Alison Shaw Knudsen had been looking for her father’s great-grandmother for many years. In fact, many people had tried for more than 40 years to find her. Her father had spent his entire adult life searching, without success. It seemed like a lost cause.Alison felt a very strong prompting to try again to find her great-great-grandmother. She and her husband began their search with a prayer. They searched again through all their family history books, looking for a clue. Finally, they turned to Ancestry.com.
“Ancestry.com gave us a massive list of possibilities,” said Alison. “For some reason, I was prompted to click on one amongst hundreds of options—and there she was! We found this great-great-grandmother in an English workhouse, at the bottom of a census record. We also found her father and mother on this record. The Spirit was electrifying at that moment in the room. No words can describe our joy at making this connection.”
The Knudsens, of British Columbia, Canada, live a day’s journey from the closest temple. As they made the long trip to perform temple ordinances for this beloved, newly-found grandmother, everything seemed to go wrong, and they nearly missed the opportunity. Upon arrival at the temple, they discovered that the temple office had misplaced this grandmother’s name card, and office staff couldn’t find it anywhere.
“The temple workers told me to get ready for the session and use a temple name instead. My heart was broken, as I felt this grandmother there, wanting her work to be done. Just as I was going to get a new name, a temple worker came rushing in to give me her name. They had found her card!”
Alison had the privilege of performing her great-great-grandmother’s endowment and sealing to her parents and children. “I felt her spirit finally happy. She had lived a life of poverty and abuse with her family in an English workhouse. But in the temple, I felt generations of our family present, now all eternally connected.”
Latter-day Saints now receive free subscriptions to FamilySearch partner websites, such as Ancestry.com. Partner websites provide access to 3.5 times the records, provide deeper and broader research opportunities, and combine the unique assets of each partner to best benefit patrons. Get your free accounts at FamilySearch.org/partneraccess.
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