Inspired by the lecture of a personal historian and feeling a bit of guilt about my feeble efforts in finding family names for temple work, I have launched a family history project to give to my grandchildren this coming Christmas (Surprise, surprise.) For past Christmases, I have given a variety of family history gifts: an illustrated children’s story about young David Hogg Matheson  in Scotland, a lengthy journal of Charles Smith, a missionary great-great-grandfather, an account of the Matheson family crossing the ocean, then the plains and mountains and settling in Parowan, Utah.

I plan to publish a book with short, readable histories and photos of our ancestors back to the first family members to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  My husband and I are both fifth-generation Church members, with the first convert joining as early as 1832. I have previously researched and written about the past presidents of the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary as well as a number of other Church figures, so now it is finally time to write about our own family members. My hope is that my children and grandchildren, now 7th-generation Latter-day Saints, will come to know their ancestors better, that they will understand the enormous sacrifices their relatives made to leave their homelands and sometimes their families to come to Zion. Most of all, I hope their testimonies of the gospel will be strengthened as they read the testimonies of their forebearers.

President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “Seeking to understand our family history can change our lives and help bring unity and cohesion to the family. There is something about understanding the past that helps give our young people something to live up to, a legacy to respect.” 1      

As I have become immersed in reading diaries, journals, remembrances, and histories of our ancestors, I have felt an urgency to accomplish this work. I am learning of experiences and details of their lives that I previously did not know. I will need to consult with other family members to learn more. Each of these generation members were baptized into the Church. Most stayed faithful, contributing Saints throughout their lives. However, there have been a few weak links in this chain.

President Hinckley recounted an experience he had while at the temple with his daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. As he also reflected on the lives of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he said, “I suddenly realized that I stood right in the middle of these seven generations—three before and three after me. . . . As I sat in the celestial room of the temple pondering these things, I said to myself, ‘Never permit yourself to become a weak link in the chain of your generations.’ ” 2

One element that has impressed me greatly as I have been reading and writing about our family is the absolute necessity of staying on the strait and narrow path. Both Matthew 7:14 and 3 Nephi 14:4 tell us: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” I don’t believe that anyone in our family fell away from the Church overnight.

Leaving Church activity is a process, started by flirting with behaviors and activities that are not in keeping with gospel principles and practices, such as participating in seances, drinking alcohol, preaching false doctrine, not paying tithing, not attending church, and immorality. For example, one ancestor, Amasa Mason Lyman, was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and a counselor to Joseph Smith, but was later excommunicated for denying the Atonement of Jesus Christ. One wonders how he could possibly stray that far. The faithlessness of all these particular family members deeply affected not only them but also their spouses and children and succeeding generations.

Happily, the strong links in our family chain are more predominant in number and have established a significant legacy of testimony, Church service, sacrifice, endurance through trials, and obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ. As President Hinckley had desired and more than fulfilled, I also want to be regarded by my great-great-grandchildren as a strong link in this family chain. He said, “Life is a great chain of generations that we in the Church believe must be linked together. . . It is so important that we pass on . . . faith and virtue untarnished to the generations who will come after us.” 3

Notes