The Happiest Place on Earth

For months now I've thought of blogging about my family history experiences.  Recently I've been yearning to go again to the place that I once heard S. Michael Wilcox call "the happiest place on earth."  No, it's not Disneyland.  It's the Family History Library.  As I was reminiscing about the good old days when I would gleefully spend hours at a time in its underground troves, only surfacing for chocolate milk and nut mix in the snack room, I realized that happy memories of the FHL could be the subject of my initial blog post.

I started working on my family history in 1988 when my third child was a baby, but I didn't start going to the Family History Library until my fifth and youngest went to school ten years later.  For about eight years, until I began working full-time, I made the one hour drive to Salt Lake City regularly to spend most of a school day there.  During the school year I went at least monthly and sometimes weekly, gathering information to sort and analyze at home in between trips.  Summers were long periods of drought.  A few time I was able to convince my younger elementary school age children to come along with me.  They were good for a couple of hours with books to read and the promise of treats afterwards.  Andrea was old enough to read the cursive handwriting in the civil registration records and help with the research.  Ryan and Carrie found films and refiled them in the cabinets with the help of the library rolling step stools.

Most often I went to the library with friends.  Barbara was always willing to rearrange her schedule and come along.  We would discuss our research plans for the day on the drive there and then discuss findings on the drive home.  Barbara is great at remembering and analyzing detail and gave me lots of good ideas.  The car conversations were so valuable!  She was having such success researching her Scottish ancestors that I began to wish I had some Scots of my own. Since I don't have any, I borrowed from my husband and worked on the McCloys for years.  Barbara and I especially enjoyed going to the library in December.  There are very few people there and extra good things seemed to happen when we were focusing on the eternal instead of the material during those weeks.

Pat began going to the library with us.  I spent a lot of time helping her read and understand the records and she became very proficient, excitedly sharing each new bit of information she found.  I got to know her family as well as she did.  When she was diagnosed with cancer, she could no longer research her family.  The week that she died I felt that I should continue her research.  I went to the library alone with her files and sat down at a computer there to work.  I began finding information faster than I could record it and felt her there helping me.  Little phrases that she had said to me in the past would pop into my head at appropriate times.  Things like, "Linda, will you help me look at this record, your eyes are better than mine" and "thank you so much for helping me."  It was a wonderful experience.

One time I was cranking through a microfilm reel at top speed trying to get to where the book about my family surname was at the end of the reel.  I paused to give my cranking arm a rest and was astounded to find information on the screen in front of me on a different branch of my family, exactly at the spot in the film where I had stopped.

Not all days were successful, though. One day after a few hours of fruitless research, I stopped in the restroom before leaving the library.  I was thinking how I had wasted my time that day when I heard someone whistling "If You Could Hie to Kolob."  That hymn was the song that I mentally sang to myself whenever I felt discouraged.  I felt like a whistling angel was reminding me to keep things in perspective.

I've also spent time in the library with my parents, my sisters, and my older brother.  My new son-in-law solidified his place in my heart when he asked for help researching his family and scheduled a trip to the library. A one-day workshop hands-on workshop on Swedish records changed my life.  I was nervous about the idea of researching in a language I didn't know.  I convinced my younger sister to come to the workshop with me because two brains are better than one.  We learned how to research in the online records so well that I didn't need to go to the library as often.  That was the beginning of the future for me.  Now I do much of my research in online sources, many digitally provided from the library's collection, only going to the library once or twice a year.  I miss it.