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Baptisms
for the Dead—A Forgotten Record For Finding Early LDS Ancestry
by
James W. Petty, A.G., C.G.R.S., B.S. (Genealogy)
Here's
a clue for filling in some of the blank spaces in your family history.
In 1840, William
Schofield of Halifax, Yorkshire, England, heard the gospel of Jesus
Christ from two Mormon missionaries from America, and his life changed.
He listened to their sermons, studied their scriptures, and took
the information home to his wife and children to share this glorious
new message of hope.
On Christmas
day, December 25th, 1840 he was baptized a member of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His wife Hannah
Gregson Schofield didn't receive the gospel as readily, but William's
enthusiasm and desire won her over, and she was baptized June 24th,
1841, two weeks after their eldest son John was baptized. The family
welcomed the Church into their lives, and began organizing all of
their activities around it. Like other Saints in England, they dreamt
of traveling to Zion and making their home near the Prophet of God.
Eventually, they saved their money, sold their home, and made arrangements
to travel to America and begin their new lives with the other members
of the Church in Utah. Arriving in 1860, William and his family
settled in Spring City, San Pete County.
Nearly sixty
years old, William took on the challenges of a new home in a new
world. He was raised in the city, but became a farmer. He also participated
in the religious practices of the Church in Zion. In 1865 he and
Hannah traveled to Salt Lake City and received their endowments
in the old Endowment House. Several years later, William returned
to Salt Lake City with his daughter, and performed baptisms for
the dead for a number of his family members in England, who had
died without hearing the gospel, recalling from memory their names
and relationships.
William passed
away in Spring City on Jan. 14, 1889 at the age of 84. His family
remained in Utah, but only the family of his son John stayed active
in the Church. Like may early members of the Church, the second
generation of their family did not share the dedication and enthusiasm
for Church membership as their parents had. Maybe it was simply
the traditional rebellion that many children experience in relation
to their parents; but in any case William's children for the most
part, drifted away from church activity. Son John's children rebelled
against their parents generation, and pushed the memories and teachings
of their fathers away. The result was that four or five generations
later, a hundred years, descendants of William Schofield and Hannah
Gregson look back on their family history, and discover many large
gaps in the collective knowledge, because the record was lost and
forgotten by the generations that followed William and Hannah.
The
Blank Spaces
This problem is not unique to the Schofield family. It is a common
occurrence for LDS families to look back on their genealogy and
find blank spaces where family history should be. Many of these
families are amazed and shocked to discover that after a century
of membership in the Church, little is known about the genealogy
of their original Church ancestors; perhaps nothing more than was
told by those early saints to their children. William Schofield
is a good example of that loss of family memory. His descendants
knew from his church membership records that he was born Dec. 8,
1804 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England, the son of William Schofield
Sr. and Sarah Schofield. That is the information William related
to his Spring City Ward Clerk.
A century later,
that was still all that was known. Earlier family members while
tracing the family genealogy may have studied the parish registers
of Halifax, England, only to discover there were several William
Schofields that lived in that area at the same time. It was a big
city for its day, and Schofields were all over the place. They may
have found the marriage record of William's parents, William Schofield
Sr. and Sarah Schofield on June 3, 1798; but that only increased
the problem. Sarah Schofield was a common name too. Who were their
families out of all of the other Schofields that were out there?
The multiplicity of Williams and Sarah was confusing, and others
of those names appeared in neighboring parishes and communities.
Identifying
the families and genealogy of immigrant ancestors through research
is challenging for any culture. Most people leave their homeland
and their parents, siblings and extended families, hoping to correspond
and keep in touch with loved ones. It seldom works out that way.
The old saying "Out of Sight; Out of Mind" is sadly very true. And
correspondence or other family records are too soon lost or discarded,
and the names of more distant family are soon forgotten. The key
to unlocking the family historical memory is finding a source that
reveals names and relationships of people in the homeland to the
immigrant ancestor.
The most important
sources for identifying the genealogy of early LDS pioneers are
the records of ordinances performed for the dead in the temples
of the Church. Of particular importance are the records of the baptisms
for the dead, performed in Nauvoo; the Endowment House prior to
1876; and then in each of the early temples at Logan, Manti, St.
George, and Salt Lake City, and so on, until the 1940's. These baptisms
for the dead temple records are one of the key sources for tracing
early LDS ancestry, but for many genealogists they are forgotten.
Why
Forgotten
The reason they are forgotten is because in today's world of temple
ordinances, every name for which baptisms are performed in the temples,
receive other ordinances including the Endowment. Therefore, most
people assume that this has always been the case. But it is not.
Baptism, by proxy, for the dead, was a doctrine introduced to the
members of the Church at Nauvoo, Illinois in 1842. The first baptisms
for the dead were performed in the Mississippi River in that year.
Subsequent baptisms were performed in the Nauvoo Temple, and later
in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City from 1855 to 1876. During
that time no Endowments for the dead were performed, only for the
Living. Endowments and other work for the dead did not begin until
the opening of the St. George Temple in 1877, and in other temples
after that. Thousands of names of the relatives of early converts
to the Church only received proxy baptisms, and never received any
further ordinances. Many of these names were forgotten or lost due
to the deaths of pioneers who knew them and the poor record keeping
of that day.
Not
in the T.I.B.
For many years the Church maintained a file known as the
T.I.B. (Temple Index Bureau). This was an index of the endowments
performed for both living and dead in the various temples of the
Church from the 1840's up to 1970. It was created and utilized to
help members of the Church determine which temple ordinances were
previously completed for their families, so they wouldn't duplicate
previously done ordinances. A belief or misunderstanding developed
among members of the Church that the T.I.B. listed all names for
which temple work had been done. But they were mistaken. Thousand
of names that were recorded in the temple baptismal rolls, never
appeared in the T.I.B.
In the early
days of the Church, actually the first eighty or so years, members
of the Church were responsible for seeing that all temple work started
by their families was completed. Large temple books were kept, or
were supposed to have been kept, by each family, showing names and
information for which baptisms, endowments, and sealings had been
done. The temples kept their own records of the ordinances completed,
but those weren't readily available to the public. Nor was there
a way to keep track of work completed from temple to temple.
Many
Baptisms, Few Endowments
Now another fact about temple ordinances comes into play. Time.
In the early horse and buggy days, travel to and from temples was
a major undertaking. Only a few temples existed and most people
had to leave their businesses and farms for days or weeks at a time
to complete a temple project. At a temple, baptisms for the dead
were easy to perform; and a person could do forty or fifty baptisms
in a session. But endowments took time, and often many hours were
required for a single name. Thus a person might have come to the
temple, performed forty or more baptisms for the dead, but then
only completed a few endowments for those same names, and left,
hoping to return, or have some other relative return, to complete
the remaining ordinances at a later date. But often that day never
came. Maybe the family records were lost or forgotten, and then
ordinance work was never completed for all of those baptisms. Hundreds
or more members of the Church had this experience. Occasionally,
only ordinances for the women's names were completed, and not the
men's, because more women than men were able to return to the temples
to complete the ordinances begun at an earlier date, and the administrators
of the temples did not have the capability to determine which names
needed to be finished, or even how to assign those names to other
proxies.
The
Key
This record of Baptisms for the Dead was the key for the Schofield
family research, as it may be for many, many other families with
early LDS ancestry. Dozens of family names were performed by William
Schofield and his daughters for which baptisms were done, but only
a few of the family names received endowments later on. William
and his daughters performed thirty or forty baptisms during the
1870's in the Endowment House, and most of the endowments for the
female names were completed, but only a few of the men's names were
finished. When these early records were examined a century later
by modern day researchers, the baptismal records revealed the names
of both Schofield Grandfathers, Francis Schofield, and Nathan Schofield,
and the names and relationships to brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles,
and many cousins were also listed. Some of them were specifically
identified as second or third cousins. The baptismal record provided
names and relationships, but only additional research could properly
identify how those people were connected to the family. William's
parents were both Schofields, but the records didn't indicate which
grandfather was which.
The Schofield
family researchers now had something to work with. They made an
"Extending Chart", showing ancestors and their families (similar
to a pedigree chart), which identifies the families that extend
from there, namely to cousins and their families. Picture your own
family. Your first cousins are those relatives who have the same
grandparents as you. Second cousins share the same great grandparents.
And third cousins share the same great, great, grandparents. By
charting the names of relatives that William Schofield identified
in the Baptisms for the dead records, it was evident that some of
those people were distant cousins who could lead to discovering
William's great, great grandfather. These names were the clues needed
to identify additional cousins, earlier uncles and aunts. The forgotten
names found in the Baptisms for the dead records provided the jump
start needed for future research on the family lines.
The research
now turned to locating the cousins mentioned in the baptismal records,
and identifying them with their parents and siblings in census records,
and various church and vital record sources. This research opened
up the family record, and new generations of this early LDS family
were found. Parents and siblings were discovered whose ordinance
work had never been done, and soon it was determined that Nathan
Schofield was William's paternal grandfather, and Francis was his
maternal grandfather. Temple work was then completed for those forgotten
family members who were found in the temple records. Because of
this research more names were now available for temple work and
new information was added to the family history.
Through the
baptisms for the dead records, William Schofield's own memory from
one hundred and twenty eight years ago, was used to discover new
genealogy! This is something everyone with early LDS ancestry can
do, and it is very exciting research! It is exciting, because these
names found in the baptisms for the dead registers, were people
near and dear to those pioneers, who like William Schofield, had
fully intended to finish the temple ordinances for their family
members. The descendants of those pioneers can now renew and complete
the work their fathers had begun over a century ago.
We encourage
everyone to dig out their family records and find which early members
of the Church in their families might have gone to the temples to
do baptisms for their loved ones. Don't just look for your ancestors
and the ordinances they performed. Look for uncles, aunts, and cousins
who might also have done temple work. Determine from your family
records, where early ancestors lived and which temple they may have
attended. Then search the early baptismal registers for the names
of those relatives who acted as proxies in the ordinance. Baptisms
for the dead records can be obtained at the Family History Library
in Salt Lake City, or copies of the films for each temple can be
obtained through nearby Family History Branch Libraries. The records
are indexed by both the names of the deceased, and also by the names
of the "Heir," or person submitting the names for baptism. The "Heir"
Index is important because it leads to all of the names submitted
by a given person. In recent years, the Family History Library has
extracted the early baptisms for the dead temple records, and made
the entries available on microfiche or on computer databases such
as the Ancestral File. But these data files do not have the capability
to search for family names by the name of the "heir," or person
who submitted the names for baptismal ordinances. It is still necessary
to search for your early LDS relatives in the temple register indexes
to find out which names they brought to the temple a century ago.
If your family
is stumped on an early LDS family line, search your records for
possible family members who might have gone to the temple and started,
but never finished, the temple ordinances for their relatives. You
might find many new names of people still waiting for their temple
work to be done. Waiting for you to do it.
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