I may have mentioned that
one of the things we have done while out on the mission is offer to help people
with their family history. We have neighbors just down the road from us, a father
and son, the wife and mother passed away several years ago. I have been helping
them with their family history and helped the son who is more computer
literate, get registered on family search.
I have worked on their lines
off and on as time allowed, last week, I was able to get one of their lines back
to royalty, I noticed that one of the lines went back as far as 300 AD. They
were pretty excited and were saying things like you can now call me King
Richard, or Sir William or Duke of Sugar Lakes. We have visited them a number
of times and become good friends and they know we are missionaries for the
Church, however, this was the first time we were able to turn the discussion
into a gospel discussion. We were able to explain to them a little bit about why
we search out our ancestors. We are hopeful that this will lead to more gospel
discussions, but if not at least they will have some of that work researched. We
are counting on their ancestors influencing them from the other side as well.
Today after church we were
taking our walk around the neighborhood, and the father saw us coming and ran
out to meet us. He was anxious to tell us he had found a birth certificate for
his mother. This was one of the lines I was having difficulty with because the
grandfather had been married three times and I was unclear on who was the
grandmother. They are excited about family History, the spirit of Elijah is active
with them, the hearts of the Children shall turn to the fathers.
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/the-hearts-of-the-children-shall-turn?lang=eng
I looked up a few facts and
or google search headlines on family history. I wanted to find facts or
information that I could use as a way to engage people in conversation on the
topic. Some people are more willing to talk about family history than religion.
So here are a few interesting family
history/Genealogy search results I found:
Paying subscribers to Ancestry.com have increased by 195%
since 2009. Family Trees experienced a 563% growth.
Interest in family history is
undergoing an unprecedented boom, fuelled by archives on the internet, websites
devoted to helping would-be genealogists and the popularity of BBC1's Who Do
You Think You Are?
Suddenly,
"Who's your daddy?" has become a $1.6 billion question: That's the
amount that European private equity firm Permira said it would pay earlier this
week to acquire U.S. genealogical website Ancestry.com—a 40 percent
premium over the trading price of Ancestry's stock.
Genealogy is hot. The same
hobby that once was the preferred pastime of shut-ins, spinsters and confirmed
bachelors has become widely popular. "It's no longer a niche," says
Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry. He tells ABC News the site now has more than 2
million paid subscribers. Ancestry will report a billion dollars in revenue for
2012. "There's a broad, mainstream interest in family history,"
Sullivan says.
Hard numbers are difficult to
come by, but hobby experts believe that genealogy ranks second only to
gardening as American's favorite pastime.
As for how much bigger it might
grow in future, Sullivan says: "Think about the last big family
Thanksgiving dinner you attended. If there were 18 people, chances are that at
least one of them is interested in family history. If you apply that same
metric to our existing market, we think there are 20 million potential
customers for our services. Today, we're serving on 2 million. We think there's
tremendous potential."
The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) could be, if they wished to, a huge financial
beneficiary of genealogy's new-found popularity.
The
Mormons have amassed one of the world's greatest genealogical archives, and
researchers from around the world make wide use of it, either online or in
person in Salt Lake City. But they do so free of charge. The church, though a
service called FamilySearch, provides access at no
cost.
"They
give free, unfettered access," explains Jordan Jones, president of the National Genealogical Society,
based in Arlington, Va. "You and I, maybe, would be more mercenary. But
they see this as an opportunity of a different kind."
The benefit the Church enjoys
is an expansion of its posthumous congregation, says Robert Raymond of
FamilySearch. If a living Mormon can establish a family relationship to someone
deceased, then the deceased can be welcomed into the faith retroactively,
though this practice is somewhat controversial. Says Raymond, "The idea is
to give families the choice to go on in family relationships after death."
Family history is booming
today at least in part because the internet is booming, and the two go
hand-in-glove.
Interest in Genealogy is
growing all over the world and will grow 36% by 2020
2.3 Billion dollars was
spend on Genealogy in 2012.
Amateur genealogists will
spend between $1,000 and $18,000 looking for ancestors this year.
2700 Different blogs are
listed on Geneabloggers
At least 10,000 Ancestry DNA
tests are being administered every month.
The genealogy gems podcast
has been down loaded over 1,000,000 times in over 75 different countries.
