Mt Jordan 4th Ward Family History Class 6/24/2018

Updated LDS Media Library 2.0 and Today's Family History Class Notes:

The church has updated it's Media Library App. You can download Conference Videos or other church videos and trim them down to what you want to use for your lesson.  You can also organize your clips and download them at home, so you can present them at church without having to rely on the church's WiFi.  Yay!  So look for the pink LDS Media Library Icon in your app store.   It is available for Apple and Android devices.

                               

In today's class, we talked about reserving names for Temple Work.  I have included a link to the article on the Family Search website.  Top things to remember:

• You can reserve names for just two years. 
• If you cannot complete the temple work for your ancestor within two years, consider sharing with a family member.  You can email them and if they accept the invitation you send them, the two -year clock is reset.  It will also remove the person from your reservation list and add it to theirs.  
• https://www.familysearch.org/ask/salesforce/viewArticle?urlname=Temple-two-year-policy&lang=en

See you next week for the start of our new 8 week Family History class.  Yes, we are starting over from the beginning!  

As always, feel free to leave a comment or question.  http://mediasrv.lds.org/media-services/ML/size/5646169106001/1280/720/1379628

Mt Jordan 4th ward Family History Class Notes and Tip Sheets 

Today in class we talked about the importance of being the link between generations.  Our children and grandchildren may never know their ancestors unless we tell them the stories.  One way to engage the younger generation is through video.  

I showed two videos I made for Father's Day, and let the class decide which one they liked best.  I encourage you to try it out using whatever software you like.  I used Adobe Spark and Animoto which both offer free trial memberships.  

Another way to reach the younger generation is to tell stories.  Tell stories of what it was like when you were growing up.  Telling how you overcame trials and difficulties will help them to know that they too can overcome their struggles.  

An article on Family Search explains that knowing family stories builds resilience in kids.  Check out the article by clicking on the link below.  

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-2/

We talked about MyHeritage.com today.  I hope you will take the opportunity this week to sign up for your partner account through Family Search.  I have included a link to an article that gives tips on using My Heritage.  If you are not LDS, you can sign up by going to Myheritage.com

https://thefhguide.com/project-1-welcome-mh.html

And finally, this video is my way of thanking all the Dads out there, and the men who step in to fill those shoes when needed.
Please leave a comment and let me know how you like the blog and if you have any questions.

Why I don't like Father's Day

"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation."  Joel 1:3

https://spark.adobe.com/video/uL51HWs9qC1f0

This video was made with Adobe Spark.  I signed up for a free account.
Pro:

• Very easy to upload photos, especially from Google photo
• I just created a new album in Google Photo and uploaded the entire thing.  
• Quick and easy to use, it took about an hour to do video.
• Ability to add audio.

Con:

• Music selection limited.
• No photo editor.
• Limits number of photos.
• In order to create a link to share in this blog, I had to share it as a story to Adobe's platform.  

https://animoto.com/play/0nwO8nzydLH5O3h69lK50w

This video was made with Animoto.  Also a free account.

Pro:

• Has a photo editor
• Music selection is better.
• Able to add more photos
• Easy to rearrange photos.
• Lovely layering affect, other photos become background.

Con:

• Annoying watermark!
• No way to add audio to video.
• Not as much room to write, very short captions.
• Difficult and time consuming to upload photos.  
• Doesn't upload albums from Google photo.  
• Took 3 hours to figure out how to get photos uploaded and finish video.  

Remember if this is too complicated you can always use your smartphone to record a memory about a father in your family.  I have attached a link for instructions on uploading audio to Memories section of Family Search.  https://www.familysearch.org/ask/salesforce/viewArticle?urlname=Adding-Audio-in-Memories&lang=en
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.

I never got to say good-bye.

Marguerite Bolobas Woolcott Mahoney

The first funeral I ever attended was yours.

I had planned to kiss your cheek,

as you lay there, all dressed up.

But when I touched your hand,

it was so cold I couldn’t do it.

I walked away without saying a word.

I didn’t get to the hospital in time

to see you before you died.

I missed you slowly suffocating

from emphysema,

your face turning dusky blue.  

The morphine and oxygen

were supposed to keep you

from feeling that you were breathing

through a very small coffee stirrer.

In the end, I’m glad I missed it,

but I never got to say goodbye.  

You sent me a check each year

on my birthday.  

It went up one dollar every year as I grew up.

I asked my mom once,

“Did she really give you a check for a dollar

on my first birthday?”

“No”, she said, “she gave me cash.”

By the time I was 10,

it was almost worth cashing.  

By the time I was 20, I was surprised.  

How did you ever find me?

I moved a lot, and yet every year,

your check was there.

By the time I was 30, it was even getting to be

a decent amount of money.  

But then you died.

I never thanked you for taking the time

to remember my birthday.

To send me a check every year.  

I know now, what it meant.  

It meant you were thinking of me,

all the way across the country.

You knew how old I was

and where I was living.  

You made sure I knew,

that you knew.  

It meant you loved me.

I love you too, Grandma.  

In my last post, I wrote about Jesse Buchanan and how he died in 1918.  My great great grandmother  Mary Ann "Molly" Stephenson Buchanan had received a telegram on October 30, 1918 with the dire news about her sons deteriorating condition.  Unfortunately, Jesse died soon after the telegram was sent.

Telegram sent to my gg grandmother that Jesse was seriously ill.  

With further research I determined that Jesse was not the only one of Mary Ann's children to die of the Spanish Flu.  I uncovered the death certificate of Jesse's older sister Addie Marie Buchanan and discovered that she died from "Lagrippe" which is an old-fashioned word for Influenza. According to Wikipedia, the Spanish Flu outbreak that killed hundreds of thousands in the U.S. lasted from January of 1918 to December of 1920. 

Addie Buchanan death certificate.

I try to imagine what it must have been like for Mary Ann to lose two of her children from the same illness within two years. Jesse at the beginning of the epidemic, and Addie at the end. Sadly,  we know that when she died, Addie left a husband and 5 children from the ages of 4-15. 

Jesse Buchanan and the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918

On Oct 30th, 1918 my great-great grandmother  Mary Ann "Mollie" Stephenson Buchanan received a telegram with terrible news.  Her 29 year old son Jesse was seriously ill with Pneumonia  caused by the Spanish flu.  October of 1918 was the height of the Spanish flu epidemic sweeping the United States and the world.  It has been almost 100 years since the pandemic, and it's hard for us to understand just how devastating it was.  

The 1918 flu pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza outbreak.  500 million people around the world were infected, resulting in the deaths of 3-5 percent of the worlds population.  (50-100 million!)  It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
  ^{]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic}

In San Antonio where Jesse was living, between September 30-Nov 7th, 7,391 cases were reported and there were 500 deaths. Hospitals were strained to the breaking point.  At Robert G. Green Memorial Hospital for San Antonio's and Bexar County's indigent, 18 student nurses tended to 140 influenza patients, since the 12 regular nurses there were ill.  
 https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-sanantonio.html#

All schools and churches were closed, and public gatherings cancelled.  The "second wave" of the Spanish flu began in October 1918.  The virus had mutated and was much more deadly.  ]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

We don't know a lot about Jesse, but in the 1910 census he was living with his widowed mother and his brother Otis in Ellis County, Texas.  He was 20 years old and single and working as a laborer. https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10132-79765887-/jesse-m-buchanan-in-1910-united-states-federal-census?s=500285941&indId=individual-500285941-2500804#fullscreen 

By 1915 he was living in San Antonio and working in farming.  He lived there until his death.  It is not known if he was married or had children. 

Unfortunately for Jessie Buchanan and his family, he died October 31, 1918 sometime after his mother received the telegram, from complications of the Spanish Flu.  I only hope his mother was able to see him one last time.  

Mt Jordan 4th ward Family History Class #1

Notice who's hiding in the back? My grandma Nellie Virginia Guinn. 

Thank you for visiting my blog, in case you missed the class, here is the information and assignments:

Information we covered: Familysearch.org

• If you don't have an account, sign up with your membership number to get all of the benefits of partner access sites.
• You can also use the same log in as LDS Tools.
• We talked about navigation tools.  (see handout)
• Memories Section
• January 2018 Ensign article:  "Family History at your Fingertips".
• Camera teams from the Church are capturing 500 million records per year.
• 1 million records a day are being digitized.  (they need to be indexed!)
• President George Q Cannon taught those who are joining the church are  joining because their Ancestors have been praying for someone to do their work.  (Quoted by Wendy Nelson at Rootstech 2017)
• We have access to 80% more data than 50 years ago.  
• For 63 direct line ancestors you may have up to 38,000 cousins that need temple work done!
• Even Pioneer or well-researched lines are only 1 % complete. 
• FamilySearch.org is ONE big world tree.  It is meant to encourage us to collaborate with our family members/cousins to do the work.  Other people can edit your work.  Sources are important!  There are lots of errors.  Don't believe any information that is not sourced!
• Living people cannot be seen by anyone else.  Their information is private. 
• Contact Sister Wendy Almond,  our ward Family History Consultant for 1:1  help. 

Homework (choose one):

• Pray and ask that the Holy Spirit guide your efforts in Family History work.
• Log in and take a look at your tree
• If you don't have an account, create one.  
• Check that your information and that of your children is complete and correct
• Keep a journal.
• Start your life story.
• Interview a relative, or yourself.  Record on your cell phone and upload to Memories.
• Label some family photos.
• Upload photos to Family Search Memories.
• Get youth involved by asking them to help you use the technology.  
• Come prepared next week to share a success story!

Links to Resources:  

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2018/01/family-history-at-your-fingertips?lang=eng

https://www.thefhguide.com/vault.html#1-1 Click here to visit the Family History Guide to get detailed instructions on computer basics as well as getting started in FamilySearch.  The Family History guide is approved by Family Search.  

Mabel Lyles Beall

White Church Cemetery Gate

My great grandmother Mabel died on Dec 11, 1920, at age 38. She married John Morgan Buchanan in 1902.  They were the parents of five children, George, Roy, Floy, James, and Mildred.  According to her death certificate she died of "pulmonary TB". Her youngest child Mildred was 10 years old at the time.

TB was also known as "consumption" or "galloping consumption".  Most patients were feverish and emaciated, their constant coughing causing pain in the lungs.  Coughing up thick white sputum in the beginning, and then coughing up blood.  Most had fevers and diarrhea and became very thin and pale causing their cheekbones to become prominent, and their eyes to look large.  Fatigue could be so severe that they could not get out of bed.  In Texas during the early 1900's, 4,000 people died of TB each year.  

It wasn't until 1882 that it was proven by Koch, that the disease was contagious.  Before that, it was thought to be hereditary, in other words, something you were born with.  After it became public knowledge that it could be easily spread through sputum, TB patients were isolated, and Sanitariums were built to house sufferers away from the general population and their families.  There was no cure at the time, and TB patients were treated with fresh air, rest and good food.  There were also lung surgeries performed including deflating the lungs in an attempt to stop the disease.  

TB patients wasted away over a period of time.  It was not usually a quick death.  As you can see from her death certificate, Mabel suffered for over a year with this disease.  During that time she was probably isolated in a Sanitarium and eventually died there.  

Mabel's Death Certificate

A cure for TB was not discovered until the 1950's.  With the new antibiotics, most people got well and went on to live normal lives.  This was 30 years too late for Mabel.  

 Her fourth child and youngest son was my grandfather,  James Lyles Buchanan.  Family stories tell that he left home at age eight in about 1915. He told his daughter (my mother) that his mother Mabel died in a Sanatorium. That makes sense in light of her TB diagnosis.

 Mabel's mother Geraldine, had been a patient at the North Texas Hospital for the Insane for over 20 years and died Jan 20, 1920. 11 Months later, Mabel died. A very sad time for the family. Could the added stress of her mother's death had an impact on Mabel's health deteriorating? I also wonder if she could have been a patient in the same Hospital/Sanatorium her mother was in?

 Mabel's daughter Floy was born in 1915.  She was given the middle name of Geraldine, even though her grandmother had been a patient in an Insane Asylum for around 5 years.  This naming gives a clue that Mabel still felt close enough to her mother to name a daughter after her.  
Mabel is buried in the White Church Cemetery in Merkel, Texas.  I have not been able to find a picture of her headstone.
  Mabel's husband John Morgan Buchanan, remarried in 1925. Thus providing a stepmother for Mildred who would have been 15.