Spiritual Thoughts and Genealogy

Geneaology & Temple Work – Random Notes of My Thoughts

Temple Work & Genealogy

  • In my patriarchal blessing talks about how I would feel the great spirit of Elijah; I thought it was a mistake until now.
  • About 6 months ago I started feeling very strong I should get into genealogy and temple work.  I inherited about 8 binders of genealogy that my grandmother worked on while she was alive until she passed away in 1994.
  • I never understood ‘hearts of the children to fathers, fathers to the children else earth will be utterly wasted at his coming’ – now I do.  For me it is no coincidence that the Lord has such a strong call for missionary and temple/genealogy work lately.  Satan’s armies are growing but so is Christ’s army to combat evil.  Our ancestors need us go to progress, they don’t call it spirit ‘prison’ for nothing; they need to be freed.  Once freed they can help us progress on Earth and help us through difficult times in the future else I will be wasted w/o their help.

Non-Members Ancestry

Hawkins House Fire – Eseck Hawkins – 5th Great Grandfather – 1852

I found this family on a census where my 4th great grandfather, William Fisk, was listed; above him was the father, Eseck, who before we did not know was his father; right below on the census page was Freeman Fisk who married William and her family.  Below is an excerpt of an event relating to the family in a county history book.  From this we found death dates of Eseck’s wife and his 6 year old son.

“A most melancholy accident occurred in Dickinson, on the 3rd of Sept 1852, in which the dwelling of Mr. Eseck Hawkins was burned and his wife and a son of six years of age, perished in the flames.  Most of the family lodged in the chamber, except the parents, who on discovering the house to be on fire, made vigorous efforts to rescue their children from the devouring element, and in this Mrs. H. perished.  The father rushed into the room where his children were sleeping, and succeeded in rescuing all but one, which he found it beyond his power to save.  The charred remains of the mother and son were collected, and interred in the same coffin.  The funeral was attended by thousands of sympathizing friends and citizens, and the melancholy disaster spread a gloom over the surrounding community.”

We did all their temple work, and especially at the sealing ordinances the spirit was very strong.   I felt strong that they have been waiting a long time to be reunited.

Henry Koch – 1st great grand uncle – b)1890 in Germany

Flora Mcgaffigan who is 2nd great grandmother ran away from a bad home (living with an evil aunt) at age 10 with her brother Joseph (featured photo).  They ended up in a catholic school and ran away from that at age 16.  Joseph married Esther Koch whose father was Henry Koch – They were Russian who emigrated from Germany to Fort Morgan CO and he had 7 girls who worked hard in the fields every day.  My father (who speaks Russian) met a man at temple square who was from Ft. Morgan (very small, about double the size of delta utah); he had stunning blue eyes, asked him a question he didn’t remember then turned around and he was gone.  He found him the same week in genealogy records.  He was the first person we found a few months ago and first person I went through and did all temple work from baptism to sealings.

Pioneer Ancestry

I found out on accident – Rueben Miller (4th great grandfather dad’s side) & Elias Blackburn (4th great grandfather on mother’s side) traveled together in the same company across the plains. I found this out through both of their journals and one of them has a ledger of the company and all families in that company and I noticed both names are there.

Nauvoo Legacy

  • 23 relatives that we know of that lived in Nauvoo – 4-5 died there.
  • One was a bodyguard to Joseph Smith; he was the only child of his family who did not join the RLDS church because of money they loaned to Joseph.
  • One wrote about how soldiers dragged oxen from temple for target practice and chased him with bayonet when age 10, could not leave Nauvoo because no father and poor.
  • One who was a wealthy German Jew gave everything to join the Saints, have his patriarchal blessing from Hyrum Young who died in winter quarters;
  • I have found 5 so far that are mentioned in D&C by accident, I was reading, looked at the name, then did some research and found out they were my ancestors.
  • Our son who is 8 asked where they were by name when we went to cemetery in Nauvoo just by his memory.  That was a neat experience.

Conclusion

  • Get to know them!  Find their photos, read their stories, learn about them from records.
  • The Lord will help us!
  • Set aside time for it or it won’t happen.
  • “If you bring even one soul to Christ”   On my wife’s side worked for over 10 hours just to find one couple but it was worth it – I felt prompted to order a death certificate from CA even though chances it was her was slim – then we waited for several weeks to get.  On my side I have been more lucky – so far have 8,273 people indexed, last night added the 600th card to be printed to do temple work since we started.  Many times that I have found someone or did temple work for them I felt that they were waiting and excited for it.
  • This is real!  It needs to be done!  Don’t delay!  They are waiting for us!

 

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