SALT LAKE CITY — A new website combines the work of two of the largest, longest-running and most prolific projects in the LDS Church to help people learn whether their ancestors interacted with Joseph Smith.
Familysearch.org/joseph-smith-papers#/people-mentioned is free.
“Using the power of FamilySearch.org and the scholarship of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, descendants of early church members can now connect to original source documents where their own progenitors are mentioned,” said Elder Steven E. Snow, church historian and recorder.
The 6 million people with FamilySearch.org accounts can log in to the new site with their FamilySearch login name and password. The site will instantly compare their family trees to the names in the digitized documents of the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Users then can see the original documents mentioning their ancestors from the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In fact, many registered FamilySearch users will get an email telling them the site has identified descendants who interacted with Joseph Smith.
"With one click, they'll be looking at a document where their descendant is mentioned," said Ben Godfrey, a senior product manager with the Joseph Smith Papers Project.
Those without FamilySearch.org accounts can create a free profile on that site, fill in their family tree and then go to the new site to look for matches.
“The majority of the papers that were written by the Prophet Joseph Smith or written on his behalf were about people,” said Reid L. Neilson, managing director of the church history department. “These people have living descendants. Now you can see how your ancestor once interacted with the Prophet of the Restoration.”
The genealogy work behind FamilySearch.org stretches back more than 100 years. The site represents the largest collection of genealogical and historical records in the world.
Godfrey, the senior product manager at the Joseph Smith Papers Project, suggested the collaboration with FamilySearch.
He saw combining the databases as a way to leverage the work of each to popularize them.
"The Joseph Smith papers team has done a tremendous amount of scholarship, but many members and others who might be interested aren't aware of what's being done," he said. "We want to encourage people who may not know anything about the Joseph Smith papers to look at what is available."
The Joseph Smith Papers Project in essence began during the church founder's life, when he kept journals and directed work on his and the church's history. BYU professor Dean Jessee's personal work, begun in the 1960s, to gather documents related to the LDS prophet blossomed into the papers project.
The project will publish every known and available document created by Joseph Smith or staff under his direction, from journals to legal records and more.
The project team has published 10 of a projected 24 volumes, said Ben Godfrey, senior product manager. The third volume of the documents series was published this month. Next year, the project will publish the third and final volumes of both the revelations series and the journals series.
The papers project has 1,300 documents online, less than a third of what will be released. Some documents are a single page while others like journals are 500 or more pages.
"What's published on our website is what we have through 1840-41," Godfrey said. "We have three years left in his life, and we're going to go from 1,300 documents to 5,000. We'll be adding a significant number of people who aren't on there today."
The project is scheduled to continue through 2022.
Godfrey suggested this project after FamilySearch and the Church History Department collaborated earlier this year on the Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel database, a website that makes it easier to find pioneer ancestry.
"It was incredibly successful," Godfrey said, "based on the number of people who used it. People really engaged with it."
FamilySearch was able to use the same tool it used with the pioneer database to merge with the Joseph Smith papers database.
Elder Snow said the latest project can make church history more intimate.
“Seeing our ancestors in the original papers will provide insight and inspiration as we see how our own lives intersect with the sacred history of the church," he said.
It turns out Godfrey is an example of that. His fourth-great-grandfather John Tanner is found in the Joseph Smith papers online.
The papers confirmed a family story that Tanner's generous financial donation to the church helped prevent foreclosure on the mortgage for the Kirtland Temple block.
Tanner also is mentioned as having been severely beaten by mobs in Far West, Missouri.
“Seeing the sacrifices that John Tanner made inspired me as his descendant," Godfrey said in a church press release. "It gives me courage to face the daily challenges in my own life and to understand how we might be the answer to another person’s prayers."
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