A Successful Family History FHE, Deconstructed

We have gotten a bit lazy as of late. Quite a few of of our Family Home Evenings have ended up being a run to In-n-Out and/or a the movie theater. While I enjoy both of those things immensely, I was feeling that we needed to add some “meat” to our FHE. (FHE is meant to be more than just play time.) Well, last night we did. We had a Family History FHE, where I, the Family History Ninja, taught everybody else some of the finer points of finding family names.

***Note: This was not just an exercise in trolling for green temple icons.  I wanted the kids to find, and enter their own work, rather than just harvesting other people’s efforts.

It went remarkably well, so I decided that I might as well deconstruct it for you, in case you are looking for ideas. And to help, I have included a photo, with detailed instructions, because it was a little bit harder than it looks… (I know, the photo quality is terrible. I wasn’t planning on doing this when I took it.)

#1: A Dairy Queen cup. A Medium Banana Cream Pie Blizzard to be more precise. FHE – gotta have refreshments, right? As a bit of a downer, we were informed by the perky employee at the drive thru that DQ has discontinued any and all mint flavoring in their product line. I have been unable to verify this, but if it turns out to be true, DQ will no longer offer Mint Oreo Blizzards.  The way FOML5 phrased it:  “Dairy Queen is dead to me.”

#2 This is a paper chain that was made last week for my High School senior.  Each link represents one day remaining of his HS career. Let’s just say he has a mild case of Senioritis.

#3 This is my eldest son. He was hanging out with us because his wife was busy saving lives at the hospital (ER-RN)

#4 These are ribbons attached to mylar balloons from FOML4’s eighteenth birthday last week. (Dollar store rules!)

Now that those things are out of the way, here are the FHE details.

#5,6,7,8,9 – Everyone had access to their own computer. Yes, you may need to beg, borrow, steal or double up.

• Before we began, I assumed that everyone had an LDS.org account. However, having an account, and being able to remember how to log in are very different animals. Check this in advance, or it can be a huge time suck. (I love you, Sweetheart.)

• Also, before we began, I emailed everyone a link to the following website:  www.tinyurl.com/ldeeqjn. I had them log in, and look for this button:

That is the button for LDS members to get a free account at Ancestry.com. I really like Ancesty.com, as I find it easier to dig deep in the records there. You will use your same LDS.org credentials to set up and log into your Ancestry.com account.

• Next, I had them open FamilySearch and Ancestry in two different windows (not tabs) so they could bounce back and forth.

• Then, we all clicked through our family tree together, step by step. It was nice having everyone on the same screen at the same time. I took them to a place where one of the lines stopped with the name of a seemingly unmarried ancestor. We had his name, birthdate and place of birth.

• We switched over to the Ancestry screen and did a search using those items. We quickly found our man in the 1851 England Census. Surprise! We also found his wife and six sons.

• We then verified that info by looking at the next censes records (1861, 1871) and also found several birth and christening records as well.

• Everyone chose one of the names. My EC took the wife, and my boys all took one of the sons. We then went back to FamilySearch and checked to see if they were already in the system. They weren’t – except mine.

We created the family, entered the children’s names, and saw those magical green temples pop up.

• HOWEVER, before I let anybody grab the names for ordinance, we sourced the material back to the census and birth records.

• HOWEVER 2, then we checked each record for duplicates to make sure we weren’t gumming up the works.

…there were lots of duplicates. Most were standalone records that had come from extraction. We compared, merged and cleaned things up.

• THEN we went in and reserved the names for temple ordinances. One son already printed out his form to take to the temple, where he will get his cards printed to perform ordinances.

 

• After everyone was finished, I went in and double-checked to make sure we got it right. Sloppy FamilySearch files bug me.

 

The morning after evaluation?  I think it was good. Everyone did things had not done before, including adding a name, finding proof, and requesting ordinances. Also, searching for duplicates, and how to get access to Ancestry were good things to learn. It did take some up-front legwork to get things ready, but I laid most of that out for you here.

It was not easy trying to walk five people through the process at the same time, but it had its advantages, especially with everyone having their own screen and accounts. Now, to keep track of the names generated across five accounts…

Also, now each of us has a name that is “ours” and each of those names probably has a wife and kids that need to be found. I’m hoping they will catch the bug and try and complete each family, generating many more ordinances that they can take to the temple themselves.  That is one of the goals of parenting: to render yourself obsolete – right?

There you go – that is a recap of our foray into family history for FHE. I am glad to know that my kids understand how to dig a little deeper than just gleaning. That said, if you haven’t done anything, or have younger kids, the search fro green temples is a great way to start.

Assuming you already began with Dairy Queen.

 

 

 

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