From Here to Paternity

found the last free table in the far back corner of the room. As they wound their way toward it, they saw Doris Schmidtheiser at HawkHunter’s table.
    His other companions had either already left or been driven away by her. She was rattling along, gesturing wildly, riffling through her file folders. HawkHunter, his charisma briefly on hold, was looking frantic. Jane smiled. Nobody was immune from Doris Schmidtheiser’s attentions.
    They sat down and Jane quickly flipped open the luncheon menu. “I’ve discovered that this resort is missing only one thing,“ she said.
    Shelley was surprised. “I can’t imagine what that is.“
    Jane grinned over the top of the menu. “Bathroom scales. Shall we order?“

Chapter 6

    After they’d ordered, Shelley got out her small notebook. “Jane, that was a fascinating morning. You won’t believe what I’ve learned. You know I’ve been meaning to get busy for a year or so on a family history. My mother keeps nagging me to organize all those notes and pictures and old newspaper clippings and obituaries from my grandfather’s attic. But I had no idea how to go about it. Now I think I’ve got a fix on it. It all comes down to the Mormons.“
    “Mormons? Your family was Mormon?“
    “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to be more accurate. No, my family wasn’t Mormon, but it’s the Mormons who have all the information.“
    “How so?“
    “Well, I’m not sure I’ve got this exactly right, but it seems that according to their beliefs, family ties are forever. When you go to heaven, you’ll be reunited with your entire family. All your ancestors. But to prepare for that, you have to know who they all were. So one of the important aspects of belonging to the church is to do your own family genealogy. Knowing your ancestors is part of the religion, you see. Then, when you’ve got them all sorted out, you submit them somehow to the main church in Salt Lake City for something called ‘sealing’, and then they’ll be waiting for you in the afterlife.“
    “Okay, but what has that got to do with your family?“
    “It’s like this—since this is a church belief, the church collects records to make it possible to do this genealogical searching. Unimaginable numbers and kinds of records from all over the world. Census records and family histories and court records from every county in the country, and church records from every church that will allow its records to be photographed.“
    “Oh, not just Mormon churches?“
    “No, all kinds of churches. Some of the records go back hundreds and hundreds of years, and they’re all microfilmed.“
    “I still don’t see—“
    “Even though they collect this material for then-own people, they make it available for free to anybody who wants to use it.“
    “You’re kidding!“
    “Not a bit. There are hundreds of Mormon churches around the country with what are called“— she paused, checking her notes— “Family History Libraries. I got a list of them and there’s one right in our neighborhood, in fact. The actual films aren’t there, but the indexes are. You can go in—for free, mind you—and look through the indexes to all these documents and learn what film numbers they’re on; then you order the film from where they’re all kept in Salt Lake City. You just pay a couple of dollars for the postage and handling, and a few weeks later, your film arrives and you can read it right there on special microfilm-reading machines at the local church library.“
    “This is amazing. Who’d have thought?“ Jane said.
    “Oh, there’s more. They’ve sort of ‘distilled’ a lot of the basic information down into a couple of gigantic computer programs called… let’s see…“ She thumbed through a few pages. “The Ancestral File and the International Genealogical Index. And you can use their computer to get into all this material as well. The example they gave in the class was that if you know your grandfather’s name was James Johnson and he was born in 1899, somewhere in the United States, you can plug all that in and the computer will turn out a list of every James Johnson born in 1899 in the United States. Well, not every one, but all the ones they’ve got in their records so far. Then you can sort through and learn more about each of them to see if one of them is yours. And if one is, you can sometimes find out what film number has original documents about him and maybe who else is researching