What Family History Is—and Is Not

Adapted from Redeeming the Dead, by Amy Harris, in the Maxwell Institute’s Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series

Prophets and apostles are clear about the ultimate goal of the Church’s genealogical efforts: to build one family tree where all people who can be identified are brought into one place. The project to preserve records and make them accessible will continue unabated for decades to come. Indeed, record preservation has become one of the central missions of FamilySearch, the Church’s family history arm. Besides the time and resources spent on temples, the Church’s funds support the annual RootsTech convention as well as the employees of FamilySearch, including hundreds of engineers and developers. In addition, thousands of volunteer hours are given each year by missionaries, ward and stake family history consultants, and volunteers of other faiths from around the world who index records and staff local FamilySearch Centers.

The early twentieth-century Church’s reason for being involved in family history was not like other genealogical entities’ commercial motivations. Over the century, the combination of technology and shifting ideas about global reach meant the Church’s involvement in genealogy started to overlap with technological and commercial aspects. The difficulty Church members now face is using those tools while simultaneously holding on to the relational motivations embedded in the Doctrine and Covenants and subsequent teachings. Converts, like the early Saints, can work from family knowledge and records, but for those from places with few available records or who have been in the Church for more than a generation or two, the notion of genealogical research to discover new family members can be daunting.

The current culmination of that combined effort, FamilySearch’s FamilyTree, is materially supported by the Church, with content entirely crowd-sourced by users (from all backgrounds and faiths). There is little vetting or supervision beyond interaction with other users. In some ways, this makes family history an individual responsibility. If FamilySearch’s FamilyTree represents the current status of a book worthy of all acceptation, then it is only as good as individual users’ contributions. That seems perfectly congruent with how early Saints saw the work of redemption for the dead: a collective enterprise inscribed in records and built on relationships. The sealing keys undergird both their and our efforts, the only difference being our use of technology and research to discover ancestors we never knew, while most early Saints were performing proxy work on behalf of those they knew. FamilySearch policies also echo nineteenth-century adoption sealings’ broad definition of family ties because users of FamilyTree can enter family information that reflects their lived experience over pre-established categories. Though sealing is not allowed, people can be linked to same-sex parents. They can also be linked to biological, foster, step-, and adoptive kin. Additional connections such as friends, co-workers, neighbors, and any variety of other relationships can also be entered. Members of the Church are also encouraged not to limit themselves to direct ancestors but to trace ancestral siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

We are still in the unfolding of the revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, as emphasized in twenty-first century leaders’ emphasis on gathering Israel on both sides of the veil. Redemption for the dead taps into the deepest purposes of creation and the Atonement. It encompasses individuals’ development, the purpose of existence, and the grand scope of divinity. Research, just like technology, is simply a tool for building relationships. Section 84:31 describes the sons of Aaron and Moses making a new offering. That echoes the language from section 128 which calls on Latter-day Saints to “offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness . . . a book containing the records of our dead (verse 24).” Given that everyone alive today is descended from common ancestors much closer to us than Aaron or Moses, this passage applies to everyone. Our effort to seek after the dead, to see them as equal candidates for salvation, is our new offering. We do this in remembrance and token of our faith in Christ.

Restoration scripture’s reference to Malachi’s prophecy raises intriguing ideas about the relationship between present and past generations. Doctrine and Covenants 2 highlights that children—the latter-day or modern Saints—have a role in fulfilling the prophecy that was never described in earlier versions. The “children” are the central actors; they turn their hearts to their ancestors. This era’s culmination of former revelations supplemented with things never before revealed means we in this era have new and particular responsibilities to those who came before us. This is the work for today: to let doctrines of universal application of the Atonement, not contemporary genealogical trends, be the engine behind the work.

As Joseph’s ideas about human relationships expanded through revelatory experiences, he was drawn to questions connected to record-keeping as a vehicle for encompassing all of humanity into relationships that stretch across space and time. Inspired by such grand ideas, current genealogical practices could make these same cosmic and eternal connections while simultaneously making them personal and immediate. Such an approach to genealogy helps us avoid some of the pitfalls in contemporary western genealogical practices. Consumerist approaches to genealogy, something stretching back centuries, but of an unprecedented availability in the twenty-first century, can strip family history of its ability to draw people together. By consumerist, I mean the production and purchase of family arms, pedigrees, genealogies, and accounts of famous ancestors in order to claim social status or to consume merely as entertainment. Such interests alone lack the power to transform lives and turn hearts. Centuries of genealogical work prove that “doing genealogy” is no protector against nationalist, racist, classist, or sexist ways of excluding one another. Instead, family history work inspired by revelations about redeeming the dead and turning our hearts calls us to a holier way. It calls all of us to participate with our family, our friends (as early Saints consistently called those for whom they did baptisms), and with our divine parents in shared, joyous work.

That joy and its attendant heart-turning can happen over and over. For example, Lucia DiOrio Focareto’s (1855-1935) proxy baptism was performed in 2019.¹ That ritual event is only required once by one family member. But everyone, every family member, every connection can join in heart-turning to her. Each time someone uses FamilySearch Family Tree to see Lucia’s birth and marriage information in Italy and her death in Cleveland, Ohio, they can choose to turn their heart with shared covenants and hope. Each time someone looks at the 1900 or 1910 Unites States census and learns that of Lucia’s eleven children, only five survived childhood, can mourn with Lucia for her losses. They can also rejoice with her that those children, despite many of them being unidentifiable in the records, have been accounted for and their salvation provided for since before the world was. Their proxy work might have to wait, but redemptive relationships need not.

What we encounter when we turn our hearts and minds to family history will often challenge both our moral imagination and our charity. In Wilford Woodruff’s words, “no doubt when we trace our ancestors back, we will find that they trod in muddy places. We shall find that there was wickedness among them. There can be little doubt about this, because they were human beings; they were exposed to temptation and to sin.” Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy, Christ came to preach to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance, to set at liberty them that are bruised (Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1). Any sustained encounter with one’s family history will bring an encounter with the poor, the dispossessed, the captive, the brokenhearted, and the bruised, and an encounter with those who trod in muddy places. Redemption for the dead is not limited to baptism for those who had never been baptized, it is also about recognizing that the scope of Christ’s atonement reaches all sorrows, provides healing and deliverance for all wounds, past and present. Engaging in this work makes us witnesses and participants. Such engagement puts us in a place where we have to reckon with the dead and their actions that have rippled down to us. And we must consider what will ripple forward from our actions. Have we fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, taken in the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and reached out to the imprisoned? (Matt. 25:35–40) Or have we “polluted [our] inheritance” through our “jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires”? (D&C 101:6.) The atonement covers oppressed and oppressor, as the Anti-Nephi-Lehites learned (Alma 24:10–18). They were unshakably grateful for God’s mercy and acknowledged He extended that mercy because “he loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children.” That love stretches to before the beginning and expands “unto future generations” (Alma 24:14).

Amy Harris is a professor of history at Brigham Young University and an accredited genealogist. A proud native of Ogden, Utah, she currently serves as the coordinator of the Family History Bachelor’s Program at BYU.

Art by Leslie Graff.

1. Lucia di Orio (KZN7-189), FamilySearch Family Tree.