Excess temple names
Names that are currently available to be shared:  FamilySearchnames.pdf
	Any ordinance that is dark green or gold-yellow is available to be shared.  But as far as sealings I am hoping to get together a group to do some familygroup sealings that are only done in the SLC temple.  (see below)   addendum:  The sealing session on 7 December 2017 (see below) was a time when we got to do sealing of children to parents in family groups.  The feeling I got about that event was, "OK, you've had your special sealing session.  Don't count on it happening again.  Just get the work done."
	Research log
	I've decided to do this like a blog with latest installment at the top of the page.
	02 February 2018
Rochelle and I went to the Provo temple today and did some sealings.  All of the children of James and Martha Mockford are now sealed to them.  James and Martha were each previously married.  I think the children from those marriages are also sealed.  Tonight when I got home from the temple I noticed that James' father James Mockford has some unfinished ordinance work.  Then there is the topic of descendants and spouses of descendants.  I get the impression that James and Martha were good people.  They seem to have some claim on my time.  In recent weeks I've dug into finding their descendants.  I've found some.  But, of course, there is a 'time limit' to how recent of temple work we can do.  Parish records aren't available for the most recent generation so we have to rely on census and FreeBMD.com.
	08 January 2018
I went to the FHL in SLC today.  While Sis. Bury was busy I processed a lot of blue boxes on my pedigree.  Blue  boxes are the flags the FamilySearch computer posts for possible new data.  I also did a bit of looking around my pedigree and found that Hugh Hills (LZJL-5XL) born in 1759 and Sarah Woodman had a lot of children (10) covering a suspicious span of years (1786 - 1823).  The last child, James Hills (K25T-5N3) was born in 1823.  If Sarah Woodman was indeed his mother she would have been 57 years old!  Also, there was a 16 year gap between the 6th child and the 7th.  Also, there was no marriage date for Hugh and Sarah.  Also the 7th and later children were born in a different town than the preceding children. In searching for marriages of Hugh Hills and Sarah across the whole county of Sussex in the appropriate time span we found one marriage in Shipley in 1785 and another marriage in Littlehampton in 1813.  The wife in the 1813 marriage was Sarah Leasseter.  So I made a new family group with the last 4 children of the family group I found to be suspicious. The only new ordinance opportunities coming out of this is for the Hugh and Sarah who are NOT our ancestors.  So I didn't reserve them.
	07 January 2018
Fast Sunday (so slow Sunday) I spent some time following up on blue box flags - mostly on Danish lines.  Particularly on HMH Lund's wife's mother's siblings.  Blue boxes are generally about possible  source material the FamilySearch computer has found.  Most of the flags were appropriate.  Some didn't fit.
	07 December 2017
Our goal these days is to get to the temple twice a week.  Sometimes we make it.  The idea for today was to go to a different temple than usual since we had to go in to SLC to get Rochelle's glasses. The way it worked out we went to the SLC temple.  We got there before rush hour.  We decided to do sealings because doing an endowment session would have had us coming home too late.  (too late for Rochelle). So we got to a sealing room with 3-4 other couples.  And were getting started when a number of other couples were added.  So they sent another sealer to split off another session.  Some of the people in the original group had some name cards of their own.  We had a big stack.  We had cards from Rochelle's research, from my research and from Margaret Bury's research.  Margaret is our genealogy guide.  She is not currently a FHL missionary but she is a volunteer at the FHL.  But since she has a number of long-term research projects she helps with she only has one day per week to give at the library so she doesn't qualify to be a missionary. Anyway, in the group that got split off from the other session I think we were the only people who brought name cards. The room we had started in was one of the sealing rooms on the sealing hall.  But our split off group ended up in sealing room 5.  That is one of the original sealing rooms.  To get to it we went through a room that used to be the temple president's office.  Then behind the holy of holies, past the spiral staircase in the SE corner and past the Southern 'front door'. The sealer started into arranging people for the first sealing and then paused, looked through the cards and directed us to organize them in a certain way - in family groups with the children sorted by age. The husband - wife sealings were, of course, as usual.  But the sealing of children to parents was all done in family groups.  Which I delight in.  And I didn't even have to ask for it.  The sealer initiated that himself.  The SLC temple is the only temple I know of where this is done.  In all other temples where I have asked about proxy sealings in family groups we've been told that all proxy sealing of child to parent is done one at a time.
	31 October 2017
In the last two weeks I've been working on people around the couple on the headstone in the picture we took in the Rottingdean church yard.  When I found the record in the parish record of David and Martha it was mentioned that her father was James Miles.  Martha was mentioned as a widow and James as a widower.  We've found the prior spouses.  And the children from David's prior marriage.  But can't find the death of Martha's first husband.  Also no record of children with that first husband.  In a census late in her life Martha states that she had 13 children.  We know of 8.  She may have counted the 2 step son's she raised from James first marriage.  Maybe she counted miscarriages and still borns.  But there are still 5 unknowns.  And I don't know how we can ever know who she was referring to.  But we've identified prior spouses and included their names for temple work.  And some degree of Martha's parentage.
	15 October 2017
As I was looking around for lines that could be extended I looked at Ball - Poiney - Poiney - Poiney - Mockford. Brighton, Sussex, England is on England's South coast just a few miles West of the start of the chalk cliffs.  At Brighton there is a beach.  It is pebbly rather than sandy.  But it is a beach.  10 miles East there is no beach.  Just chalk cliffs.  There is a village called Rottingdean.  That is where our Mockfords lived.  If you go back further their ancestors lived in Brighton. The parish register for Rottingdean has been extracted.  The parish register for Brighton has also been extracted.  So many of our Mockford ancestors have been baptized and endowed.  But they haven't been sealed to their spouses or their parents. There are a lot of Mockfords in that area.  As I was working on that line I got a little mixed up and started looking at a family group that was too recent to be our ancestor.  But I felt strongly drawn to them.  I had noticed that the pop-up that states the policy about whose records you can submit mentions that you can submit people of the same surname as your ancestor who live in the same area as your ancestor.  (This seems to be an acknowledgement that if they have the same surname and live in the same (small) town they are going to prove to be cousins.)  But there is a limit about recent people.  I think you have to stay with people that were born at least 110 years ago. Anyway, I got chided by Rochelle and Sis. Bury (our 'guide' to British genealogy) for bothering with people who weren't my direct ancestors.  Other than the pressure from them I was leaning toward 'harvesting' all the Mockfords I could find.  But their chastisement cooled my enthusiasm. Then when we went on our trip to England and actually stopped in Rottingdean and visited the church (yard) we all felt the importance of doing all the Mockford's we could find there.  The churchyard in Rottingdean is full of headstones.  Many of the headstones I looked at were worn and weathered enough that it is hard to read them.  But we did see one headstone with the Mockford name on it.  In fact it was right near the main path to the front door of the church.  I took a picture of it and later Sis. Bury took that information and found that the Mockford buried there was descended from one of our ancestors.  So he is a distant cousin. Anyway, I'm back to working at gathering all the Mockford's I can from Rottingdean - and then later I will go on to Brighton.  And looking for the marriage records of these Mockfords sometimes points to other villages in Sussex.  If I find Mockfords in these other villages I think I'll try to include them into the project. As I said, this parish has been extracted.  So a lot of these people I'm finding already have their baptism, initiatory and endowment already performed for them.  But there is need to pull families together and do sealings.  So far I've found a few that needed baptism, initiatory and endowment, but mostly sealings. When you go to submit a name the computer checks for possible duplicates.  There is a lot of work to be done in merging duplicates.  The reason is that when the Church extracts names from christening records the name of the child and the names of the parents get added to FamilySearch.  The christening record gives no clue as to the parent's birth dates and usually no clue as to the parents birth place.  So baptism and endowment for the parents can't be done from the christening record.  But more than that, in a family of 5 children (for example) the parents names will have been added to Family Search for each child.  So their will be 5 copies of the father's record and 5 copies of the mother's record.  And if the father and/or the mother were christened in that parish their own christening record might also exist.  So there might be 6 records that all refer to the same person.  These records need to be identified and merged down to just one record.  That is what I'm going to be working on for the next while. Now, about sealing of children to parents.  When a family joins the Church and finally goes to the temple to be sealed, all the children are gathered around the alter with the parents and all the children are sealed to the parents at one time.  When a child to parent sealing is done by proxy for the dead it is usually done one child at a time.  I've asked about doing a proxy sealing for all the children of a family at once.  At every temple but Salt Lake City temple I've been told that they don't do family groups for the dead or I've been told that group sealings for the dead are not allowed.  But I've attended 2 or 3 such sealing sessions in the Salt Lake City temple.  So it looks like Salt Lake is the only temple where family group proxy sealings are allowed.  But one of the issues with arranging such a sealing session is that you need a lot of proxies for a large family.  You need 2 men to be witnesses.  You need a man and a woman to be the parents.  And then you need enough male and female proxies to represent all of the children of the biggest family you plan to seal in a given session.  That can be a big group.  But I've seen it done.  There are some other conditions placed on these kinds of sealings.  Maybe these Mockfords who aren't direct line may not qualify.  But if they do I think it would be a nice experience to arrange to seal these families in family groups. If you are related and interested in helping to do these ordinances - especially if you are interested in participating in a group sealing please get in touch with me.  If you are interested in doing some of this temple work but live too far away to come here let me know and I can email you a pdf file which you can then print and then snip out the name cards.  (You don't have to have pink and/or blue paper anymore.)  Contact me at lorin.lund@gmail.com
	15 October 2017
	great grandma Lund was not alone!!
When I was a teenager I got interested in genealogy.  I went downtown to the part of the Church Office tower where submissions to the "3 generation program" and "4 generation program" were filed.  I saw a lot of family group sheets.  I saw a lot of them that were repetitive - a lot of submissions that were essentially the same as several others.  As I recall it there were 3 completely separate scenarios of Dagmar Nielsine Sørensen's ancestry (HMH Lund's wife). Dagmar has been a mystery to me - what is the truth.  In the last year and a half I responded to an error flag on her father - his birthdate was way off.  We eventually got that ironed out after I took some actions I later had to undo.  The final evidence that straightened me out was a census from long after Dagmar had left for Utah.  That census gave Soren Larsen Sorensen's complete birthdate. Then, in chasing down Dagmar's mother, there were 3 women of that name and birthdate.  2 were listed as daughters of the same parents - that would be twins except they have the same name.  I consulted with a missionary at the Family History Library in SLC who specializes in Danish research.  She was confident that the 3 records all referred to the same person and should be merged - but that I first needed to identify which of the 3 different death dates was correct. Then I learned that FamilySearch ID numbers that start with KW are from LDS church records (and therefore should not be changed).  One of the 3 records was a KW record.  So I decided to trust that record as most reliable and merged the other 2 records into that one so that none of the KW information was changed. But the fact that Anne Maria Olsen (Dagmar's mother) had a 'KW' record implies that she was a baptized member of the church.  When I looked into that I saw that her baptism date was, in fact, earlier than her death date.  So she did join the church!!  In fact her baptism date is the same as Dagmar's.  So mother and daughter were baptized the same day!!  I also noticed that a sister to Anne Maria had a 'KW' id number.  Her baptism date was during her lifetime - in fact just a little while after Anne Maria's.  And that sister's husband had a baptism date during his lifetime too.  Looking at the rest of their ordinances I could see that their temple ordinance dates were all before their death dates - so it is evident that Dagmar's aunt and uncle joined the Church and came to Utah too!  So she wasn't here with out relatives on her side of the family!  The feelings that came upon me when I saw that were very strong.  I was very glad to know that (great grandma) Dagmar had an aunt and uncle nearby. Then I looked back at her parents.  If her mother joined the Church why would she not go to Utah with Dagmar?  When I looked into her father's ordinance dates it became apparent.  Even though Dagmar's mother joined the Church along with Dagmar her father never did.  His ordinance dates are all after his death date.  And his record ID doesn't start with 'KW'.
	14 May 2017
Boy, I didn't realize it had been 7 years since I successfully updated this page.  I remember starting into making updates at least once before.  But I guess I never uploaded it. Most recently I've worked on the Herbert Wheeler line.  This will be of no interest to HMH descendants in general - just to the descendants of Isabelle Margaret Ball Fewin who married George Lund. Many weeks ago I had the help of a crack researcher and she zeroed in on a case where she spotted (or sensed) something fishy.  When she got looking into it she found that prior researchers had overlooked the fact that Anne who married Richard John Wheeler name on the marriage banns was listed as a widow.  Someone found a family to fit her into that matched the name of her first husband and built a pedigree upon that.  With Sis. Bury's help we found the actual first marriage and the actual maiden name.  The people I'm talking about here are Richard John Wheeler 1722 (LZGT-8T9)  and his wife Ann Williams 1722 (2MPP-1TV).  Someone had tied her into a Mason family line.  I lopped that off and neglected to go back for a while.  But most recently I went back and found parents.  I've found her father, John Williams, and her mother, Rebecca Rawlins 1698 and Rebecca's parents: William Rawlins and Rebecca Wormington 1660 and her father Thomas Wormington 1636. As for HMH and his line, a few weeks or months ago I noticed a red flag in FamilySearch regarding Soren Larsen Sorensen 1845 father of Dagmar Nielsine Sorensen (wife of HMH).  I initially misjudged the cause of the red flag and made some changes that I later had to reverse.  But it turned out that his birthdate was wrong.  In the end the proof of the problem was found in a later census when he and his wife were old and Dagmar had long since emigrated to Utah.  But the later census I found gave his birthdate which was a lot more feasible than the old one that had raised the error flag.   The erroneous birthdate had him being born before his mother was born. As I've found new information I put new people into the family tree and think I'll get to do their temple work.  Then I check for duplicates and find that someone else has already done their work.  All that was missing was a relationship.  But with the Rawlins and Wormingtons it looks like I've got some temple work to do.  I've already done the work for Anne's first husband, Samuel Matthews.  He isn't a direct ancestor.  But his wife, Anne, who is a direct line ancestor, couldn't be correctly sealed to her children without getting them attached to the correct father.
	17 Jul 2010
I couldn't find Roy Ellis in the death record archive web site at wvculture.org.  So, in hopes of finding Roy buried next to Belle I started work on finding Belle's grave.  I called the funeral home in California that prepared her body and conducted the viewings in California to see if they had record of who they shipped the remains to for the burial in Fairmont, WV.  That turned out to be another funeral home.  So I called them to see which cemetery Belle was buried in.  It wasn't the same cemetery as the one I started with.  It was a bigger one.  I called the cemetery and made inquiry but the lady was not at the office at the time I called.  She called back alter with some information (in terms of lot number and grave number). Last Monday I ventured to go down to Fairmont to see if I could make sense of those numbers.  I could not.  So I went to the funeral home that buried Belle to see if they had a map.  They did not.  They said that the cemetery is supposed to provide someone to take me to the spot.  So I called again later.  The only person who does this is a lady who has a day job elsewhere.  So I made arrangemenets to meet her after work on Tues. at about 5:30 - 6:00 PM. Tue. was my day off so I had time to get down there early.  I headed out in time to get there before 5:30.  It was raining.  The rain got more intense but I kept going.  There were people parked along the shoulder of the freeway to wait out the storm it was so intense.  I kept going.  Knowing that the lady's day job was in Morgantown I knew she would have to drive through the same storm so I allowed that she might be a little later than planned.  I was early so I decided to go back over to the little cemetery and start photographing everything I could see.  I didn't expect to get the whole cemetery covered but thought I would get started.  Starting at the corner where I parked I started photographing every headstone and family monument.  I don't think I had even shot 4 doz. pictures before I ran across Roy F. Ellis!!!!  He was in an Ellis group that was mostly empty.  He is in the same cemetery as Belle's parents and two of her brothers but not in the same group.  That was wonderful.  Finding him before I went to Belle's grave was great!  I know that if I had gone to Belle's grave and not found Roy beside her I would have felt like I had no clue, no 'next step' to find him.  But having found him first left me free to not worry about what I might or might not find near Belle's grave.  It turns out that Belle shares a double headstone with one of her sons.  The other son is less than 20 feet up the hill.  That son is buried with his wife.  That leaves me to wonder if the one buried next to Belle was never married or perhaps divorced. So I still don't have month and day for Roy's death.  But I have the year from his headstone.  So I have death years for Belle's brothers from their headstones. I don't have a clear statement of place of death for Roy nor his 2 boys.  The boys are buried in Fairmont, they once lived in Fairmont, Fairmont would be the logical place to start looking for other records that clarify their death location.  Likewise for Roy.  The most reasonable guess would be that he too died in Fairmont.
	11 Jul 2010
What a blow!  I've been working for weeks on getting the Metz and Merrifield info to a point where I would feel it accurate and complete enough to submit for temple work.  Then I went to new.familysearch.org and found that someone else has already done Belle and Roy Ellis with the shoddy, census-only data.  Even though I have been interested in genealogy all my life, and have worked on creating genealogy related computer programs this was going to be the first names for me to submit and someone else has already submitted them.  The work was done in the St. George temple during this summer.  I feel so robbed!! Since the last posting I have found what Roy's middle name is.  But that was something 'gisgal' found.  I guess I'll go ahead and submit corrections to the data on new.familysearch.org to fill in Belle's first name and Roy's middle name. I got good pictures of the headstones for the Metz group.  The diagnally adjoining Merrifield group turns out to have only one headstone.  But it is a brother to Jennie (Helen Virginia Merrifield) One thing I would like to clear up if I can before submitting the Merrifield names is whether the 'L' after Lemuel stands for Leonard (Lenard) or for Luther.
	7 Jul 2010
I went to Fairmont the other day to see if I could find the Jones #1 cemetary.  I did find it.  It is between Franklin St. and the river between Liberty Ave. and Layman St. I found a Metz family monument and headstones for "'Father' Lemual L. Metz", "'Mother' 'Jennie' Helen V. Metz" "Charles O. Metz" and one for 'Fess' but I don't recall it verbatim.  There appears to be room near the family monument for others but there are not other names carved on it.  Since Belle does not appear to be buried near her parents and brothers I am left to assume that maybe she is buried next to her husband.  But searching wvculture.org for death and marriage records I found no death record for Roy nor marriage record for Roy and Belle.  Today I called the funeral chapel in Pasadena that was mentioned in the obituary for Belle.  I asked if they had record of who they shipped the remains to.  They had the name of a funeral chapel in Fairmont.  I called that place to see if they had a record of which cemetary.  They did:  'Woodlawn'.  I can see Woodlawn cemetary on the map (Google.com).  I plan to follow up with Woodlawn to see if their records show a Roy Ellis buried next to Belle.  I will want to get pictures of the headstones next time I go that way.  I took pictures of the Metz monument and headstones the other day but they proved to be out of focus.  I'll be wanting to repeat those images.
	26 Jun 2010
Having found some information on 'Arlie' or rather William Arlie Metz, I did some more searching in Ancestry.com and found his draft record. But off to the right of that there was a box with links to the work of other Ancestry.com subscribers who included 'Arlie' in their records collection.  I followed one and found that her shared family tree information goes back way before Belle's father.  And includes descendants of Arlie but almost nothing on Belle.  In fact she is using 'Flora' as the other part of her name.  Which matches the census but conflicts with the obit.  But she has some information on where Belle's older brothers are buried.  If I can locate the cemetary in Fairmont I'll be wanting to go down there and look around in coming weeks.  I don't know how many cemetaries there might be in Fairmont.  I know there are very many old cemetaries around Morgantown.  Each little church had its own cemetary.  So there are cemetaries for places that were never even incorporated as towns.  In fact less than a 1/2 mile from here there is a cemetary for which the associated church is no longer standing.
	23 Jun 2010
Since receiving a response from Pasadena Public Library on the obituary search request for both Georgia Mozelle Ellis Lund and Belle Ellis I have been able to tie in a bit more information. I did find that 2 of Belle's daughters were living Pasadena at the time she died.  And the fact that Georgia was listed as living at Washinton D.C. has pretty well cleared up the question of when Arthur and Georgia moved to California.  It would have been after Arthur retired. One other tidbit of information I didn't mention in the first blog installment was found in the California Death Record Index.  That listed Georgia's mother's maiden name as Metz.  But more than that, Belle's obituary gives a full name of Laura Belle Ellis.  So her maiden name would have been Laura Belle Metz. But searching for that name in Ancestry.com doesn't find anything for West Virginia. Belle's obituary gives a name of a surviving sister as Blanche and a surviving brother as "Arlie". I revisited the 1920 and 1930 census records for Belle's household and noticed that one of the 3 other names listed for that household was a LeRoy Metz.  And it gave his name age as 5. By this time I knew that Belle's maiden name was Metz so it dawned on me that this wee fellow was most likely a kinsman.  So I thought that maybe I could find out more about her family by searching for facts about LeRoy Metz.  That lead me to another household in the same town where there was a Lee Roy Metz listed - also 5 years old.  But also in that household was a daughter named Blanche.  And Belle's obituary mentioned be survived by a sister named Blanche.  That was the 1920 census.  As you can see below I found the same family in 1900 and 1910 also.  From this variability of the father's name I am left completely unsure what his name really is.  The fact that Belle doesn't show in this household in the 1910 or 1920 census is appropriate.  She shows up as Roy Ellis wife in 1910 and as head of her own household in 1920.  But you would expect to find her in the family for the 1900 census.  In fact she would be about 14.  And her first name is actually 'Laura'.  'Belle' is her middle name.  When you consider that the census was taken verbally and written by the census taker I can imagine that the census taker mistook 'Laura' for 'Flora'. Fed Census 1900 Name     Age Luther Metz     49 Jennie Metz     40 Fess Metz     17 Charles Metz     16 Arlie Metz     15 Flora Metz     14 Rustle Metz     11 Hugh Metz     9 Cland Metz     4 Blanshe Metz     2 Fed Census 1910 Lenard Metz      51 Jennie Metz     54 Claud Metz     19 Hughie Metz     18 Fed Census 1920 Lemuel L Metz      61 Jennie Metz     64 Claud Metz     37 Hugh Metz     35 Clay Metz     33 Blanche Metz     22 Lee Roy Metz     5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1945 city directory   Hugh Metz 306 Rayland Building   Claud Mitz 105 Jefferson 1947 city directory - same 1949 city directory    Clay E Metz and Hugh Metz showing as constables in Court House 1st fl ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking up various names in the Social Security Death Index and in the California Death Record Index I have been able to ascertain some exact birthdates and a few exact death dates.
	29 May 2010
For lack of knowledge of where Arthur lived, of where the twins lived I looked in the Social Security Death Index. In the process of doing SSDI searches I noticed that Arthur's wife, Georgia was born in Fairmont, West Virginia.  Since I currently live just 20 miles North of Fairmont that caught my attention. So I have pursued a little bit of searching on Georgia's family. I found Georgia in the 1920 census and the 1930 census in a household headed by Belle Ellis, her mother.  In both cases they were in Fairmont, WV. Looking back to the census before Georgia was born I find Belle Ellis and the older children living in a different city with Roy Ellis, the husband and father as head of household. Arthur and Georgia were married in the Washington D.C. area.  They were in California as of 1976.  Arthur died in Arcadia, California in 1989.  Georgia died about 2 years later.  Arthur's name showed up in one search on a Pasadena, CA address.  Also, Arthur's obituary was found in a Pasadena newspaper. I don't have any strong evidence on the question of when Arthur and Georgia moved from Washington DC to Arcadia, CA.  If they lived in the Washington DC area until Arthur retired I wonder why they moved to California.  Erwin and Earl had both lived in California.  But they had both died before 1976.  My current theory is that there may have been one or more of Georgia's siblings may have lived in California at the time. I did an SSDI search on Belle Ellis.  I found a number of women named Belle Ellis that were born in West Virginia during the right time range (based on Belle's age listed in the census).  There was one Belle Ellis that was born in W.V. and ended her Social Security benefits in Pasadena, California. The California Death Index does not show any record of a death certificate for that Belle Ellis.  That leaves the question of whether someone could die in California in the 1970s without being recorded.  Or maybe she lived in California for some time, received Social Security benefits there, but in the end left the state just before she died. I have submitted a request to the Pasadena Public Library to look for an obituary for Belle Ellis (maiden name Metz).  If they find one, and especially if it shows Georgia Lund as a survivor, I'll know I'm on the right path. Here is the summary of the info I found:
Roy Ellis		Abt 1878
Belle (Metz) Ellis		Abt 1888
	Nola Ellis	Abt 1904
	Herman Ellis	Abt 1906
	Melvin Ellis	Abt 1908
	Edith Ellis	Abt 1909
	Madge Ellis	Abt 1911
	Cathrine Ellis	Abt 1913
	Geogia Mozelle Ellis	20 Aug 1914