I was assigned to speak in the Plano
7th ward back in January. It was my very first talk outside my own ward,
in my capacity as a high councilor. I prepared ahead of time and had
about 35 minutes worth of material. Well, obviously that was too much,
but I enjoyed writing about it.
When I arrived Bishop Schroeder came up to me and told me he had
arranged for a youth speaker and one other adult speaker, as well as a musical
number. However, all those had cancelled. He advised me to speak
for as long as I wanted and he would take up the rest of the time.
I smiled and told him not worry. I had enough material to
take up all the time. So I spoke for 35 minutes, or perhaps a little
longer. It was quite well received considering that it was so long.
He also gave me a copy of the
program. The program had a typo. It said "Brother Earl
Ashurst
- Stale High Councilor". I thought it was funny, so I started
out saying, "Hello, my name is Earl
Ashurst and I will be your stale
high councilor for today - at least according to your program. I like
that (big smile). I was going to introduce myself as your dry councilor,
your minister of
somnambulation, but this is much
better.
________________________________________________________________________________
Side note: Bishop Schroeder fell ill suddenly a couple of weeks ago, and died two days ago. He was a nice man. He was 51 years old, I believe.
________________________________________________________________________________
My names is [me] and
I am one of the 13 high councilors in the Plano,
Stake. I bring to you the love and
concern of the Stake President and his councilors. They are good men, who have jobs and lives of
their own, but they are anxiously concerned about every member of the church in
the Plano Stake. President Wilding
tirelessly attends functions of every kind throughout the stake and you have
probably seen him pop in at unexpected times.
It is a pleasure to work with such men.
My purpose here today
is to continue the theme already presented in this meeting: My assigned topic is Family History. I intend to share some stories of my
experience with it, including my failures.
We can learn from failures, and I’ve made my share.
When I was a young
man, about 137 years ago – approximately
- the church was encouraging
everyone to build a 4-generation chart of their family. My older brother had done one, and I mostly
copied his, as any young man with better things to do, would do. However, I dutifully talked to my grandparents
to make sure I had it right. On my
Mother’s side of the family, I found what many other descendants of the
pioneers find – that somebody has already done the pedigrees - far back, and
well. I felt there was nothing left for
me to do, there. That is an illusion,
but it is how I felt.
But on my Father’s
side of the family it was virgin territory.
He is not LDS and nobody had done anything in the way of genealogy. That sounded like a bit more fun - but not enough to actually do anything
about it at that time. I was still a
young man, after all.
So I finished high
school and went off to BYU. I served a
hitch as a U.S. Marine part way through my college work and came back to BYU as
a married student. I finished up my degree
in Zoology and chemistry in December, 1975 and headed off to Arizona for my first job as an agricultural
biologist. At that time, they didn’t
pass out diplomas when you finished your degree in December, so when I got a
fat letter from the Y in the mail, I thought it would be my diploma. To my surprise, it was a copy of my
transcript and a notice that I needed two more hours of coursework before I
could expect a degree. Any two hours, in
any subject would do the trick.
Well, I was
disappointed, to say the least. I was
living out in remote NE Arizona about 30 feet from the edge of the Navajo
Reservation, and there was no way I was getting back to Provo for a 2 hour class.
But wait! There are correspondence classes. I called BYU and they told me that even
correspondence classes would do, as long as the class I chose was a credit
class of at least 2 hours. They sent me
a course book and the Religion Department had a class in Genealogical Research
that was 2 hours. It sounded kind of
interesting, so I sent in my registration and fee. My only hangup was that it required a fair
amount of time in a genealogy library and I was living in Sanders, AZ which had
a permanent population of about 100 and no library, grocery store, theater, or
much of anything else. In fact, it had a
post office, a trading post, a high school, and a small LDS chapel – that’s it. The stake center and the genealogy library were
in St. Johns,
which was 60 miles south. There was also
a stake center in Gallup, NM,
which was 60-some miles to the east, and there might have been another in Holbrook, AZ,
which was 60-some miles to the west, although I think their stake center was
probably in Snowflake, which 60-some miles further west
So I picked our
own stake center and started driving down to St. Johns every Wednesday after work to do my
assignments in the genealogy library. I
found that the other patrons were all older women. I never saw a man there at all. As you might imagine, they were all
interested in what I was doing, which made my natural bashfulness even more
intense, and I kept my head down, did my work, and left without saying much. I am pretty sure I did tell the lady helping
me that I was working on a class from BYU.
Mostly I was
retrieving microfilm records from the county courthouse in Paris, Kentucky
where my great-grandparents were born and I found many good marriage and death
records, which, when combined with census records let me build up my pedigree
back to the revolutionary war. So that
was fun.
I was able to tell
my coworkers that I was spending my days off doing research in Paris.
They didn’t believe me, though.
What I could not
find was any birth records in Paris,
KY, so I was using estimates
based on census records for birth dates, and that isn’t very accurate. That bothered me. It still does. I’d like to find better dates. Later, talking to my grandfather’s brother, I
discovered that there was a family cemetery in Paris that had all the dates I needed on the
tombstones. I decided that someday I
would go find that cemetery, and I had a strong feeling that I should hurry.
So, I finished my
class and graduated from BYU. About that
time, I got a call from the High Priest’s group leader, inviting me to talk
about genealogy at a stake meeting of the high priests, down in St. Johns. I was surprised by that, but I don’t turn
down church assignments so I agreed, even though I felt woefully unprepared for
it. I did my best to prepare something,
but I was still a rookie in genealogy, after all. I went, knowing that my talk wasn’t very
good.
When I got to the
meeting in St. Johns, they had me sit on the
stand and the Stake President introduced me, saying that I was in St. Johns working on a
doctorate in Genealogy from BYU! That
was a shock!
As I sat there
waiting my turn, I debated how to handle this turn of events. Clearly those ladies at the library had been
busy speculating, and the rumor mill had churned up a doozey. I wasn’t sure what to do, but as I stood up I
decided the only thing I could do was set the record straight.
So I got to my
feet and thanked the stake president, but then said I wasn’t working on my
doctorate, only a bachelor’s degree. And
my degree wasn’t in genealogy, it was in Zoology. And I only took one class in genealogy, so I
was pretty much a beginner. I think I
also mentioned that I hadn’t seen any of them at the library, which is why the
confusion. I then gave my talk, which I
soon realized anew wasn’t really what they expected, needed, nor deserved. I gave a poor delivery, but I don’t think any
of them were paying any attention to me after that, anyway. It was a long drive back home that night.
So what do we take
out of that story? Clearly the brothers
in the church in the St. Johns
stake were not anxiously engaged in Family History work at that time. If they had been, one or more of them might
have actually shook my hand and talked to me.
As I’ve grown old in the church, I’ve seen that that pattern is pretty much the norm. The genealogy library serves church members
but only a few of us actually use it and there are usually more non-LDS patrons
than LDS, which is fine with everybody.
Nowadays, genealogy is done more and more on personal computers, at
home, and I think that the library may become a thing of the past. Not yet, but someday.
Well, in
Ecclesiastes 3 we read: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every
purpose under the heaven.”
At that time, 1976, there were only a handful of temples in the world,
and those ladies in the libraries were keeping an adequate supply of names
available for temple work. Things are
different now. We have 144 temples
operating today and more in the works, bringing the total to 170. They continue to announce more nearly every
conference. We have a greater need for
names, nowadays, and the internet makes genealogy easier and faster. We continue to generate sufficient names that
any time you go to the temple, there are names waiting which need the work done
for them. Everything is speeding up, and
we need to be keeping pace with that increase.
All of us.
I keep honeybees
as a hobby, and I like to tell people about honeybees. I harvest several gallons of honey each
summer and a few more gallons in the fall, which I mostly give away to my
family and a few select friends. I am
fascinated by the way the bees work and what they do.
BUT, Did
you know that there are literally thousands
of different kinds of bees in the World?
Thousands! And
They all make honey. But we
only know about a few of them: European
honeybees, African honeybees, and bumblebees are the only ones known by most
people. Three kinds of bee, out
of the thousands. Why don’t people know
about any of those other kinds of bees?
The answer is very
simple. Bumblebees are big and loud and
colorful, so we see them and notice them.
Honeybees make
honey for us, so we know about them.
But what about the rest? Most bees make exactly as much honey as
they need to survive. And no more. You could open up a leaf-cutter bee cell and
get a tiny amount of honey, but you would starve to death trying to get enough
to put on single bite of toast. It’s the
same for all the other bees. They make
enough for themselves.
Only the honeybees
make enough honey that we can have some.
I build wooden boxes to hold the honeybees, and they are happy to live
inside them because I build the box to the size they prefer. If they don’t like my box, they will fly away
and find a better place, but I make my boxes the size they like, so they stay. When they fill the hive up with honey in the
spring, I add another box and when that one is filled, another. As long as nectar is flowing and they have
more room, they will keep making and storing honey. By the end of the year, they will have made
enough for themselves to last through the winter, plus several more boxes of
honey that I can have. Each box yields
about 3 gallons of delightful, sweet honey.
It’s a perfect food. It’s hard
work for the bees, and it’s hard work for me to harvest it, but I love doing
it. And the reason we know about, and adore
honeybees is that they make more than
they have to. Of all the thousands
of kinds of bees in the World, only 3 or 4 kinds make more honey than they have
to.
We are like that
too. We can get by doing just enough to
survive. We can do that and be
forgotten. Or we can do more than we have to, and we will be remembered when
the Lord calls the roll of his faithful.
What we are asking
you to do is to be involved in some part of the family history work.
The easiest thing
to do is indexing. The stake presidency
is asking each of us to spend one hour per month doing indexing. That is not a big thing. Many of you are diligent in doing it. In case you don’t know why we ask this, let
me tell you what it is. Indexing is
simply building a file of references, so that other people can find what they are
looking for.
I have an
old-fashioned index here. I found this
in the courthouse in Paris,
KY when I finally got out
there. Somebody had taken the time to go
through the wills filed at the courthouse and write down each surname he
encountered.
here is the name, Ashurst
In this column are First names and
page numbers.
This piece of
paper is the result of many long, hard hours of going through those
records. But once I found it, I was able
to go straight to the records I wanted instead of having to sift through books
and books of old, dusty records. It was
great. Now that we are doing this via
computers, it is much easier. But, we need to build this kind of index for all the
dusty, old books of records people have stored all across the globe. And that is what indexing is. We do indexing a little bit at a time, and
when we are done, many, many people can go straight to the record they want to
see. Indexing is pure service.
Greater love hath
no man than this, that he index my family’s records so I can find them when I finally
get around to doing my geology research.
Now, let me go
back and recap. To get my degree I did
some pure research of old records and built up a pedigree of the Ashurst family
back to the Revolutionary War. That was
in 1976. I sent copies of my pedigree to
Salt Lake.
I left copies in the Arizona State genealogy library in Phoenix,
and later in the courthouse in Paris,
Kentucky. I gave copies to my grandfather’s
brother. Of course, I also gave them to
my siblings and my children. Many, many
people have taken that beginning and used it as the basis for their own
research. I constantly find where it has
been copied or referenced. That gives me
a great feeling, although I don’t feel like I get much credit. It only happened because I was negligent in
finishing up my degree.
But remember that
I did not find any birth
records. I still needed to find the
family cemetery in Paris.
I told you I would
tell you about my failures. I let a lot
of years pass without getting to Kentucky. I worked hard and built a career. My wife and I raised six wonderful kids and
kept them happy and fed and clothed. But
I had this nagging thought in the back of my mind that I should get myself to Kentucky and find that graveyard!
I knew I should
make it a priority, but I was living on the West coast, and we had some
financial setbacks. I just couldn’t find
the time and money to make that long trip.
Finally, in about 1987 I was working for Ross Perot’s company on a high
priority project in New Jersey. We lived in Washington state at that time, so I was a
continent away from home. I was out
there for 3 months straight, working terribly long days, 110-120 hours per
week, week after week. Finally it
started to slow down and I had a chance to take a weekend off. I talked to my wife and we decided that it
was time to make that trip to Kentucky. A trip back to Washington meant so much flying time that
we’d only have a half day together anyway.
So, Instead of going home that weekend, I caught a short flight to Kentucky, rented a car, and drove out to Paris.
I parked in front
of the courthouse and walked in the door, not really knowing what to do. I had no idea where the old family farm was
located, except that it was near Paris,
and I didn’t know how to start.
Two women were talking behind a circular desk
with a sign that said, “Information” so I walked over there. As I waited for them I noticed a map of Bourbon County on the wall and I was startled
when my eye fell on the name: W. ASHURST! It was like I got poleaxed! William Ashurst was my grandfather’s
grandfather! What I was looking at was a
copy of an old map dated 1877, and it showed all the names of families living
in the rural farms. It was the key to
what I needed! Now I knew how to
proceed.
When the women
finished and one of them asked how she could help me, I asked first thing if I
could get a copy of that map. She told
me it had been used as the inside cover of a book on architecture and that I
could get a copy across the street, which I did soon after. She also showed me where they kept the old
records and let me into a back room where I found a lot of the records I had
painstakingly searched on the poor microfilm copies when I was doing my
original research on my family. Actually
handling those old, original records was a hoot, but I didn’t find much
new. I confirmed that in Kentucky they didn’t
record births. They just didn’t bother.
I did find some
interesting court records such as the Wills I already showed you the index for. I spent my first day in the courthouse and
nearby public library, which had a genalogy section. The next day (my last), I headed out to find
the family farm.
I bought a current
map of Bourbon County and laid it next to my new book
on Architecture (with the map inside) and pretty quickly got the road located
where the ancestral farm was located. I
was on my way, at last.
As I turned onto
the Clintonville Pike road where the old farm is located, I noticed a sobering
sight. There was a little triangle of
land where several roads came together that was too small for a business, and
was obviously used mostly for temporary parking. In the middle was a big old chestnut tree and
under the tree were tombstones. Hundreds
of them, leaning on the tree trunk, and on one another. Someone told me they were from farms nearby
as farmers got tired of plowing around them.
He said there are family graveyards on every piece of ground and most of them
are for people nobody knows, so they get plowed under pretty often When the farmers got tired enough to do
something about it they loaded the stones up and piled them there, or hauled
them to the dump. I got a sinking
feeling in my stomach.
It took me a while
to locate the exact farm where my ancestors had lived. When I did, I knocked on a farmhouse door and
a nice young couple came out. I
confirmed I was in the right place as they looked over my maps. When I inquired about the family graveyard the
man told me that the corporation that currently owned the land had instructed
him to remove the gravestones and haul them off. He said he had pled with them not to do it,
but they had insisted and he had taken them to the dump, about a year before.
For eleven years I
had had the strong feeling that I should go find that cemetery, but I had
waited one year too long! There is no
other way to explain except to say that I failed. My only hope is that someday I might discover
that somebody else recorded the information on the headstones. So far, I haven’t found a trace.
The couple who
lived there did tell me an interesting thing.
They said there was another graveyard just over the hill, away from the
road, and they pointed out the track to follow.
I went back there and found a slave graveyard. At that time, I had no idea such a thing
existed, although it is logical.
I knew from census
records that my ancestors had been slave owners. I wasn’t very happy to learn that, but you
can’t do anything about what your ancestors did. You can learn it, but not change it.
I located the graveyard
because in the middle of rolling hills of beautiful blue grass farmland there
was a grove of tight-packed saplings growing in a square. That was it – just a square of young trees. I walked over to the edge of the square and
sat down on a log to think. At first, I
thought it was another cemetary where the stones had been hauled away. But as I sat there I began to see the pattern
of it. There were stones, but they were
simple blocks of uncut limestone, unremarkable in every way except that they
were laid out in a regular grid. They
were about three feet apart from each other in both directions. It took me a while to figure out what that
meant. When we bury people, we dig a
hole six feet deep and about 2 X 8 feet long, so we can lay them to rest lying
down. With stones 3 feet apart, it meant
the slaves were not given the space and/or time to do that. They dug a hole just large enough for a body
that was folded up. It must have sucked,
being a slave.
I wandered through
the yard and I found a few stones that had 2 or 3 initials rudely carved into
the limestones, but most had no marks that remained.
I actually had a
very spiritual experience as I contemplated that slave graveyard. Those people had some severe trials, but I
felt like they had found peace there. It
is a nice location, near the top of the hill with a view across the
countryside, not to where most folks live, but across the back country and
trees and grasslands. It was quiet, and
nice.
The last thing I
found there was in the SE corner, at a low point where it wasn’t visible from
very far away. There were a few modern
stones standing upright – 3 or 4 of them.
Most were small-ish, but one stood out above all the rest. To begin with, it was 5 feet tall, and very
ornate, with carvings – which alone would make it stand out in that place. But the inscription is what made it unique.
J. H. Simonds
Born Nov. 22, 1830
Died Feb. 8, 1860
(that means it was
placed near the beginning of the Civil War when slaves were still in bondage,
and J. H. Simonds was less than 30 years
old.)
And then this
verse
Why do we mourn departing friends,
Or shake at deaths alarms?
Tis but the voice that Jesus sends,
To call them to his arms.
I’ve always like
that verse. I have no idea who J. H.
Simonds was, or even if J. H. was male or female, although I always think of
her as a woman. It piques my curiosity
why such an ostentatious gravestone got to be in such a place, and why J. H.
was that well thought of. There has to
be a story, and I wish I knew it.
I am sad to report
that the slave graveyard is also gone,
now. I haven’t been back, but recently I
got onto Google Earth and looked at the satellite images of that hillside. There is an unbroken field there now, so the
slaves of the ancestral home are now in the same state as the family who owned
them, sleeping in unmarked peace. But
they are not forgotten. I remember them,
and I think of them often.
So, what should
you get out of that experience? Well,
obviously, DO NOT put off doing things the spirit tells you to do! Don’t be like me, having years of strong
feelings that I should journey to ancestral home, only to arrive too late to
accomplish my main purpose. Now, I had a
great experience on that trip and I am very glad I went! But I still have no birth dates for my Ashurst
ancestors.
Well, we’ve
discussed indexing, and genealogical research.
Those are two legs of a 3-legged stool.
But why do we do those things?
My close friend recently said genealogy isn’t doctrine, it’s a
hobby. True, so why does the church
encourage us to participate? The answer
is temple work. We are trying to perform
temple ordinances for every person who has lived on Earth. That is the third leg of the stool. It is also is a very big slice of pie to
swallow at one time. Too big for
me! Fortunately I don’t have to do it
all alone, and neither do you.
Here is an
engineering question for you: How did
they dig the Panama Canal?
Answer: One shovel-full at a time.
True, they had
some awesomely big shovels, but they still dug it by moving a shovel-full at a
time. Move enough shovel-fulls and you
can bridge a continent.
We don’t have to
do all the temple work there is to do.
But if each of us does something, we can perform huge tasks. We can’t do everything, but each of us can do
something. And that’s what we are asking
you to do.
Try out
indexing. It is given in small batches
and they are simple to do - Easy; fast;
instant gratification.
Try your hand at
genealogy. It is a hobby that is
encouraged by the church and can become a fascinating journey into
history.
Or write some
history. Just start writing down what
you remember about your parents and grandparents. I recently did that and got a surprise. My mother told me that she met my father at a
dance. When I wrote that down and sent
to my siblings another version of the story came out.
My father confirms
that actually they met when he was washing a car just off main street, and it
being a hot day he had his shirt off. My
mother whistled at him! I was shocked at
this turn of events. My mother whistled
at a man?!? Really?
And take time to
come to the temple. It is a wonderful place to spend a couple of hours.
God bless you
all. You are wonderful people, and you
are doing good works. Remember that we
know about honey bees because they do more than they absolutely have to. Bee like honeybees.
And I say this,
…………………………
and 40 minutes after that it is eating a small mammal. 
