof. Henry Eyring, Mrs. Eyring, Master E. M. Eyring, and Master H. B. Eyring. I believe the date was approximately 1937. It appears to be before the birth of the younger brother, Harden Romney Eyring (1939), since he was not mentioned, and infants or small children were routinely included in these manifests, even if they were not named. This appears to have been while Prof. Eyring was on the faculty at Princeton University (contemporary with Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein) and shortly after he published his paper on absolute rate theory, which advanced science so dramatically in so many fields. I imagine that he was invited to speak overseas (he previously worked in a lab in Germany early in his career and was well respected internationally), and I guess this record I was indexing may have been his return home from such a meeting. I wonder if President Henry B. Eyring remembers that trip. I was thrilled to see this record and take a few minutes to contemplate the possible story behind this great man and this ocean voyage. It may also have taken place during a time when Atlantic Ocean voyages were being threatened by German U-boats.

My cousin had submitted our grandpa’s name for temple work several years ago, but recently I became concerned that perhaps we had him sealed to the wrong set of parents. Using the indexed records, and especially being able to see the images, I found his true parents and also siblings. What a blessing!

I had been told that my paternal grandmother had a sister who died as a baby, but not that she had been born before my grandmother. I kept looking for her in birth records in New York because the family had emigrated when my grandmother was six months old and there is a five-year gap between her and her next younger sister. One night I was working in our stake’s family history center. I was working on another line and getting nowhere. Feeling frustrated, I gathered my paperwork and got up to leave. As I did so, I heard several voices in my mind telling me that I needed to find Violet. Following the instruction (it was far too strong to call it a prompting), I sat back down and after logging back into the program, I entered Violet’s name in the search engine and came up with a single hit. She was listed on a 1901 British census record. She had lived and died before the family had ever emigrated. I now realize something that hadn’t occurred to me at the time; my grandmother’s family had accepted the gospel on the other side of the veil and needed that little baby to complete their family. I am so grateful for the indexing process and the ability it gives us to identify our ancestors so that they can partake of the blessings we have in this life.

A recent hint appeared in the hint section of my father-in-law’s person page in Family Tree. A record had been indexed, and the automatic review placed it on his page. It indicated that he had immigrated to Brazil at Rio de Janeiro in 1940. My wife was not aware of any such immigration. But the record was valid. It listed his parents along with the city of his United States residence. We did a search in Family Tree to see if there might be anything else to amply this find. Bang! We found a manifest of a ship that had docked in New York City a few weeks later. There were 25 names, and they were all young men in their early 20s. They had hometowns in Utah such as Salt Lake City, Eureka, Beaver, Midway, Brigham City, and so on. We learned that her father, who was serving a mission in South Africa, had been called back to the states due to the outbreak of World War II. This bit of personal history was not known by my wife. An indexer’s efforts had made this story known. What a find!

On FamilySearch.org, I came across the name of Christian Herbst, born in the 1500s in Italy. Our last name is Herbst also, and the name is quite unusual, so I was completely surprised, and I pondered and wondered how he could be related to us. My answer was powerful and instant. ‘I am the granddaddy of them all.’ So if he is our granddaddy, how are we connected? Soon after, while indexing, I came across the name Fred Herbst. He was a funeral director in Chicago many years ago. I still wondered how we are all related, but he also spoke to me, with the words ‘Here am I.’ I was able to take the information from the indexing sheet and trace him and his family back to Germany. We are still trying to connect these two families to ours, but we know that their temple work is done now, so maybe at some place or time we will be able to put the pieces together and get to know that ‘granddaddy’ of ours! Another coincidence happened that answered still more questions. How did the Herbst family in Italy get to Germany? That question was answered when one day we were watching a PBS special where they showed an early map of Europe. The southern part of Germany was once part of Italy, so that part of the puzzle came together for us. We are still trying to piece it all together, but without indexing, it never would have happened. We are thankful that we could be a part of this story through indexing!

I joined the LDS Church in 1979 and truly believed I was the only member in my family! I just learned a few days ago, I have three great-aunts on my dad’s mother’s side who joined the Church in 1832!! So I really do have early pioneer heritage in the Church! They were in Captain John Tidwell’s group heading west. Two were sisters, and the other was a cousin. One lived in a plural marriage. One of the husbands witnessed the murder of Joseph and Hyrum. All three couples were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple just before they were run out! My patriarchal blessing says my membership in the Church is due to righteous progenitors on the other side of the veil!! WOW!!! So true! The three aunts are Mary Caroline Allred, Nancy Weeks Allred, and Hannah Caroline Allred.

I always thought my grandfather’s brother Ikuji was married in Japan and then sent for his wife later to come to Hawaii. I had Ikuji’s wife’s name but no other information on their marriage. Because prefecture records are archived and no one in the prefecture office wants to dig for them, people requesting those records are told no records are available, which was the case with me. Imagine my surprise when I got a hint saying a marriage record was available for Ikuji. It turns out he was married in Hawaii! Because someone had indexed that marriage record, I now have the marriage date and his wife’s parents’ names, and I’m working on completing their ordinances. Many, many thanks to the indexer who indexed that record! Thanks to you I can seal Ikuji’s parents-in-law to his wife! A big hug to you!