Welcome to the Union Fort 3rd Ward Family History Blog!

Merlin and I thought it would be so fun to have a ward family history blog. We can submit stories, questions and links that might be helpful to others. We can share success stories.

I’ll start with a story about teaching the Family History Class in Sunday School this year.
When I began working on my families' genealogy, I didn't understand about sources. I never completed a research paper in high school or college. I hated trying to reduce the subject of my research down to one theme. This lazy attitude continued to be displayed in my genealogy research attempts. As I looked for my ancestors, I found several websites with downloadable files of my Ware and Radley ancestors. I was very happy with the already compiled family history data from distant family members. Why reinvent the wheel I thought. Who would say they were related to someone who was not their relative?

Sidney Wells, who is an actual true blue genealogist, signed me up for an eleven week genealogy research class. It was there I found out how important sources are.

So, now I'm teaching this Family History Sunday School class. There are seven lessons. And I'm trying to teach them the importance of sources. Many of the class are people whose ancestors have been members for generations. Others are like me, converts with a beautifully blank canvas on which they will paint their family histories. I used several true stories about sourcing throughout the class. One in particular is about my Aunti Do's brown paper bag. She cut open one of those large brown paper bags she got from the grocery store and wrote on the blank inside all of the genealogy she remembered about our family. I now have a copy of that brown paper bag.

Because of the brown paper bag, I found a death certificate. Information on the death certificate led me to some relatives not on Auntie Do's brown paper bag, and sources. So I am beginning to learn about sourcing. I used these examples to teach sourcing to my class. In the last class, I took them  from Auntie Do's brown paper bag to actual sources like the death certificate, and pages from the Federal Census to taking people to the temple by using real sources.

Then I mentioned to the class some GEDCOMs I previously downloaded for my Ware and Radley families. I said that they were sourced very well, so I wasn't going to go over them now, I'd wait til I found some of the folks who no one had found. My class stared at me with horror! There was an audible gasp from some. Then several of them said that I couldn't trust the sources listed in the GEDCOM! They were incredulous that I would accept these GEDCOMs. This was the most attention to my lessons I had ever had in these classes. All eyes were on me! I was ecstatic! They got it! They really got it! I finally mentioned that the sources were enumerated very well with name, place and actual text. So I felt that I could wait on these folks to prove the sources. Reluctantly they acquiesced.

I'm so happy that they got it. The FH Center has a saying. "Family History without sources is Mythology!" Sidney says that she has created a monster because now I'm crazy for sources.