Former President Jimmy Carter recently added a preface to the paperback version of his book, "Living Faith," that describes a how extended family members he didn't know he had responded to his personal history of faith.
After keeping a computerized record of all who claimed a blood relationship, more than 800 family members related to his great-great grandfather, Wiley Carter -- many of whom had never crossed paths before -- gathered to celebrate their ancestor's 200th birthday last May.It seems Carter's book had spurred a series of unwitting connections to his roots -- and he was pleasantly surprised at how nice it felt.
That same realization is coming in waves around the world, as the Internet provides untold volumes of family history information literally at people's fingertips.
"How to Search for Your Roots" is the cover story in this week's issue of Time magazine, which says "the coming of the millennium focuses people's attention on the disappearance of an era." Consequently, "millions of family trees are flourishing" and "genealogy is fast becoming a national obsession," the magazine says.
Of course, none of this is news to thousands of Utahns, who live within a day's journey of the LDS Church's Family History Library, which the magazine touts as the world's largest collection of genealogical records.
And it comes as no surprise to church officials, who have been sending microfilm crews all over the world for decades in order to photograph and preserve records of every conceivable type.
Making that personal connection -- in an era that, in many ways, continues to become more impersonal -- seems to be part of the spark that drives people to look for their roots.
As Carter found, "we had a surprisingly harmonious and enjoyable weekend sharing information, reminiscences and promises to stay in touch, at least with our closest relatives.
"A distant cousin, a Mormon who lives in Salt Lake City, volunteered to do additional research about our family tree in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' extensive genealogical records."
He or she is certainly not alone. An average of 2,500 people visit the library each day, with thousands of others visiting the church's 3,200 family history centers in 64 countries worldwide.
Church founder Joseph Smith taught that the biblical prophet Elijah returned to Earth and restored the priesthood power that would unite parents and children in family units for eternity through the performance of "sealing ordinances" in the church's temples.
He quoted the Book of Malachi, which says that Elijah would return "before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" and "turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers." (Malachi 4:5-6, KJV) Latter-day Saints believe the current "turning of hearts" refers to family history work and fulfills prophecy.
In order to be "sealed" to each other, family members long dead must be identified and linked together. And temples, where such ordinances can be performed, must be available to those who seek to have such work done. Thus President Gordon B. Hinckley's push for temple building at a record pace worldwide.
With more than 2 billion names on a variety of records, it may seem the church has done ample work and could focus energy elsewhere.
Yet church leaders are continually devoting resources and backing the development of technology that will not build the library's holdings -- 5,000 new rolls of microfilm and 1,000 books are added to the collection every month.
As noted in the Time article, the church is now in the middle of a beta test allowing Internet access to a database that will contain more than 600 million names. Church spokesman Dale Bills said of the test, 'It's happening. That's about all I can say. It's one of those things where it will continue for several weeks until the developers are comfortable that it will give meaningful value to as broad an audience as possible. That's the intent of the test -- to prove the site functional."
Family history officials "know what the response has been, but for now they're not comfortable releasing it," Bills said, simply because they want to have "everything in order" before they do.
"It's now available for anyone to use, but people must know that there will be glitches" as the test proceeds.
The Web site at www.familysearch.org not only provides access to individual records, but links to other genealogical resources, and allows users to collaborate with others in their search for ancestors. Bills said he doesn't know whether traffic on the Web site had increased as a result of the magazine article -- which listed the Web address -- or how busy the site has been during the past couple of weeks since the test began.