Family History Library Experiences Discussion (Jason Harrison Live)

okay jason i am like i'm so glad glad that you are joining us today and as we're getting started and waiting for our family search friends to join our live stream which we do every wednesday on facebook and youtube will you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is you do sure well i currently manage two teams of the family history library uh the u.s and canada research specialist team which is composed of five staff members and then i also manage the vip hosting and research services team and we have four dedicated members on that team but in truth uh we rely a lot upon all the research specialists in the library for what we do and and even uh members of the department so i have i have one of the best jobs that's why we're talking to you today and where are you joining from where are you where are you quarantining i am quarantining in my home uh here in ogden i live up north to the library uh um yeah so you're in utah i'm i'm in i'm downtown and we have um oh my goodness someone is saying kylie hi hi kylie in australia and we've got people we'd love to hear where you're joining from new york and apple valley at california i've been there and calgary and columbia you guys this is so fun to have you and so today jason is going to talk a little bit about his job and i think we want to really focus on your experience um did you call it vip hosting yeah vip hosting and research services so we are responsible uh for taking care of kind of vip guests that actually come on site to the library and kind of ensuring that they have a great experience so when they come and then we also support uh senior church leaders and department leaders with various research projects that are needed as they relate to family history oh my goodness okay and so hello we want to say hello to everyone we've got oregon and new zealand and jersey shore um jason tell us before we start talking about the vip experience or some of your stories tell us what is the status of the reopening of the library yes okay so that is the biggest question that many people have including myself and those on my teams you don't know so um the last messaging that went out was on july 20th the family history library staff and management are monitoring the direction that we're receiving from both state and local government leaders in regards to the pandemic they're wanting to be very cautious obviously a good majority of our patronage falls into that higher risk category including many of our our volunteers and staff so i know that a lot of precautions are being looked at at this time on ways that we could reopen in the future and what that's going to look like and how we implement various measures to keep everyone safe at this time there hasn't been any specific reopening date given but i know myself and and many of my staff included hope that it's sooner rather than later we're eager to get back into the library uh to get access to the the resources we're well aware that uh there's many of our resources that can't be accessed online at this point and you know there are folks that rely heavily whether it's professional researchers or just local community on those records so we're hoping to make those available soon we have taken measures to provide a way for folks to get access to our staff for the last month or so we have been doing online virtual consultations and this applies not only to kind of us and canada but to various areas throughout the world our staff are making themselves available anybody can come free of charge sign up for a consultation a 20-minute consultation and can ask their questions and we can provide guidance and assistance so you still have access to the staff and can interact with them we also have our great family search community pages where you can go and and benefit from you know the the wealth of knowledge that's contained within our comp community environment um and ask your questions as well so we're hopeful that that is helping those that are struggling this time but we know that what people really want are the records and we hope that's going to be sooner rather than later and the expertise so i i appreciate you sharing what people can do that are looking for help and and our moderators will make sure and put that information in the chat we also had um we also had we had jeffrey on about a month ago and he talked about it and david renter came on and shared some of the changes to library so those of you that um love the library like all of us you can you can see more information there so follow the family history library facebook page and and this you know family searches facebook page and that's where we will post updates or we have a press page on familysearch.org so we i love that you you mentioned that because i think it's important before we talk about some of these vips you know um what are your thoughts about vip like who's a vip who's qualified you know that's a really good question uh my team uh specifically focuses on supporting uh the senior church leadership the the church hosting the department leaders and others for guests that are in town we also support community leaders to arrange for an experience when they come in but really anybody that walks through the the doors of the family history library is a vip many of the same things that we provide whether that be an overview of the library an introduction to family search or to the collection you know those are all things that any guest that walks in the library can get we may spend time you know taking our guests on a tour and we can show people around the library it doesn't have to be something that's scheduled and that's formal uh we can show you where the books are where the films are and get you acquainted that way kind of anybody's a vip but anybody's a vip i mean we we provide one-on-one uh research assistance to these guests when they come in but any guest who walks in can get one-on-one help and assistance so there really isn't uh um uh anything special uh per se that that these vip guests that we work with get versus anybody that walks through the doors oh that's so good it's just a scheduled visit versus an unscheduled business and sometimes because of like who they are there's protocol or security or things so you know sure i think that's that's that's and that's good information so everyone's a vip so everyone who's watching you guys can all have the kind of a similar experience but let's go into some stories of some of the people that you have helped and um but before we do one question because you do you have any idea how many different i don't know if we want to say vips let's say guests including vips that you've helped in your career at family search like could you throw out a number uh well we have hundreds that come through every year and this some of our groups may be a single individual or 20 or 30 at one time that are coming so there there are currently anywhere from 150 to 300 guests that come every year to the library that we have the opportunity to help um and within that number i would say in the last four years i mean they're coming from all over the world that we've hosted guests from uh just about 80 different countries so they're coming from all over right so that to me is exciting that's probably one of the exciting things about my job is getting to meet people from all over the world you never know what you're going to get you never know who may walk through those doors and so it's always fresh it's always different it's always new and that to me is exciting that is exciting so is there like a common thread or something that no matter where they're from or what their family looks like is there something that everyone wants to know or you know is curious about well i would say a fair majority of the guests that we've helped this is their kind of their first first exposure to family search they're curious about their family maybe where they come from they're looking for stories they're just looking to make some any type of connection they can and i'm always amazed uh in some of these experiences because while we do have a very large record set and collections from all over the world we don't always have a robust collection uh say from you know somewhere in the middle east or in africa and so sometimes somebody everybody's experience is different and you never know how that's going to turn out sometimes i think oh wow we really don't have much to show we only have this one record set and then you end up finding one record of their family in this one record set and and they're just elated they can't believe it and and they're so happy and and they take that uh print out and they're hugging it and they're thanking you and it just really surprises me sometimes thinking well you know this doesn't look like much of an experience but it turns out to be something incredible and beautiful and and it's just fun to be a part of oh wow okay i and i think this is something we've talked about with different guests but just you know we all want to have an understanding you know where we come from and i think it helps us connect to the world and to ourselves so thank you for that um okay so jason as we today are talking about your job um interacting with some vip guests at family search that come to the family history library what are some stories about people that you've helped that you can share because i know some of the stuff right like you can't share their their sensitivities around their history these aren't published anywhere right sure yeah so we have kind of two two aspects we've got uh those that actually come to the library that we work with and then we've got those that we do special projects for that senior church leaders may deliver so as far as guests coming to the library it it really runs the gamut we host a lot of uh political government leaders that come that may be in salt lake we work a lot with military leaders chaplains business leaders you know occasionally we get to you know celebrities and and we get uh athletes and uh other high-profile names that come to the library so yeah you never know what you're going to get i would say uh kind of thinking about some fun ones that we've had the opportunity to work with i was particularly interested in because um they were a part of hamilton which is yeah tell can you tell us that story is that one you can share sure that's been publicized we had the opportunity when when hamilton was in salt lake touring the cast and crew were given uh a list of things they could do while they were in salt lake city and uh two of the cast members said joseph morales and nick walker their main thing they wanted to do while they were in salt lake city was come to the family history library and so we arranged for their visit to for them to come and and work one-on-one with a specialist and i was fortunate i got to be one of those specialists i got to work with nick and we reached out beforehand knowing they were coming to see if they could provide us with a little information for nick he didn't know much about his family in fact he knew nothing about his paternal side of his family and and then very little about his maternal and so i was able to do a little bit of research beforehand so that we could share some things uh is probably one of my most favorite visits of all time just because of how much that information meant to him and i think that's probably one of the funnest things about the job is you get to share information with these folks that they don't know and they start making connections i remember one of the things that we shared with nick was a photo of his father and from a college yearbook and i remember him taking the the the the photo and showing others and say we look just alike okay i can't believe this you know and uh so that was that was that was so meaningful for him to just to see that picture and make that connection but throughout the entire visit he was just so excited as we we shared information we learned in that experience that you know some of his ancestors had been religious leaders in their communities and had ties to a particular church and that meant a lot to him because that's part of their family [Music] faith is very important for them so to see that this uh legacy of faith had been in the family for x number of generations was really cool and what was great is we got back into the mid-1800s to see a number of his ancestors were educated and and that meant a lot to him we looked at some some school records and to see that that his ancestors had been afforded an education uh really touched his heart and and we found i remember an obituary of one of his i think it was a second great grandfather that just talked about the kind of man that he was and the respect that he had in the community among his people was just very admirable and all these little details he just soaked them all in and was just so thankful that we could share that that he had an identity that he had stories that he knew of his past and and it lit a fire uh within him and and he was he was so thrilled to um to to have that and and just his reaction was was priceless to me that was that was very memorable oh wow i love i love i love when you've shared that story before and and i think we can all relate to you know having a moment where you see something that you haven't seen before tied to your family and those of us you know watching are pretty much enthusiasts but i think it's also wonderful to be able to introduce that um to others and like you said some people come and you don't have a lot to show them but they appreciate you know what you do show um so yeah you know i'll just say this you know i love that visit it was it was definitely a highlight and it kind of got me in some hot water nick was just so generous so gracious wanted to provide me with tickets to go to hamilton offered to take us backstage and and i didn't want that experience to be tainted that's not why we did it that's not what it was about for me it was about that getting to share something that was so valuable and seeing his reaction so when family found out that i turned those things down they were very upset that i would do that but that to me today still is one of the the highlights of my experiences just for how well that was received and how much that meant and that's one of the great things as specialists we get to do we give people something they didn't know they didn't have and we expand their story and and being a part of that is so cool oh jason i think that's awesome um and people everyone who is watching if you if you have questions let us know we'll take questions in a little bit okay so let's go let's talk about what about when you find things out about families that maybe were things they didn't know and maybe they were skeletons um what do you do am i uh in that instance and can you share a story of something that you you know you helped the colorful background yeah so uh every once in a while we'll discover things that uh individuals may think aren't uh worth uh bringing to light i guess so that happens now and then i i to me it's it's part of the past it's history it happened and why while it may not be something that uh that that we um necessarily relate with or advocate or anything like that it happened so i think i think some of these things can add a little bit of color to our family history and and sometimes they add a little bit of spice uh some people are maybe devastated to learn something others can take it for what it is and i remember working with a guest at the library on one occasion where it just seemed like it was one thing after another where we just kind of discovered these things that she didn't know um we learned through our research together that her grandmother had been convicted of attempted murder and and and she couldn't um she couldn't believe this she's like i've never heard this story and and i grew up knowing my grandmother wow that would be a shocker it was and and it was a very colorful story about how things had happened and and she had shot a man fortunately he didn't die um he had supposedly entered her bedroom without permission but she was later uh her sentence was commuted so she never really did serve any time and so she this woman had grown up knowing your grandmother but not knowing the story and so i wasn't quite sure how she was going to take that and she says i just can't wait to share this with my family nobody knows this this is incredible this is so interesting and and from there we we looked at the next record and discovered that her grandfather had been thrown in jail for bootlegging he had been arrested and from there we then go on to the next record a newspaper record that shows that their dog but the next door neighbor was just all these crazy little things and she just soaked it up she loved it i thought it was fun that she says this is my family yeah this makes sense um but was she she embraced it others may not be as receptive to some of that but that one just definitely stands out because every corner we turned it was just something new and kind of exciting and there was a lot of laughs and it turned out to be a very memorable visit so like um as you help people from all over the world and you and you and your team um and you kind of talked about the common thread of wanting to know who they are do you have like any like research tricks or tips um for uncovering the information like what recommendations would you give people who are sort of starting from scratch or trying to help somebody obviously the online consultation you know yeah definitely right we we can take you from where you're at and give you recommendations and suggestions on where to go and what to do next we can help you better understand the records that we have in our collection that are available online as well as points you to collections that are out in the community so no matter where you're starting we can help and right now it's through those virtual online consultations i would say with the vip research that we do for guests we're often not provided with much information on these individuals so we have to do a little digging and so kind of bridging the gap between the present and when our records start can be a challenging experience so family search has has some resources and and one of those is kind of the the public uh records set that's out there that can provide some information with an address a telephone number even even a birth date that may be enough to get us started or to connect so using those public record databases is very helpful we often rely on newspapers so whether that's obituaries or marriage announcements or other articles that provide clues and details about a person's family so that we can put them in the right place the right time and then use the right record sets to to try to extend some of the things that we know about them yearbooks can sometimes be very helpful if we we know where they went to school and can find them in a yearbook we can often glean enough details to put them into context and and i always get a kick out of pulling up people's old yearbook photos to to share with them when they come and their guests some appreciate it more than others but it's kind of a great way to illustrate you know the resources that we have at family search for preserving memories so your documents your photos your stories and i always tell them well this may be a photo that you want to preserve maybe not but family search provides you with a place where you can do that um we'll use uh social media platforms like facebook sometimes you can gather enough clues to kind of put families together and so those resources are very helpful if you're you're trying to bridge that gap between now and and when our records start to give you enough clues to to get an ancestor a parent or a grandparent to where you can start looking in census and vital records and for the most part uh we've been able to to be pretty successful uh sometimes it takes a little more effort than others but it's it's always nice when we can share something with a guest uh a record even if that's a census record uh with them when they come that connects them with uh their family um how many someone is asking like do you have an estimate on how many hours it typically takes to work on these projects or does it vary according to you know how how long does it take yeah that's a good question so um with with a lot of the guests that we host uh we don't have much time from the time that we find out they're coming uh to the the time that they actually arrive uh we may just spend just a couple hours uh just briefly researching and to see what we can come up with the the good majority of what we do is done while they're here when we can start asking them questions and they can give us information but it's always impressive as we're giving our presentations to highlight an ancestor to share a little tidbit about their family and get them excited about doing the work now if we're talking about some of the research projects that we do then those kind of projects take several staff months to put together we can be talking four five six seven hundred hours on projects and so those take a lot more time so we do we don't do as many of those as we as we do actually hosting our guests uh there's extensive research projects that one of the senior leadership within yeah will deliver and then there's the people that come can you tell us about any of the big projects that um you've participated in if they're public record yeah so there's been a few that have been published over the last couple of years uh on different news media outlets uh you know recently uh uh senior church leaders met with governor brad little of idaho uh we did another we we provided a framed pedigree of his ancestors uh governor larry hogan of maryland also met with church leaders and and we did some family history there some more higher prominent folks would be folks like prime minister theresa may prime minister jacinda ardern of new zealand um president uh rubella de souza of portugal um so those kind of projects uh we we do on a more limited basis uh um yeah but you can do so many with that like that so it's interesting because you said from a couple of hours when people come and then hundreds of hours for these larger projects yeah and um so a question that i think is interesting is like have you had a particular um story that you've either helped someone uncover or your own sort of ancestor story that has really impacted you uh i was thinking uh about an experience of um that we had uh uh within the last couple of years so we hosted uh a gal uh dr martha dryznik who is uh um with the oregon health and sciences university uh and she's done a lot of research um about family stories and the impact stories can have uh on our children in particular and and that that visit was very memorable for me as we talked about family history and how that can strengthen and benefit families uh her work showed that uh you know children who know their family history who know their family stories are more resilient they're they're better able to deal with some of the life's challenges that are thrown at them and they seem to do better and and to me that information uh was um very motivating for me to uh to start telling our family stories and to do a better job of of recording my stories as well as sharing the stories of ancestors that i've researched with my my kids i can say that i i hadn't done a superb job of passing along that information but since that time i have recorded a number of stories and shared a lot of these tidbits of history with my kids and and it's changed the way that i do family history now i really love um the stories and and what it can do and and my kids love them and and i can actually keep their attention write stories we love we love family stories okay so is there um what is their favorite story do they ask you to retell a certain story over and over again one of the stories that uh that i think uh really means a lot to me and i've told my kids on multiple occasions has to do with my great uh grandfather and my great-great-grandfather on my harrison side they were immigrants from england they came to the united states in 1904 and 1905. my harrisons come from a long line of coal miners and they immigrated to the united states and settled here in utah and continued the occupation of coal mining and one that's really hard dangerous work okay um and a number of my ancestors have suffered either health effects from working in the mines or have been killed in mining disasters um so so telling this story is the the stories of my harrison coal miner ancestors has one uh strengthened my appreciation for what i have today so my my father was really the first in like seven eight generations of harrison ancestors to actually kind of break the chain after he graduated high school he went into the military later became an electrician and that changed the course of our future but his father was a coal miner who died at an i an early age from black lung disease but my my great great grandfather was actually killed in the 1924 castle gate mine explosion which at the time was probably the the third most deadliest mine accident in the united states killed 171 men everyone that was in the mine was killed and one uh rescue worker and it was horrific and and not only did it take my second great grandfather but it took two of his sons um who had uh wives and uh each had a young child and it left uh three widows um you know i'm i'm fortunate to in that my great-grandfather had left that particular mine a short time before and was working in another mine it may have claimed his life um another son had worked the night shift and was not in the mine at the time that it that it exploded and and so those were just horrific times uh and so i i have a greater appreciation for the the blessings and privileges i've had they lived in small coal mining camps under harsh conditions uh just a lot of gratitude and appreciation i appreciate their sacrifices and their hard work and effort and you know those stories one connect us to our ancestors but to also then uh motivate us and give us the strength to deal with our own challenges and i just found that that particular story in and of itself has inspired me in so many ways that i i'm grateful uh to have learned all that i've learned about these ancestors because it's given me such a different perspective and appreciation that i think has really been a blessing in my life well i i really appreciate you sharing that and i know that um that people are you know here with you and and appreciative of that and i think you know i'm sure all of us have stories of you know loss and hardship and i think you know how are we not only trying to understand and and learn from that but how are we sharing and documenting our own you know trials and struggles so is that something you're doing and you talked about recording your story like how are you sort of leaving behind i don't want to say legacy but but you know remembering the good and the hard yeah i was just thinking about an experience that uh that my wife and i had we we've had six children and four of our children are still living but we've lost a couple of children along the way and one of the things that family history has done for us is it's brought some healing um especially so for uh for my wife as we've gone through these experiences and and one of the things that we learned when we lost our first child and were going through that experiences was that my wife's grandmother had gone through a similar experience and my my my wife didn't know about this experience uh and she was very close to her grandmother and and has felt this connection with her even though she has long since passed away and and so as we're going through this experience and we're learning about her grandmother it kind of took my wife's attention away from what she was feeling i want to know more about grandma what she went through and we made some incredible connections as we started to explore and and learn more about this child that she had lost we learned that it was their very first child and the child was full term and had died during the delivery process uh due to some negligence and and other factors and and the the experience nearly claimed the life of her grandmother and uh she wasn't able to attend the funeral services for the child because she was fighting for her life we learned that this child had been buried in a neighboring town cemetery they didn't have the means to bury the bury their own child and a family member gave them a plot in another cemetery we learned that the the the child uh had uh been buried but without a marker ever placed on the grave and uh and as my wife's learning these details uh there's just something insiders like we've got we've got to fix this her grandmother had always lamented the fact that they'd never placed a marker on the grave in fact as we as we interviewed family members nobody knew where the grave was and through some records at family search we identified the cemetery where this child was buried and we also discovered a book that had been kept by her grandmother of some keepsakes of photos and cards and newspaper clippings from that experience in fact an interesting story behind that is this particular book nobody really knew what it was for or who it was for it had actually been put in a box of things to be discarded because nobody wanted it and we rescued it and and this book had a photo um of the child that had a photo of the casket it had a photo of the cemetery and uh one of the the key things that we found was a picture of the casket sitting in the cemetery next to a couple markers and you could see the the mountains in the background and so knowing where the cemetery was we were able to take this photo and we were able to hold it up and walk around and we were able to find where that child had been buried we were able to work with family to get a marker put on the grave and it became this very just healing experience it helped us to to not focus on our pain but it helped us connect with uh those of the past uh by serving them and doing something that they could not do that was very healing for us and it was just a beautiful experience and i i never would have guessed that family history was going to help me through one of the the toughest times of my life but it did and uh equally so for my wife i really appreciate you sharing that and i think you know we're having a lot of um appreciation for you um and the experience that you had and i think many people have found a way to sort of be lifted by connecting with and serving almost you know this they've gone before so that's a beautiful you know um example of that jason so thank you sure and um i think that the idea of our story and documenting all parts of our story and it's not doesn't need to be for everybody right like we're not saying you need to um but i think there's a lot of healing in the in the process of documenting right um in fact i have a book and it talks about like writing away you know writing as a way to process trauma and and so there's so many things that you can learn from understanding those who have come before and then connecting to their story as you are i mean we're living our story right now so as we're getting ready to sort of um wrap things up i just want to know if they're like what is a message that you would share with those of us those who are watching as someone who gets to interact with people from 80 different countries and all walks of life and you've seen their experience when they see a photo of their dad in the yearbook and um what what encourage us give us you know give us a good reminder about why this matters well i would say that uh my my big tip was to get beyond yourself don't keep all of these great discoveries that you're making to yourself share them there's just so much joy to experience like i mentioned sharing them with family has extended multiple blessings to my children and connected us in in unique ways and and has provided us with uh some some great family experiences as as we've taken the time to do that uh you know from the library's perspective the thing that i enjoy most is working with guests and sharing this information so if you want to experience some joy some some some great happiness you know get beyond yourself look to help others share what you know use your talents and skills that you've acquired doing your own family research to encourage somebody else or or maybe you look into the family history of a neighbor and you share what you find to me that is some of the most rewarding experiences i've had is just getting to share something with others and and we can all do that so record your stories make them available whether that's using family search and uploading those stories to the memories or sending them off via an email or posting them on facebook just let others know what you know and experience what you've experienced and you'll find that there's a there's great joy that comes in doing that oh jason that was beautiful and lovely thank you for spending this afternoon with us and thank you to all of our our loyal viewers we love welcoming you here each wednesday afternoon and we appreciate people like jason joining and sharing and encouraging us

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 786

Rating: 4.7714286 out of 5

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Id: FOuL8DFxTOY

Length: 41min 53sec (2513 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020