'Great joy' in store in seeking one's family history
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
The 11th annual BYU Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy drew hundreds of enthusiasts to the campus March 13-14 for "how-to" sessions on beginning-to-advanced research. More than 100 sessions were presented on computer programs, research techniques, genealogical databases, digital photography and Internet research.
Susan Easton Black, professor of Church history and doctrine at BYU, gave the keynote opening address, describing herself in the topic of her presentation as "A Novice in a Computer World."
Her presentation is summarized on this page; reports of a few of the other sessions at the conference will be reported later in the Church News.
At age 13, Sister Black said, she embarked on a quest for "great joy," one of the promises in a patriarchal blessing she received at that age.
As promised in the blessing, she found it via genealogy. But it has been for her not just a destination, but a lifelong journey.
"So as a result [of the blessing], when I was 13 I said goodbye to my piano teacher," she said. She persuaded her father to buy her a long-carriage typewriter suitable for producing legal-size documents and enrolled in a typing class.
"Suddenly, I and technology united," she said. She persuaded her typing teacher to allow her, instead of doing the rote exercises for the class, to type the handwritten genealogical records her grandmother had accumulated. As she would type the records, her grandmother would relate stories of their ancestors.
"Nothing matched the joy of sitting with my grandmother and typing in what she had saved from years and years," Sister Black said. "As I did so, I began to notice that many of my ancestors had multiple baptism dates. Adding to that, it was amazing how many different times they had been born."
With the money saved from no longer taking piano lessons, her father allowed her to send away for certificates to verify and correct the information.
"These people had become the heroes and heroines in my life," she said of her ancestors. While still in her youth, with $5,000 provided by her father, she published her first book of family history, tracing one of her genealogical lines back to the 12th century. The book contained the certificates she had obtained so no one in her family would ever have to send for them again, she said.
"The book was published, and as far as I was concerned, for the rest of my life, 'great joy' was gone," she said.
She went on to a career in academia, eventually being tapped by then-BYU President Dallin H. Oaks as the sole female faculty member in the school's religion department – the only one in 150 years.
Later, Earl Olsen, then Assistant Church Historian, invited Church history scholars to come to a meeting. He wanted someone to compile a list of early Church members from the beginning of the Church in 1830 through Joseph Smith's time. Being the "new kid on the block" and the only one at a meeting not occupied with other major projects, she took on the challenge.
Later, she contacted Jim Rosenvall a developer of the WordCruncher software, who freely shared his time and expertise to help her digitize and format the voluminous information she was compiling.
"Now I have the system, I'm really going to go, and guess what's happening to me: I have great joy," she recalled. The result: 48,000 pages in 50 volumes listing the membership of the Church from 1830 to 1848.
Later, an interest in Church members who did not follow Brigham Young to the West prompted her to contact officials of the RLDS Church and offer to organize and compile seven volumes of the early membership of that church. The First Presidency of that church was so appreciative that they offered to baptize her into their church and then immediately ordain her an elder.
She responded by joking, "As good as that sounds, I'm actually holding out to be a goddess," an allusion to the LDS doctrine of exaltation deification.
Sister Black recounted meeting Harvey Black, whom she would later marry, united in part by their mutual and fervent interest in family history. Their union added to the "great joy" she had already received from her ancestral research.
She said that the innovation of the Infobases software made it possible for her to distribute her work widely to consumers of that database containing hundreds of works of gospel and Church history subjects.
"Why would I do this?" Sister Black asked
"It comes back to great joy," she said.
She then summarized doctrine revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith incident to the dedication of the Kirtland Temple in 1836 and later, regarding temple ordinances and covenants pursuant to salvation and exaltation.
"It's the covenant," she said. "You want the covenant for your kindred dead. My hope is that I made sure that everybody that's related to me received their covenants."
She asked her audience of family history enthusiasts, "What do I hope for all of you?"
Answering the question, she said, "My hope is that my efforts and now the efforts of my husband will make it possible for you not to have to do some of the original research." She spoke of their time spent at Church history sites in Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, Illinois and elsewhere acquiring the information needed for her publications.
"Let us suppose," she said, "that the patriarch wasn't just telling me I could find great joy, but let us suppose that great joy was already hidden for you there" in family history work.
"How long can I put off great joy?" she asked. "In my life, I've needed it on a daily basis."
