finding long-lost family (descendancy research)

 Descendancy research starts farther back in time and moves toward the present.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Descendancy_Research

Who are Descendants?

All of a couple's children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren, etc. are considered their descendants.

What is Descendancy Research?

Descendancy research is the process of choosing one of your ancestral couples and identifying all of their descendants. Start with a couple of about four to five generations back on your pedigree who lived in the early to mid-nineteenth century in an area with available records. You then locate that couple and their children in available records, identify children, children's spouses, and grandchildren. Repeat for each of the children and grandchildren.

Why do Descendancy Research?

Descendancy Research will help you to identify and connect with distant cousins, locate family documents and photos, share stories, and collaborate on research projects. It is especially useful for those with full family trees, as it allows for a more detailed view of all of the members of a family tree from a specific point in the past, as opposed to conventional research, which works backwards from a specific person and doesn't provide as full of a perspective for all the members of a family. This makes it a tremendously valuable tool for finding missing relatives, finding relatives with sparse records that need more information, as well as discovering distant relations. Even trees that have been completely filled in back several generations can be expanded further with descendancy research.

How do I do Descendancy Research?

The following video and handout will help you use the resources of FamilySearch to find the descendants of one your ancestral couples.

VIDEO on Descendancy Research (c 2013)

Handout on Descendancy Research (from video)

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/How_to_Find_Descendants_in_the_United_States

How to Find Descendants in the United States

The goal of descendancy research is to find the children (and spouses), grandchildren (and spouses), and so forth of an ancestral couple. Descendancy research starts farther back in time and moves toward the present.

Motives for descendancy research. Researchers sometimes do descendancy research in order to:

• contact relatives who have moved to distant lands
• show a relationship to a famous ancestor
• find genealogical evidence such as the family Bible of a common ancestor
• return a family heirloom such as an old photograph
• find heirs of an unclaimed rich estate
• locate possible compatable organ donors
• identify family members who may have an inherited tendancy toward a disease
• publish an article in a genealogical journal like the New England Historical and Genealogical Society Register
• submit an application for certification with the Board for Certification of Genealogists
• research direct-line ancestors and their children.
• locate living descendants of ancestors for DNA testing purposes.

Value of Descendancy Research

More names per generation. One advantage of descendancy research is the potential number of names you could find. Most families have more than two children per couple. If all those children marry and have more than two children, there is a potential to find more relatives by descendancy research than in the same number of generations of pedigree research. However, to be fair, pedigree researchers also usually research the immediate children of each couple on their pedigree. In theory, assuming each generation has exactly four children who live, marry once, and have exactly four children, in three generations, pedigree researchers would find 42 relatives (counting spouses and immediate children), and descendancy researchers would find 106 relatives. With larger families the difference can increase dramatically. This way of counting names does not change the number of actual people who have lived—it only changes because of who you count as a relative. 

Risks of Descendancy Research

It may be harder. Some genealogists consider descendancy research more difficult than pedigree research. This is because finding children is sometimes more difficult than finding parents. There are always exactly two parents of each child, but the number of children of each set of parents can vary widely. In many cases there tends to be more documents that are likely to name the parents of a child, and fewer documents that list all the children of a set of parents. Finding children who died young and between censuses is often more difficult than finding parents.

On the other hand, some genealogists consider descendancy research easier—an opportunity to snatch the low-hanging fruit[1] by the wagon full.

Latter-day Saints 

Acting in conflict with the wishes of the closest living relative can result in bad feelings.[2] Mass descendancy research and submissions by an overzealous distant cousin often deprive more closely related family members of the joy of contributing work on their nearer relatives.

Protect privacy and the feelings of others.

Please be respectful and considerate of the feelings of living relatives regarding their deceased ancestors.

Choose a Starting Family

Do you have an ancestor about whom you are curious? Have you heard intriguing stories about a great-grandparent? Possibly you are looking for a genetic connection to a great uncle who may have had the same illness you have just had diagnosed. Many reasons may spark your interest in a particular individual or family. Regardless of how you decide, the first step is to choose an individual or family to use as the starting point.

Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind as you get started:

• Begin with what you know. If you already know the names of your great-grandparents and approximately when and where they were married, it will be much easier to search for their descendants.
• Begin with individuals or families alive around 1850. People who lived in the period from the mid-1800s to the present are usually easier to find. In many countries, birth, and death records began to be created by the mid-1800s. Also, some countries began to keep census records showing the names and ages of each family member.
• Record what you find on family group records. A family group record will enable you to record information for all the children in a family, parents and grandparents. As you search for the descendants of your ancestors, family group records will help you organize your work.

Internet search engines. Search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, help you learn if someone has posted information on the Internet about your ancestors or their descendants. Search engines may help you find pedigree charts, family Websites, cemetery records, personal histories, family Bibles, and so forth.

Expert Tip: You may find many references to your ancestor in a search engine, especially if he or she has a common name. The following search strategies can help to narrow your search:

• To search for an exact phrase or name, put quotation marks around your search terms. For example, search on "John K. Doe" (typing the quotation marks into the search box). Also try putting the surname first and the given name second—“Doe, John K.”
• You many also want to try the name without middle initials.
• Remember to try alternate spellings, abbreviations, nicknames, and so forth.
• Try adding a place name or date to your search terms. For example, to find all the Werths from Chicago, enter a search phrase like Werth Chicago. 
• Try typing the family name, along with the word "genealogy" or "family history."

Consult Additional Sources

Five record types are especially rich in descendant information:

• census records
  
• wills (probate records)
  
• county and local histories
  
• church records
  
• obituaries

Census Records. Censuses show where a family lived. When you know where someone lived you can search for other records created for them in that place. Censuses also may list all living members of a family, and tell their relationship to the head of house.  The best researchers use ALL the censuses available for every member of a family.

Expert Tip: The U.S. 1900 and 1910 censuses give the number of children born to a mother, and how many were still living.

Wills and probate records. Some jurisdictions have wills or probate records useful to genealogists as early as the 1600s. Wills commonly list children by name. Even if your ancestor did not leave a will, a probate record containing a list of possible heirs may still exist. Wills and probate records are generally kept on a county level, so you will need to have some idea of where your ancestors died to find a will. 

County and local histories. County histories often identify families and some of their descendants.

Church records. Many churches kept christening (baptism) records showing a child and parents. If you can guess the denomination of your ancestor, look for church records.

Obituaries. By the 1870s local newspapers often published obituaries listing the surviving relatives of the deceased and sometimes their residence. 

Conclusion Finding the descendants of your ancestors can be rewarding. This approach to family history research will help you find hundreds of relatives you would have missed had you focused your research only on your ancestors. It might also provide the clues and information you need to get past dead ends in your search for ancestors. Descendancy research will help you locate living relatives you didn’t know about. You can collaborate with living relatives and share the workload with others. Learning about the children, grandchildren, and even the great-grandchildren of your ancestors gives you a more complete picture of your family.

• George D. Durrant, "Branching Out on Your Family Tree," Ensign, April 2007, 44-47.
• Sam Lower, "Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit," Ensign, April 2007, 46. 

Branching Out on Your Family Tree

By George D. Durrant

I remember, as a grandfather, having a picture taken of our family. Like other grandparents, I did not want a single descendant left out. What a task it was to arrange everyone’s schedule so we could all be in the same place at the same time. But it was worth it.

I think that is how most families feel. Grandparents love their children and grandchildren. They want to spend eternity with them. So why wouldn’t our ancestors feel the same way about their posterity? I think they would.

As Latter-day Saints, we have the priesthood power to provide temple ordinances that can seal families together forever. So just as my grandparents didn’t want to leave even one of their children or grandchildren out of the family portrait, they wouldn’t want to leave even one of them out of their eternal family.

Yet as we reach back through time on our pedigree, we sometimes provide the saving ordinances for only one child of each couple on our pedigree chart—the child who is our direct ancestor. We seal that child to his or her parents, but we forget about the rest of the children in that family. We leave our ancestral families like an incomplete family portrait with many empty spaces.

Tracking Descendants

Providing temple ordinances for relatives other than our direct ancestors is not a new direction. This article is simply a reminder that in addition to providing ordinances for our direct ancestors, we can also provide ordinances for the descendants of our direct ancestors. We should, however, be sensitive to the feelings of others and obtain permission from the closest living relative when submitting the names of deceased persons who were born within the last 95 years.

President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, wrote on July 14, 1994: “Members of the Church as individuals and families are responsible to identify their own direct-line ancestral families and see that temple ordinances are performed for them. They may also do family history research and temple work for their deceased relatives who are collaterally related (not their direct lines).”¹

Blessings and Clues

So why would anyone want to do family history for an ancestral family?

1. Some people feel that their family history has all been done. By choosing an ancestor on our pedigree chart and identifying the ancestor’s children and grandchildren, we will have the opportunity to experience the joy of doing family history work and providing temple ordinances for more of our own family members.

2. Records become scarcer as we research ancestors who lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When we do research in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we have more records available and, as a result, have more opportunity for success.

3. Since the families of the children and grandchildren often lived in the same area as grandparents, we can find the needed information with little extra work. This is an efficient use of research time.

4. Clues to ancestors are found in the records of their descendants. When you gather records of the descendants of an ancestor, you will have a better chance of finding clues of that ancestor than if you just search the records of one child or grandchild.

5. Meeting living cousins can be a blessing. All of you will learn more family stories and discover other family photos. You may also find out more about your common ancestors.

Rejoicing in Posterity

Attending the temple and doing vicarious work for a person who never had these temple ordinances in life is spiritually satisfying, but when we do this work for our own family members, the satisfaction is magnified. By seeking the descendants of a direct line ancestor, all of whom have a kinship relationship to us, our time spent in doing their temple work will have deeper meaning in our lives.

Perhaps you have already been approaching your family history in this broader way. If so, you already know the joy of seeing things through the eyes of your ancestors. You recognize that they would want to have their children and grandchildren with them eternally, just as we do. You may have even broadened your research to include great-grandchildren and beyond. The more of the members of an ancestral family for whom you are able to do temple work, the greater the joy and rejoicing your ancestors will be able to have in their posterity.

Helps for Home Evening

1. Create a game by hanging fruit at different heights, including some that are too high to reach. Have family members try to pick the fruit. At what height is the fruit easiest to pick? Read “Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit,” and discuss how family history research can produce great success when we identify family members who lived within the last 150 years.

Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit

By Sam Lower

My great-great-grandparents were born about 1800. Climbing that far up my family tree was fairly easy for me. Climbing higher up the family tree will be harder. So I thought about branching out. Have you? The fruit that is easiest to pick is in the lower branches of our family tree, among the descendants of our great-great-grandparents. Our success rate in the lower branches will be greater than in the higher branches.

For example, if we have an average of five children per family and come down five generations, we can expect to find 12,496 people.

Printing a descendancy chart will show you where to look for family members on the lower, more accessible branches of your family tree. By picking the low-hanging fruit, we will be able to identify more family members, provide temple ordinances for them, and seal their families together for eternity.

Relating to Recipes

Rhonda Gibb, a friend of mine from high school, was looking for a recipe. This is the story she shared on Facebook:

Notice that it didn't have to be perfect to be loved. (I'm assuming that baking sod is really soda and not some square of lawn that gets tossed into the mix!)

When David's mother was on hospice care, he asked for some of his favorite recipes to be included in her history book so that he would still have them after she was gone.  There is something comforting about food that ties us to tradition and those we love.

Food is one of the best conversation starters for oral history work. 

Here are a few family interview questions to get your creative juices flowing:

1. What is your favorite family recipe and why?
2. Is it part of a holiday tradition?
3. Whose recipe is it?
4. Did you make it with this person?
5. What did it smell like?
6. What does it taste like?
7. How long has it been in your family?
8. What’s the best part about the recipe? Making it? Eating it? Both? Why?
9. When is the last time you ate it?
10. Did the person hand-write the recipe? Where is the recipe now?

Rachel Trotter has written a great article on food:

What food takes you home?

Rocky Road fudge. When Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch thinks of this treat, he can almost taste home. When he was in a faraway land on his LDS Mission a few decades ago, he dreamed of the stuff, especially at Christmas. That’s why when his mother sent it to him with love, but it didn’t arrive until two months after Christmas, he picked the mold off and ate it anyway – best rocky road fudge he ever ate. The recipe was a family favorite, passed down from his grandma to his mother. Now it is a family favorite in his own family.

What’s your rocky road fudge? What is your family recipe that is home in your mouth? That morsel that the second you eat it, all the feelings of love, deliciousness and family tradition flash into your mind like a warm blanket on a winter’s night?

...[food] elicits specific memories, thoughts and questions.

What do food and recipes have to do with family history? So much! For [Rachel Trotter], when I think of food and recipes my mind goes immediately to cooking with both my grandmothers and my own mother – happy times of doing what we love and then eating it!

... I am deeply grateful that my extended family had the foresight to put a couple of family cookbooks together over the years because that is where a bulk of our cooking repertoire comes from and it shows. When Rockwood talked about family recipes, my mind immediately went to my tattered and torn ... Family cookbooks.

Challenge #1: write about what food means to you.

Challenge #2: upload a family recipe and story to family search.

(family search, top tab, find under Activies, In home, My family) 

Eat What They Ate

Eating the same foods your ancestors ate is a great way to connect with them and to experience in one small way what their life was like.

POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES

• Make your favorite meal. What about this meal makes it your favorite? Do you know your family members’ favorite meals?
• Cook a favorite family recipe. Talk about the story behind the recipe: where it came from, why it is part of your family story, and how and when you enjoy it.
• Eat a favorite food of one of your ancestors or a food from a place your ancestor is from. Consider eating an ancestor‘s favorite food on his or her birthday.
• Who is the oldest person in your family? Ask him or her if he or she has any family recipes to share.

GO DIGITAL

• Take a picture of the meal you made (your own or your ancestor’s) and put the photo and recipe on FamilySearch as a Memory.

Celebrate the holidays with a Heritage Dinner. Click to get recipe ideas from around the world.

[How did I get here? Family search home page, top left pop-up]

Note: these blog pages have beautiful photo illustrations, historical information and recipes that are sure to tantalize your tastebuds! (Thank-you Rachel Trotter! - for Finnish food)

Do you have a favorite family recipe? Upload it for future generations to enjoy!

with guest MaryJan Munger.

I've followed MaryJan on Facebook as she has posted recipes based on her family heritage.  She described the process to me thus:

"I choose a dinner (or at least a dish) I either know they've had from their records or, more often, one that they would likely have been familiar with, appropriate to the season [of] their birth. But I'm not religiously authentic.  I want things to taste good and be healthy for my family and not be too difficult to make. I meant to write my sketches beforehand and read them at the start of the dinner but I have rarely been able to pull that off. So I make the meal and then share the story when I get it written. 

"I've learned a lot about why certain recipes were common at certain times and in certain places.  It's made me aware of what kinds of things grew in different climates and some of the difficulties faced - and also how some cheap and ubiquitous choices are now difficult and expensive. And taking the time to look at each story from the point of view of each ancestor has shed interesting lights for me and certainly made them seem more real to me."

Examples...

Today is the birthday of Ann Jewell, the servant girl who married her widower employer and became Ann Rowley. We could have eaten boiled ship's biscuit in her memory but instead we made Cottage Pie for the lovely farmhouse she left in Worcestershire and Malvern Apple Pudding for the beautiful green hills she could see from the front step.

December 5, was my 3rd great grandmother's ... birthday: Ann Jewell Rowley, my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother's mother-in-law was born in the village of Leigh in Worcestershire, England, and she died in Huntington, Emory County, Utah. If you've heard the story of the Mormon handcart pioneers, you've heard her story -- not because her experience was so extraordinary, but because it was so representative. And maybe because she was particularly good at telling the story.

The prayed-over ship's biscuit that expanded to fill the Dutch oven and then the hungry stomachs of her eight fatherless children? And before that the gray-haired husband who answered, "But these are our neighbors, what harm can come to me?" to her plea that he not go out to talk to the angry mob? The precious featherbed saved from the auction of every worldly good, bundled up and borne miles and miles across the Atlantic, across half a continent, just to be ripped open on the frozen prairie, its feathers floating down like snow on snow, and the tick tucked around the sparse remaining belongings in a lightened handcart because when you came right down to it, a featherbed was just a featherbed but Zion was Zion? The sixteen-year-old son, collapsed on the snowy bank after returning over and over to carry others across the icy Platte River, whose mother refused to leave him, even when the company's captain insisted, "He's dead," pushing at him with a foot, her son suddenly opening his eyes? "I would be the happiest woman if I could reach Zion with all my children alive"?

Ann Jewell Rowley, every time.

Really, it's amazing we have so many details of her life considering she had to rely on others to put her remembrances down on paper.

I know the power of the retelling of those stories personally. Once, in a reenactment of that costly handcart trek, I sat down for a noonday rest with my back turned to the leaders of our modern well-supported trek who spoke about those early pioneers and then one of my friends began to tell Ann's story ... in first person. I felt the hair in my arms rise as that so familiar story unwound once more:

"Our handcarts were not designed for such heavy loads and we were constantly breaking down. They had been made of green lumber and were affected by the weather. Rawhide strips was used to wrap the iron rims to the wheels and the wood would shrink and the rawhide would come loose. It hurt me to see my children go hungry. I watched as they cut loose rawhide from the cart wheels, roast off the hair and chew the hide.

"There came a time, when there seemed to be no food at all. Some of the men left to hunt buffalo. Night was coming and there was no food for the evening meal. I asked God's help as I always did. I got on my knees, remembering two hard sea biscuits that were still in my trunk. They had been left over from the sea voyage, they were not large, and were so hard, they couldn't be broken. Surely, that was not enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and 2 fishes were not enough to feed 5000 people either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it. So, with God's help, nothing is impossible. I found the biscuits and put them in a dutch oven and covered them with water and asked for God's blessing, then I put the lid on the pan and set it on the coals. When I took off the lid a little later, I found the pan filled with food. I kneeled with my family and thanked God for his goodness."

(Though this story, I find, is actually word-for-word, except for "I" and "my" in the place of "my mother" and "her," from the life history of Ann's son Thomas.)

You can see yet another retelling of Ann's pioneer experience with the Willie handcart company in the movie "17 Miracles" and the documentary "The Sweetwater Rescue," as well as in various paintings, especially those of Glen Hawkins, a distant cousin.

***

Mary Ann Woodcock had her birthday back in October - in fact, she shares her day with her 3rd great grandson, my father - October 16th - but in 1804. If I could have found a different recipe from her birthplace in Birmingham, England, we would have commemorated Mary Ann a month or more ago. But I couldn't face pig trotters and so I've spent a month tracking down a source for pork liver to make faggots and peas - a dish that my dad's great grandparents were still making whenever they butchered a pig and used up everything but the squeal.

Essentially, these are meatballs spiced with nutmeg, allspice, sage, parsley and a pinch of cayenne and wrapped in caul fat (or lacking that, bacon), served with potatoes and gravy and peas. And surprisingly good - I was a little put off by the ground liver before making them.

Mary Ann too was a little put off by the prospect awaiting her. She was comfortably off in England, her husband a silversmith and also the manager of an iron foundry and her children able to attend school, though two boys had died as babies. Mary Ann and her husband had established "a family of means, never knowing want, and had very pleasant surroundings." Even when son Alfred lost three fingers when 13 in an accident while working with his father, steadying sheet iron through rollers, Mary Ann was not cowed by officious hospital staff who forbade food brought in from outside - instead Mary Ann sewed a deep pocket in her underskirt and slipped him dainties to keep his spirits up.

***

the Baked Cranberry Pudding was truly wonderful. Amen to the words of some distant Day cousin:

"from the Original Day Family cookbook

"This is one of our all-time favorite family desserts. We used to have our own little cranberry patch out beyond the barn at what is now the Roger Day family farmhouse. That is gone now, but we still make this dessert, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas."

Baked Cranberry Pudding with Butter Sauce - perfect balance of tart and sweet, rich and plain.

***

Pumpkins were such a mainstay of the Massachusetts Pilgrims and their descendants that they even wrote a song about it:

"Stead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies

Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,

We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,

If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon."

And so to honor Miranda Jones, born ...16 November 1784 in Berlin, Massachusetts, on the far eastern edge of Worcester County, we chose two historic pumpkin recipes from the plethora offered by Old Sturbridge Historic Village in Worcester County, Massachusetts: Gourd Soup and Winter Squash Pudding (both delicious!)

***

PS I can just imagine my descendants centuries from now reading through my journal entries and asking "What is Costco? And where can we find some..."

Saving family favorites on family search:

I tag our "family favorites recipe"(s) when I add them to family search. (In case my descendants don't know which ancestor I attached the recipe to!) That way when I search for them, it will pull up all recipes thus tagged.  I like to include photos of the dish, but even more, people making or posing with the dish!  If there is a fun story attached to the recipe, tell it!

example: David - oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

                David/Linnea - strawberry pie glaze (you can tag more than 1 person!)

                

Did someone else use your same tag? You can make your tag unique or search only your close relatives...

After David's mom died, there was something comforting about making her gingerbread house recipe for Christmas.  It was as if a part of her could still be with us.

        see Jackie - Mom's gingerbread house (photo, pattern, recipe)

What traditional foods do you still make? Where did that tradition start?

        see Sue Huber - pizzellas

What recipes are your kids always calling home to get a copy of? Include those in your memories!

Insight from Mary Jan (posted 29 Sept 2018):

A strange thing is happening as I take an hour or so on their birthdays to learn about, think about, write about each ancestor up to five generations back. I can see in their photos traces of my own parents' and grandparents' faces, in their actions and recorded words traces of myself. Where I have thought of myself as a solitary unit, bulletting through time and space with a definite beginning and end, I'm starting to feel my sense of self expanding, spreading. I am a quivering leaf on a tree too big to imagine. Or at most, I am a fruit, full of seed, streaked and reddened by my own position toward the sun, but wobbling with the tossing of larger branches, pulling from roots I can't begin to see.

Recipe Idea from Rhonda Lauritzen:

She sent out a Christmas card with a photo, recipe, and a bit of family history!

Rachel Trotter lists 3 reasons why Holiday Food and stories go together:

1. Holiday food traditions bring memories of Christmases past that we cherish.

2. Holiday food traditions teach us about our heritage, an important part of our story.

3. Holiday food traditions unite family and friends in a very unique, uplifting way. 

Sometimes the unitedness comes in the preparations, sometimes it comes in the eating of the food... Santa Claus punch is a mixture of cran-raspberry drink, sprite, vanilla ice cream and raspberry sherbet.

What can you learn from recipes? How about character traits! Watch Recipe for Success...