Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Mark Petersen on the Growth of Interest in Genealogy After the Coming of Elijah in 1836



It is remarkable how, after being dormant over the centuries, genealogical research activity began to quickly following the coming of Elijah. People who had never heard of Elijah became interested—almost overwhelmingly—in searching out their dead, members and nonmembers in the Church alike.

In nearly every nation in the world, fascination with genealogical research has grown. Hundreds of societies formed for the express purpose of finding and preparing human pedigrees have been organized in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of individuals are engaged in searches for the records of their ancestors. Patriotic and hereditary societies in which eligibility for membership is based upon proof of descent from some honored statesman, soldier, or pioneer have been organized by the score.

Many genealogical magazines are being published in various nations, and some newspapers of wide circulation run genealogical columns. Large libraries devoted exclusively to genealogical material and family history have been established in various nations. Hundreds of thousands of volumes of such data have been published within the last century, and so great has been the demand for this kind of printed matter that public libraries in most cities of the United States have found it necessary to establish genealogical departments, in many cases under the direction of trained genealogists.

Through microfilm, additional records in many countries are being copied and preserved. These microfilm records are now among the richest sources of genealogical information.

The appearance of numerous books of fiction with a genealogical or family history theme is another indication of the reaction of people to this subject. Some of these books have even ben best sellers.

In England, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, and other European countries, governments have required the preservation of genealogical data and in many cases have set up archives for this purpose.

Since Elijah, whose coming created this interest, was destined by prophecy to appear in the latter days, “before the great and dreadful day of the Lord,” it remains to determine if this vast genealogical activity is of modern origin.

The Encyclopedia America says: “In the United States, genealogy was generally neglected until the latter part of the 19th century, when the organization of patriotic, State and colonial societies . . . aroused an interest in genealogy.”

The New Standard Encyclopedia states: “There has been a growing interest, especially in the United States, in matters pertaining to genealogical research, and it forms a very important part of history. This is largely due to the growth of patriotic and hereditary societies which have flourished in the United States since 1890.”

These two authorities set the latter part of the nineteenth century as the period when general interest in the subject appeared.

The formation of patriotic and hereditary societies stimulated genealogical pursuits. Nelson’s Encyclopedia describes such societies thus: “In the United States, organizations in which the members bound together for patriotic work, and in many cases eligibility is dependent upon descent from an ancestor who participated in the event which the society commemorates. These societies, especially in the hereditary ones, publish registers with the pedigree of their members and the records of their ancestors. They celebrate anniversaries of important events in history and foster fraternal feeling among the survivors of wars and their descendants.”

Lists of these societies and their aims, particularly concerning ancestral studies, may be found in any large encyclopedia. The organizations include such groups as the Sons of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Society of the Mayflower Descendants, and the Order of Descendants of Colonial Governors.

Their work reveals that the “hearts of the children” are being turned to their fathers in more ways than the preparation of family histories and pedigrees. Interest is shown in the preservation of historical buildings, erection of monuments on sites where their forefathers won glory, the marking of graves, and the construction of memorial parks.

Many of these societies were formed about the year 1890, but some came into being as early as 1850. Since it takes a few years for the interest of individuals to crystallize into the organization of societies with a special interest in ancestry, we must look to a year slightly earlier than 1850 to arrive at a time when such interest began.

In response to a letter asking the date when genealogical interest began in America, F.A. Virkus, executive director of the Institute of American Genealogy, wrote: “In 1844 the New England Historical Genealogical Society was formed in Boston, and genealogy in America really dates with the founding of this society.”

To show how little was the interest in this subject in 1844, Josephine E. Rayne, librarian of the New England Historical Genealogical Society, wrote: “When our society was formed, a single bookcase was sufficient to hold the entire library, and had the society then possessed one copy of each American publication devoted wholly to genealogy, a single shelf would have been ample for that division of its library. However, we now have in our specialized library some 80,000 volumes and several thousand pamphlets.”

By way of still further arriving at the precise time when widespread genealogical interest began in America, we have a most interesting paragraph from the register of the New England Society for 1847, in which the founders discuss the reasons for the formation of their organization in 1844: “The period has arrived when an awakening and growing interest is felt in this country in the pursuit, and especially the result of historical and genealogical research and when the practical importance, both to individuals and to society, for the knowledge obtained from such investigations begins to be appreciated. The existence and activities of the historical, antiquarian and statistical societies which have arisen within a few years past in most of the other states of the Union is sufficient evidence of the fact.”

We have shown that international interest was aroused in genealogy beginning a few years before 1844. According to the scripture, Elijah was to originate that interest. Then Elijah must have come a few years before 1844 in order to have started (according to prophecy) a movement that burst into activity at that time. (Mark E. Petersen, Malachi and the Great and Dreadful Day [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1983], 58-61)



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