ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050040
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PEMBROKE
SOURCE: By BOB MORGAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
For many, the search for ancestors can be an emotional experience.
That yearning to connect to family brings people each week to The Family History Center in the Mormon Church in Pembroke, one of 2,850 such centers around the world.
One local volunteer at the center, Charlene Long of Pearisburg, has even traced her family back to John Rolfe and Pocahontas.
For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such ties are more than mere curiosity or bragging rights.
These families make covenants in church temples to continue their relationships beyond the grave, so the family will remain united throughout eternity. Church members can also make covenants for ancestors they have not known - but to do this they must identify them first.
The Mormon Church teaches that God would like all of his children "sealed" as family units. These sealings are based in large part on genealogical research.
The church's genealogical records, which are also available to the general public, can be transferred from one Family History Center to another on microfilm, compact discs and other information systems. Microfilm originals are kept in a vault in the mountains near the church's famous headquarters in Salt Lake City. ("Something like Fort Knox," one of the volunteers at Pembroke said.)
Ted Johnson Jr., a lifelong resident of Pearisburg and for 16 years clerk of the Giles County Circuit Court, directs the Pembroke Center. "This is where I learned about genealogy," said Johnson, who was a Mormon bishop for five years before becoming director of the Family History Center in 1993.
Two other volunteers are John and Carolyn Cosgriff of Christiansburg, authors of "Turbo Genealogy: The Computer Enhanced 'How to Find Your Roots' Handbook," published by Progenesys Press in Christiansburg, which describes the steps in the Mormon system. John Cosgriff is associate professor and reference librarian at Virginia Tech. His wife heads a computer-based genealogical research firm.
To find information in the Mormon system, a client starts with living family members and works backward in time using family interviews and records.
Data in this detective search come from many sources including:
* Family Bibles, old photos, albums, maps, letters.
* Newspaper clippings and newspaper files.
* Government, state and local records, town histories, including tax records and wills.
* Church records including christenings, marriages and burials.
* Cemetery records including tombstone inscriptions.
* Court proceedings, census data, military records, naturalization records, ship passenger lists and many more.
It is a step-by-step job - a name at a time, a date, a place and so on - all being entered into the church's data files. If you want to use the Family History Center, to see if one of your ancestors was a member of one of the First Families of Virginia or possibly came over on the Mayflower, volunteers at the Family History Center will show you how to get into the computer program and how to use the records. But you have to do the research.
The church's easily accessed records, however, mean genealogy is no longer the province of the aristocracy but has become a democratic science.
The Family History Center is open to the public from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Another center is located in Salem. There is no charge for using the center and only minimal charges for records from elsewhere in the worldwide network.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. Ted Johnson Jr., a lifelong resident ofby CNBPearisburg and for 16 years clerk of the Giles County Circuit Court,
directs the Pembroke Family History Center.