Take 15 Minutes for Family History with The Family History Guide

http://thefhguide.com/

Quoting from a recent blog post from The Family History Guide:

One of the most common reasons people use for not getting involved in family history is, “I don’t have the time.” Yet if you ask busy people if they could spare 15 minutes a day—or every other day—for something very important, chances are they’d say yes. That’s where the “15 Minutes” approach can be helpful. We recently added a “15 Minutes” button on the Home page of The Family History Guide.

The button is shown above in the screenshot from The Family History Guide homepage. The post goes on to explain how this 15 Minute Button works:

• The Quick Tour button shows a 6-minute video about the features of The Family History Guide.
• The Get Started button takes you to the Get Started (Quick Start) page, where you can review family history or computer basics, or
• The 15 Minutes button takes you to a newly revised “More Things to Do” page. This page is geared towards doing family history tasks and activities in short spurts, which may be ideal for young families and others who have busy schedules.

There are many tasks on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree that can be accomplished in 15 minutes a day. For example, it would take less than 15 minutes to upload a couple of photo to the Memories section and tag the people. It would also take much less than 15 minutes to add one or two Record Hints and check to make sure they apply. Instead of spending hours with social media, perhaps you could spend a few minutes helping your deceased ancestors.

Let's Eliminate Noise in the FamilySearch Family Tree

Noise in the context of transferring information is any type of disruption that interferes with the transmission or interpretation of information from the sender to the receiver. In our case, the FamilySearch.org Family Tree is the sender and we are the receivers. The "noise" is the disruptive information that is intentionally or negligently present in the Family Tree that disrupts our using the information for the purpose for which it was intended. Do I need to give some examples? How about this for noise:

Granted, not all of those 52 changes to only 10 people were noise, but 21 of those changes were to one person.

By the way, the list of changes goes on and on for Francis Cooke. This is definitely noise. Can FamilySearch do anything to cut down on the noise level in the Family Tree?

Over the past few years, as the Family Tree program has developed, many of the underlying issues with the information inherited from over a hundred years of genealogical submissions to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been "cleaned up." On its own, this process of standardizing entries and correcting errors has eliminated a great deal of the confusion and noise present in the program, but in some limited areas, such as the Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke, the noise level is still deafening. Here is what is happening.

Over the past hundred years or so, people both in and out of the Church have been accumulating their family history mostly in the form of paper records and more recently in the ancient Personal Ancestral File program. These records are like a huge reservoir of "noise." Very few of these records were accurately recorded or supported by source citations because that was not a priority at the time they were created. The dam holding back this huge reservoir of records broke when FamilySearch instigated (introduced) new.FamilySearch.org releasing a flood of informational noise. FamilySearch contributed to the flood when it dumped in all the previously submitted records including millions of duplicate records. During the time new.FamilySearch.org was in use, the flood increased exponentially. The new.FamilySearch.org program actually encouraged adding in more unsupported information and additional duplicates.

When the FamilySearch.org Family Tree was introduced, the flood of noise was rampaging through the genealogical community augmented by millions of individual family trees on other online genealogical database programs. Slowly, as the years passed, the flood subsided. FamilySearch began to get control over the flow of information into the Family Tree and the users began to provide sources and remove duplicates. Meanwhile, like a lone voice drowned in the flood, I have been writing, teaching, presenting and working away trying to persuade people to get rid of the last vestiges of the flood of noise in the Family Tree. Actually, there are a lot of people out there who are aware of the problem and making tremendous attempts to stem the flood.

How do we stop the flood of noise?

I have an idea. We need to form Family Tree Noise Abatement Groups (aka vigilantes) who can join together in groups, such as the descendants of Francis Cooke and talk to each other about maintaining the integrity of the Family Tree one person at a time. We can agree to look at the target person every day (or frequently) and send messages about maintaining the integrity of the Family Tree to anyone who makes an unsupported change. We have such an informal group targeting others in my family line and this has been successful in almost completely eliminating the noise and changes.

I would suggest that we could use Facebook to create a memorial page for each of these target individuals and use the page to exchange information about the ancestor that needs to be corrected. We could also refer those making changes to the discussion on the page and send them a standard message. Here is an example of one of the standard messages I send to everyone making changes to my ancestor William Tanner.

We certainly appreciate your interest in the Tanner family. However, we notice that your changes were made without reading the existing documentation, sources, and memories. We also notice that your changes were not supported by any contemporary sources. Please take the time to carefully consider all the information that is already available on the Family Tree before making any changes. The Ancestral File is not a source. It is a compilation of user submitted pedigrees.  James Tanner genealogyarizona@gmail.com

Extensive research into North Kingstown probate and other files has shown that the the father of Francis Tanner MTC6-SWW and his brothers, Nathan Tanner LFY7-PVT, and Benjamin Tanner M2G7-SMB whose name was William Tanner, had a wife named Elizabeth. He could not have been the William Tanner who was born in 1657. So far, we have counted at least 12 possible William Tanners in Rhode Island at that time and research is continuing to Identify the one who is the father of Francis Tanner MTC6-SWW, Nathan Tanner LFY7-PVT and Benjamin Tanner M2G7-SMB. Please feel free to add a source record supporting any additions you make to the Tanner Family. Also, the records show that a “William Tanner” married Elizabeth Colgrove in 1723, long after both Francis and Nathan were born. Perhaps, you could take the time to the read the extensive documentation and Memories attached to Francis Tanner before making any changes. Please be aware that the Tanner books are highly inaccurate and are not at all supported by the documentary evidence. Please take time to read the sources and the attached Memory documents. 

Doing this would go a long way to eliminating the noise and making things a lot more pleasant on the Family Tree. Who wants to start?

Thoughts on Changes and their impact on Family History

A number of major and minor changes have been announced in the last two sessions of the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of these changes will directly or indirectly affect those members who are interested in pursuing family history activities. Teaching genealogy in the Church has a long, although somewhat inconsistent history. The earliest formal attempt to teach members that I can find is this set of lessons first published some time before 1915. Here is a screenshot of the third edition cover.

https://archive.org/details/lessonsingenealo00gene/page/n1

The Genealogical Society of Utah was established in 1894 and continued to be the main agent of the Church for promoting genealogical research to the present. Currently, it is doing business as FamilySearch. Piecing out this history is quite difficult. The best reference is the following book published back in 1995.

Allen, James B, Jessie L Embry, and Kahlile B Mehr. Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894-1994. Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, Brigham Young University, 1995.

There are still copies of this book available on Amazon.com although they are becoming more expensive to acquire. There is a Kindle book edition that is reasonably priced.

Over the years, there have been times when teaching genealogical skills were promoted more by the Church than other times. At times, formal classes for both adults and children were implemented and then abandoned subsequently over the years there is quite a legacy of family history manuals and publications both by individuals sponsored by the Church and by those who published independently. I have acquired quite a library of these old manuals.

That brings us to the most recent practices. For many years, the leaders of the Wards and Stakes of the Church have been encouraged to call "Family History Consultants." During that same time, there has been a succession of supporting materials including manuals, CDs and DVDs. The support usually focused on holding a "Family History Class" during the Sunday School hour of the three-hour block of meetings on Sunday. Dating back to about 1962, the Church has been implementing "Family History Centers" around the world. The first of these was started at Brigham Young University inside the main Harold B. Lee Library on the Brigham Young University Campus. There are now more than 5000 of these Centers around the world. More recently, a few of the Family History Centers and Libraries have been augmented by adding "Family Discovery Centers."

The commitment of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to family history and genealogy is based on revealed scriptures. See the following:

• Family History
• Temples
• Baptisms for the Dead

As I have written several times previously, during our travels around the United States and Canada and while working at the Mesa FamilySearch Library and the BYU Family History Library, we have found that many, if not most, of the people, called as Family History Consultants or Temple and Family History Consultants are given very little, if any, training and about the same level of support. There are always notable exceptions, by and large even if members of a ward or stake are somewhat involved in family history, they are not aware of the Temple and Family History Consultants. I have very recently observed individuals being presented for sustaining vote as Temple and Family History Consultants when the person doing the sustaining did not even recognize the correct name of the calling. 

What will change from now until the beginning of 2019 when most of the recent changes go into effect? 

From the standpoint of the Temple and Family History Consultants who have relied on contact with the members during Sunday School, that contact will likely be curtailed. In fact, the instructions specifically indicate that Temple and Family History classes or meetings will not occur during the now two-hour block of meetings. Quoting from the enclosure to the First Presidency letter dated October 6, 2018:

Other courses, such as those for strengthening marriage and family, temple preparation, missionary preparation, and family history, will not be held during the second hour. However, at the bishop’s discretion and based on local needs, these courses may be taught at other times for individuals, families, or groups.

Does this change the present policies and instructions to Temple and Family History Consultants? No.

Here is a quote from Learn How to Help Others from the training for Temple and Family History Consultants on FamilySearch.org:

As a temple and family history consultant, you help individuals increase their love of family and build connections to their ancestors and our Heavenly Father through personalized family history experiences.

This is best accomplished by working with someone in their own home or as an alternative in a local Family History Center. We do this by talking to individuals and asking them if we can help them find names from their own families to take to the temples.

What about the Stake and Ward Temple and Family History Consultants? Well, there have also been a few changes in the Elders Quorum since the Elders Quorum was combined with the High Priests Group. The responsibility for Temple and Family History and Missionary Work on the Ward level has changed. The Bishop still has overall responsibility, but the Elders Quorum President and his counselors may be given those responsibilities.

Although there have been scheduling and organizational changes, the basic responsibilities of Temple and Family History Consultants and individual members have not changed. I will still be working to help people find their ancestors individually or when asked, in classes, webinars, seminars, and conferences. 

Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

Years ago when we were working in the Mesa, Arizona Temple, a man came in pulling a large rolling briefcase like the kind we used to haul our trial exhibits to court. He opened the briefcase and we could see that it was almost entirely filled with thousands of printed Temple Ordinance Cards. In short, he had reserved and printed thousands of cards. This is what reminded me of what my grandmother used to say about not biting off more than I could chew.

Temple work is not a competition sport. You do not get bonus points for having a huge number of names reserved. The idea is to do the Temple work, not collect the cards. Of course, when I bring up this subject, there is always someone who points out that they are supplying their family or their Ward or even their entire Stake with names. But, the counsel of our leaders is very clear: we are to do our own family names. Yes, we can share them with family members, but that does not relieve family members from helping with the research or participating in family history in ways that they are able.

What is a reasonable number of names that I should have on reserve? Do I need to quit doing research when I have "enough" names? Should I be letting Ward and Stake members help me?

The answer to each of those questions is highly personal. What is a realistic estimate of the number of times you will be able to attend the Temple? In my case, I have a number of grandchildren who are able to go to the Temples near them and do baptisms for the dead. I am glad to be able to share my names with them.

When I find more names of ancestors and relatives than I can reasonably do, I begin unreserving them and letting my larger family do the work. Meanwhile, I keep an "Unreserved" list and if I need a few more names, I can see if anyone has done the work or reserved any of the names I have on my list. I also keep doing research to add more names.

This is an ongoing work, but it is not fair to other family members or to the people waiting in the Spirit World just so you can have a pile of names. Use moderation in all things.

Still Waiting for the Golden Years: Surviving Dementia: Part One

From what was possibly the first indication of cognitive disability until he died from what was most likely Alzheimer's disease, my father lived almost 16 years. In an article published by The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) entitled, "Survival of people with clinical diagnosis of dementia in primary care: cohort study" the findings of the study were summarized as follows:

The matched comparison group contained 112 645 people aged 60 years and over without dementia, with 432 307 person years of follow-up. This group was younger (mean age 72.2 (SD 8.6) years) and consequently had a longer median follow-up time (3.1 (interquartile range 1.4-5.6) years) than did people with dementia (1.3 (0.5-2.7) years). In the dementia group, 41.6% (n=9372) had died compared with 17.5% (n=19 713) in the non-dementia group. More than a quarter of people with dementia transferred out of the practices (27.5%; n=6195) compared with 10.2% (n=11 490) of people without dementia. 

The median survival of people with a diagnosis of dementia was associated with age at first recorded diagnosis. The median survival for people aged 60-69 years at diagnosis was 6.7 (interquartile range 3.1-10.8) years, falling to 1.9 (0.7-3.6) years in those aged 90 years and over (fig 2⇓). The five year survival ranged from just over 50% in 60-69 year olds to 25% in 80-89 years olds.

In short, the study concludes, that "people with dementia have a lower life expectancy than do people without dementia" and "mortality rates are more than three times higher in people with dementia than in those without dementia in the first year after diagnosis."

When we think of dementia, we think of the terrible loss of productive life experiences, but there is another, just as serious, loss from dementia, that is the suffering and loss of productive life experiences on the part of the family members and others associated with the impaired individuals.

There are many progressive diseases such as cancer that rob individuals of life, but dementia in all its forms robs the affected person of life long before they die physically. In my father's case (and my mother's also) as the disease progressed, it was like watching the person disappear in stages. Finally, all that was left was the shell of a body. During the entire time of their illness, my parents were blessed with extraordinary care. But despite the high level of both medical and personal care, the inexorable progress of the disease resulted in an almost constantly worsening tragedy.

There are different types of dementia. Here is a list of the commonly accepted types. For a short explanation of each type see "What is dementia (neurocognitive disorder)."

• Alzheimer's disease
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
• Dementia with Lewy bodies
• Frontotemporal dementia
• Parkinson's disease
• Huntington's disease
• Mixed dementia
• Normal pressure hydrocephalus
• Vascular dementia
• Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome

Alzheimer's disease is the most common and affects from 60 to 80 percent of all of the people who have dementia. However, since there is no reliable diagnostic method for determining whether or not a person has Alzheimer's before the person dies, the number of actual cases is just an estimate. Another factor that affects the reported incidence of the disease is the fact that some people can have the brain changes presently associated with Alzheimer's and not exhibit any symptoms. Accurate figures would require a specific autopsy on everyone who died. 

Technically, my father was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's and my mother was diagnosed as having Dementia with Lewy bodies, but neither of these diagnoses was confirmed by an autopsy. 

My father was an attorney who graduated from Harvard University Law School. He practiced law in Arizona for almost 50 years. The earliest account of a problem with my father's cognitive ability was about his getting lost while driving. However, this was not at all that unusual, we had been lost a number times on trips. Having now lived in the East for almost a year, I can certainly related to getting lost while driving even with GPS. I am hoping this is not a symptom of dementia. However, as the disease progressed, we started to see personality changes and mild memory loss. During the entire course of the disease, he never admitted to having a problem and became belligerent if the subject was brought up. 

What can you do to minimize the impact of dementia for yourself or for those around you? Unfortunately, if the person suffering from dementia denies the problem, there may be little you can accomplish. But if you have a history of dementia in your family or even if you don't there are quite a few things that you can do that will lessen the impact on you and your family. This series will talk about the ways you can prepare for old age, regardless of the onset of dementia or not but the focus will be on the effects of cognitive disabilities from my own experiences both as an attorney who was actively involved in the issues of old age disability and from our family's experience. 

A Family History Mission: Interesting and Strange Documents: Part 1

Mouse chewed document

No. 85

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

Thanks to a comment from a reader, I am going to show some of the interesting and somewhat strange documents we have seen during our time digitizing documents at the Maryland State Archives. The first one above is a mouse (or other rodents) chewed document that we ran across recently. Not that I find all these documents, we are currently down one pair of Senior Missionaries, but we have four cameras and a lot of local volunteers preparing and digitizing the documents. Some of these images were made by other missionaries. When we find an interesting, unusual, or strange document, we usually take a photo and many times share the photos with the other Senior Missionaries. 

One of the first challenges in preparing the documents for digitization was reading the handwriting. The Maryland State Archives has requested that we provide a preliminary index of the records and that includes the primary person or people named in the record and the date of the court filing and some information about the type of record. The documents also need to be unfolded. Most of these documents have never been touched since they were filed in the Maryland State Orphans Court going back into the early 1800s. Here is an example of some of the handwriting challenges. Of course, after almost a year, for me, this looks pretty simple to read. 

But here is a challenging document:

Some of the time, we need to confer with the other missionaries or look up possible names online to see if we can make sense of the documents. In this case, the paper is actually blue. 

Here is another type of challenge. The long document. We can't imagine why they did this. 

Because these are court documents, many times they needed an official seal. This practice has mostly disappeared, but in the absence of a metal seal, the clerks of the Court got inventive. Here are some examples of seals. 

This document is also unreadable, shows a pedigree, and comes from somewhere in Europe. 

This is a Notary Seal. We have been doing probate files and before about 1900 there are no notaries the documents were filed under oath and had a certification by the Clerk of the Court. 

There are a lot more interesting documents and I will keep posting them from time to time. 

Still Waiting for the Golden Years: Dementia and Alzheimer's

First a few definitions. Dementia is the umbrella term for any chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning serious enough to interfere with daily life. Historically, it was often referred to as senility or mania and was considered to be a form of insanity. It was also called softening of the brain. Alzheimer's is a particular form of dementia. There are many forms or manifestations of dementia in addition to Alzheimer's. However, Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia and accounts for 60 percent to 80 percent of dementia cases.

Because dementia is a progressive disease and worsens over time, measuring the number of people who have the disease is nearly impossible but estimates range as high as 50 million people with about 10 million new cases every year. Here are some facts from the Alzheimer's Association website:

• Alzheimer's is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States
• 16.1 million Americans provide unpaid care for people with dementia
• Between 2000 and 2015, deaths from heart disease had decreased by 11% while deaths from Alzheimer's have increased by 123%

I have had a very long and very involved experience both personally and professionally with dementia. Both my parents died of dementia-related disease and my wife's mother also died of dementia. I also worked as an attorney investigating and dealing with the issues associated with clients and potential clients with dementia-related problems including people who were the victims of exploitation and adult abuse. I spent about 15 years working directly with people with dementia and to become knowledgeable, I spent a considerable amount of time researching and studying all of the aspects of the diseases that fall into the category of dementia. 

The demographics of genealogists puts us squarely in the category of higher risk for dementia-related issues. I am certain that many of us have an unresolved, background concern that we may be next in succumbing to the disease.

Unfortunately, even though more than 25 years have passed since I first started to become acquainted with dementia, not a lot of progress has been made in curing the disease if it really is a disease that can be cured. Alzheimer's, for example, can only accurately be diagnosed after a person has died. 

One of the earliest signs of dementia is short-term memory loss. I have observed a marked decline in people's ability to operate a computer and I have subsequently seen that decline evolve into the full-blown symptoms of Alzheimer's. Using a computer with a window or graphical user interface requires multiple short-term related activities from remembering passwords to remembering where items are located when covered by open windows. Unfortunately, I also run into dementia-related symptoms when I am helping people work on a family tree due to the requirement that the person be able to remember information as they move through adding or correcting entries. I also suspect dementia-related issues when I see people add or correct the same information over and over again. 

All of these computer and genealogy related issues fall directly into the 10 categories of signs and symptoms listed by the Alzheimer's Association. I just see these symptoms more frequently because I am working with people all the time and helping them with their genealogical activities. 

From my own personal standpoint and because of my long experience with the progression of the disease, I am very sensitive to small changes in cognitive ability. Unfortunately, I can usually detect that person has a problem with dementia within a few minutes of talking to them or helping them with computer-related activities. I never say anything to the person or their family members unless specifically asked to make an evaluation. 

As an attorney, I have further observed that some of the side effects of dementia on family members and their relationships can suffer almost as much damage as the disease itself.