I have recently been rewriting my personal history that was originally written seven years ago. In the process I realized I had said very little about my seven siblings. I left home as an eighteen-year-old to work in another state and never did get back to live close to where my family lived. We saw each other briefly for a few hours every year or two as vacations or death in the family dictated. As I contemplated what I might say about them, many things entered my mind. I began to realize how important they had been to me as we grew up together.
Brothers and sisters are usually relatively close as children because they live together, eat together, sleep together, fight together, study together, play together, and hopefully they worship together. As they mature, their interests may separate them, and time and distance may weaken the strands of memories that bind. But there is something about family ties, such as those that siblings have, that prevents them from completely tossing aside those childhood affections forever. Over the years, things in common may eventually be few, but ties that remain are strong enough to bring them together in time of need and sorrow. Love has many faces and many degrees of emotion, and siblings can seldom say there are none, none at all. Though I left home as a very young man, I have never forgotten my memories nor my affections for those I grew up with—my siblings.
As we become involved in family history research, it seems that patriarchs and matriarchs have been central to our research, and we tie children in as they are discovered, but they are not usually central to our search attempts. Family history research, until just recently, has primarily been ancestrally and patriarchally oriented. We have been looking back generation after generation and trying to tie direct line families together. Once we feel comfortable that we have a father, a mother, and several children identified, we move on to the next generation.
Recently, the concept of descendancy research has taken center stage, and we have discovered what a boon to family history that has been. Two good brothers from our own Ogden center have played an important part in developing the concept of descendancy research: Brother Samuel Lower and Brother Ken Jones. Brother Jones recently added another dimension to the original concept—that is researching missing siblings. Brother Jones considered how unlikely it was that a couple in days past would not have children, and he came to one conclusion. Children, in times past, were the lifeblood of a family. The more children, the better because farms were manned by children. Prior to the industrial revolution (1800), agriculture was practically every family’s business, and family farms were the rule. Farming was hard work, and in some cases, survival was dependent on having enough children to man the farm.
Brother Jones decided to go back on his lines and find couples who apparently were childless. His more careful research often revealed children for those couples, children who somehow had been missed the first time around. Overall, he was able to find many children, and children who also had children, etc. He was submitting hundreds of names to the temple that would have been lost had he not gone back.
We all need to replicate Brother Jones’ research concept. We must have it in our minds to think: where there are couples, there must be children. After all, that was the Father’s plan. More than likely, we, too, will find children, precious children in God’s sight who have been left behind in our patriarchal approach to research.