Elder Brent H. Nielson stated in his talk at General Conference this past April 2024: “My friends at FamilySearch have taught me that over one million new names are added to FamilySearch each day. If you didn’t find your ancestor yesterday, I invite you to look again tomorrow.” (See Link)
A month ago, I was helping a ward member to prepare the cards for temple work for her parents that had recently died. As we looked through her tree, we came across her great grandfather— a man named George Hinnen. She told me that her family only knew that the marriage hadn’t worked out well. He abandoned their great grandmother in Utah, left her with a baby son, and they never saw George again, and they didn’t know where he went or where he was from. This took place about 1880-1900. I told her I would look and see if there was anything available in newspapers in Utah when I had some time.
In the newspapers, we uncovered some marriage dates, divorce dates, and even a second spouse here in Utah. There were advertisements that he was an auctioneer in Belleville, Kansas and that he bought horses and stock to take back from Wellsville, Utah to Kansas. Looking in Kansas, we were able to find some Hinnen’s around the 1900’s and an obituary for John George Hinnen in Holton, Kansas, but this didn’t seem to match her George Hinnen. This obituary told of a really, really great man in the community and his family—not someone who would abandon his family, but it didn’t seem conclusive.
This sat on my desk for a month and this past Sunday afternoon I thought I should clean off my desk and send the ward member an email about what I would consider the next step in this tree and give her the obituary for her files. As I was writing an email about her next step and that my approach would be to do all the Hinnen’s that live in Kansas and how that would require a great deal of her TIME, Elder Nielson’s above quote came to mind, and I was prompted to look one more time at this Hinnen family in Kansas. I took the obituary of John George Hinnen and started to make a familysearch.org tree and see what would happen as AI and search engines are sometimes “magical” in how they can find needles in haystacks of data. Within minutes, I found John George Hinnen’s parents: Johannes Hinnen and Johanna Hiltbrand and that led me to find a grave and an obituary posted there that said the following: “John Hinnen, Sr., was born October 14, 1840, at Zurick, Switzerland, and died at the home of his son, John Hinnen, Jr., at Holton, Kan., July 7, 1919, aged 78 years, 8 months, 23 days. He grew to manhood in the place of his birth, was married and established a home. Five children were born into the family circle. Of these, two boys and the mother preceded the father in death. Two sons and one daughter still live. There are also four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. One grandson died last fall. At the age of 35, Mr. Hinnen, with his family, left Switzerland for America and settled in the state of Utah. One year later, in the summer of 1876, he moved to Holton, where he has since lived, working continuously at his trade of tailor, until three weeks ago when his strength gave way. The Holton Recorder, July 10, 1919”
Utah!!! This was a great clue. And a few minutes later, I found John Hinnen, Sr.’s son, Gottlieb Hinnen, and his obituary which said he was a horse trader, a stock buyer, and he ran a cab business in Salt Lake City. He was the right age, and he died in 1910 so he wouldn’t have come back to Utah after he went missing. I also found his sister, Bertha Hinnen, with an LDS Swiss Baptism and that the entire family listed with the Swiss emigrants in the 1870’s, the ship’s name, and who the missionary was that brought them. Bertha was the only one baptized. In the end, we discovered that George Hinnen was his “Utah” name, but Gottlieb Hinnen was his “Kansas” name. Now, it only requires my ward member to learn to merge this family to her family. It will take a few minutes to do this work, and she has some temple work that will need to be done. This woman in my ward is an amazing disciple of Jesus Christ and is one of the faithful that Elder Nielsen spoke of in his talk that are living today. She is blessed for her faithful temple attendance and the sacrifices she makes in her church callings. And, she was looking again, too.
– Allene Lemons, Consultant, Granite FamilySearch Center