Ancestors are Real People

Each day, students have experiences at the Family History Center that testify of the guidance given to those who diligently seek their ancestors.

A volunteer couple, Brother and Sister Stowell, were scheduled to attend a training session.  As they were preparing to go to the training, they felt inspired to stay at the center instead, and attend the next session of the training two days later. This is their story: Note: Professor Harrell gives his students an assignment to write a paper about an event in history that involved one of their ancestors.

As told by Sister Stowell:

St. George Temple

Leaving us in the FHC yesterday was a great move!  A young man from Professor Harrell's English class had just come in and Sister Harrell, Professor Harrells's wife, one of our missionaries, wanted us to give him some help.  While I worked with him, Brother Stowell, helped another young woman with her class project.  But here's the fun part. The young man I was helping was looking for some information on a man whom he thought was a great grandfather (turned out to be a third great granduncle). The last name was McAllister. As we did a Google search, and researched in new.familysearch.org and the Harold B. Lee Library online at BYU, we found it was John McAllister, who was the first counselor to President Wilford Woodruff in the St. George Temple, and it was he who baptized President Woodruff for the signers of the U.S. Constitution. John was later called as the 2nd president of the St. George Temple. The story had been passed down in the family, but some of the details had been lost.  We also found that our Brother McAllister was the author who wrote the original text and music for the primary song "The Handcart Song." The young man was very excited about finding all this information, is now researching the background of baptisms for the dead in our dispensation, and had several references to cite before he left at 3:30 p.m. His ancestors are no longer just names on a pedigree chart but real living examples of those who were faithful and changed the world for the better.

Also, this young man is from Wyoming. You may remember that our son, Todd, from Cedar City, had applied for a job in Cody. Matt is not from Cody but was giving me his 18 year old view on Cody when Brother Stowell received a call from Todd saying he'd been given the job in Cody! That was amazing!

So we were where we needed to be, although the training was going on downstairs!

 
Submitted by Sister Stowell, Family History Missionary
Edited by Douglas Poole, FHC Director