Every genealogist knows about Family Search, the genealogy organization operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, or Mormons). Established in 1894, it is the largest genealogy organization in the world. Its Family Search website https://www.familysearch.org/en/ offers free access to its resources and services online, although it does require users to establish a free account. This site has generated a One World family tree, which currently includes 1.3 billion individuals. The website provides access to 5.7 billion digital images. This site does not allow individuals to create private family trees – any individuals you place on the tree become part of a tree that everyone has access to. I use the Family Search site for its access to records; I don’t use the tree function, because any damn fool can add stuff to the tree.
So why does the Mormon church emphasize genealogy?
One of the core tenets of the Mormon faith is that the dead can be baptized into the faith after their passing. Baptism of the dead evolved from the beliefs that baptism is necessary for salvation and that the family unit can continue to exist together beyond mortal life if all members are baptized.
Mormons trace their family trees to find the names of ancestors who died without learning about the restored Mormon Gospel so that these relatives from past generations can be baptized by proxy in the temple. For Latter-day Saints, genealogy is a way to save more souls and strengthen the eternal family unit.
In addition, Latter-Day Saints believe civil marriages are dissolved at death, but that a couple who has been sealed in a temple will be married beyond physical death and the resurrection if they remain faithful. This means that in the afterlife they and their family will be together forever. This belief is illustrated by the words of the marriage ceremony performed in the LDS Church's temples: the words "until death do us part" are replaced with "for time and all eternity".
Marriages can be sealed posthumously. Posthumous sealings are performed to eternally wed a living person and a deceased spouse (with a live church member standing as a proxy for the deceased), or, more commonly, to wed two deceased persons (with a living man and woman standing in as proxies). In either case, the couple must have been married while alive. This means that people who were married as non-Mormons or who were married before the Mormon Church existed (it was founded in 1830) can still have their marriages “sealed” so they can be with their descendants in the afterlife.
This seems unusual to non-Mormons, but it is very useful for everyone who makes use of the LDS website or archives in Salt Lake City.
The Mormon Church plays a significant role in my family history, although my direct ancestors were not Mormons. I’ll explain these connections in the next few pages:
John Workman (1789-1855) was born in Maryland in 1779, moved with his family to Kentucky in 1811, and then moved to Tennessee in 1840
He converted to the Mormon faith in Tennessee in 1840. This is how Thelma Anderson describes John’s conversion in her book The Workman Family History.
"John, having studied the Bible and classified its scriptures into subjects, had a very comprehensive understanding of the teachings of Christ. He tried to show the other members of the church the better understanding of the scriptures. This led to arguments and contention among them, bringing the hatred and envy of the members of the church upon John and his family. For this reason John left Carlisle [KY] and went back to Overton County, Tennessee. Because of the bitterness in the community towards them over religious disputes it was impossible for John to sell his fine holdings in Carlisle so he abandoned them. When I was in Carlisle, Kentucky, in 1932 I found that four of the best city lots were still deeded to John Workman. The only certificate of title the present occupants had was based on 'long continued, uninterrupted possession.' These holders were very much afraid that I was going to start action against them.
"Back in Overton County, Tenn., again, John bought much land and had slaves to work it. He laid his farm out in sections for the different kinds of farm crops; had his own grist mill, grocery store and flocks and herds. He attended but could not accept the popular interpretation so in due time he quit the church altogether. After that he carried on a distillery of whisky and brandy and got to drinking moderately himself.
"In 1839 two Mormon Elders came to Overton County, Tennessee. They had a hard time finding lodgings. They came to John Workman's door. As John had never turned a traveller from his door without food and rest these elders found a welcome in his home. The message they brought struck a familiar chord in the heart of John Workman. He brought out his compendium and found his classification of scriptures to be similar to the one the elders used. Their explanations were those he had tried to convey to the church members and for which they had cast him out and abused him and his family. On the 22 day of July 1840 John and his wife Lydia and several of his children were baptized by Abram Owen Smoot and Julian Moses and confirmed 30 July that year as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"This step increased the hatred and persecutions by the local church and community. In 1843 he abandoned his vast holdings in Tennessee and emigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he could associate with those who had the same religious convictions that he cherished. Here he bought a farm four miles east of Nauvoo where he lived most of the time. Two of his sons had previously located in the City of Nauvoo.”
Things didn’t go any better for John in Nauvoo than they did for other Saints.
“In the summer or 1845 John had harvested a good wheat crop and threshed some of it. One day in early evening he saw some of the farm homes of other Saints in flames. He knew at once that this was the work of mobs whose fury had raged unabated since the Nauvoo Charter had been repealed. He had a wagon there with boards across the running gears. John put what he could of the sacked wheat on this wagon and his family on top of the wheat and drove to Nauvoo for protection. The severe persecutions the saints suffered at this time proved too much for John's wife, Lydia, and she succumbed to the trials, dying in Nauvoo, 30 Sept. 1845, and was buried in the Nauvoo cemetery.
“John passed through the trials incident to the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo. This was the third time he had abandoned his earthly possessions for his spiritual convictions. He remained in the city of Nauvoo until the late spring of 1846 when he was driven into the wilderness with the Saints. He joined his son, Jacob L. at Mt. Pisgah, Iowa, where he had a temporary cabin. John remained there until 1851 when he emigrated to the Great Salt Lake. In Salt Lake he lived part of the time with his children and part of the time in the small home that Jacob L. had built for him on the lot Jacob had drawn at the time the city was laid out. John had left some of his family in Illinois, they having elected to stay there, but others had followed the course of the church and were with him in his devotion to the cause he had espoused. He labored with his own hands for a living and because of his beautiful penmanship was given the assignment of being scribe to the Church, spending most of his time transcribing patriarchal blessings and family histories. . . .”
John Workman’s son Jacob Lindsay Workman (my 1st cousin 5x removed) was to play a more significant role in the Mormon church in Utah. This is what I wrote about Jacob a couple of years ago:
In Nauvoo, Jacob Lindsay Workman was a member of The Seventy – a kind of priesthood of the LDS church. After the Saints left Nauvoo, church records show that he helped to build the temples at Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah. A set of books entitled Heartthrobs of the West (volumes I-XII) (that really is the title of the book), written by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, contains Jacob’s sad story during the trek to Utah. Members of his family got sick during this trek, so they stopped at the pioneer way station at Mt. Pisgah, Idaho. His son Samuel died there, and his wife Nancy was so ill that she died while Jacob was out looking for someone to help her. He wasn’t able to find anyone who was well enough to help, and when he returned from his fruitless mission he found that she had died while he was out. He did find someone to help bury her, and he stayed in Idaho with his six remaining children while everyone recuperated. It was almost two years before they reached Salt Lake City, as Jacob had to recover financially from his family’s illness and the death of his wife before they could move on.
Jefferson Hunt (1804-1879) was born in Kentucky in 1804 and converted to the Mormon faith in 1835. He moved to Nauvoo in 1839. He was a member of the Nauvoo Legion in Nauvoo, where he was also ordained into the priesthood, but he and his family moved to Iowa early in 1846 when the persecution of Mormons in Nauvoo intensified. While in Iowa, he volunteered to serve in the Mexican War as Captain of Company A of the Mormon Battalion. This Battalion (the only religion-based unit ever formed in the U.S. Military) was created at the request of President Polk; the Saints (as they called themselves) had been asking for government protection against the persecution they had suffered at the hands of local residents in Nauvoo, and the Mormon leaders believed that federal help would be forthcoming if the Saints aided the United States in its military effort against Mexico.
He left military service in 1847. Although he did not make the cut to appear in Heartthrobs of the West, he does merit a book all about him – Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion by Pauline Udall Smith. He also has an entry in the four-volume set Conquerors of the West by Florence Youngberg. After his service with the military, he went to California and settled the part of the state that became San Bernardino, serving in the first California legislature from 1853-1857. He is honored as the “Founder of San Bernardino.” He moved back to Utah, settling in Ogden Valley, where the town of Huntsville is named in his honor. He was elected to serve in the Utah Territorial Legislature in 1863.
A memorial to Jefferson Hunt was erected at his Idaho gravesite in 1950. In a speech given at this ceremony, one of his descendants, Jesse A. Udall, said this about Hunt’s conversion to the Mormon faith:
§ His wife, Celia, obtained a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel from Mormon elders. Jefferson, however, appeared not to be interested in the message and maintained an indifferent attitude toward the teachings that impressed his wife so much. In due course of time, with the consent of her husband, Celia applied for baptism and with the elders and a group of friends repaired to the river where the ceremony was performed while Jefferson took his yoke of oxen and went to the field to plow. The wife was naturally sorrowful because her husband would not go with her and continued in prayer in her heart that something might change his attitude. While they were assembled on the river bank, prior to the baptismal service, they saw a man running across his field swinging his hat and shouting, “hold on”. Jefferson had left his ox team standing in the field and with beaming face came to apply for baptism. When he arrived at the river he said, “I cannot let Celia go ahead of me.”
In 2018, I made a genealogy research trip that included spending a few days in Hancock County, the location of the Mormon settlement at Nauvoo. But I wasn’t there because of the Mormon settlement; I was there because direct ancestors in my father’s line had settled in Hancock County in 1838 and were living there in 1900, my target year for the research project I was working on. I found the Mormon fixation on genealogy very helpful to my family research. I was able to find not only information about my Mormon collateral ancestors, but the Mormon records also contained information about the “gentile” – non-Mormon – residents of Hancock County. A very pleasant woman who introduced herself to me as “Sister Gordon” gave me an orientation to the sources; she also gave me a thumb drive to use to download information, as they did not allow any external electronic devices to be used in their archives. In about 45 minutes I was able to download information about my direct ancestors in Hancock County, including legal descriptions of their land and plat maps that show the location of the land. These records are not online anywhere, not even on the FamilySearch website.
Here’s an example of what I found:
If you want genealogy records about Hancock County, Illinois, and Lee County, Iowa (across the Mississippi River) between 1839 and 1846, the Land and Records Office in Nauvoo is the best place to be. If you want 1838 or 1847, you’re out of luck. If you want neighboring Adams County or McDonough County, you’re also out of luck. Fortunately, I was interested in exactly the right location in precisely the right years, so this was a gold mine.
The LDS was the first place I visited online when I decided to find my relatives. We lived in DC when the Washington D.C. Temple opened. We had the tour with thousands of others. Then they pulled up all the carpet where the visitors had tread and replaced it with new carpet. Quite a place. Your ancestors arrived in Nauvoo right after Joseph Smith's death, I take it. Wild times in Nauvoo.