by Norm Weiss

When I came home from my mission back in the mid 70’s, I was excited to do some genealogy work thanks to some of the members in Illinois, where I served. My mom told me that we could only go back 4 generations because my parents were from Nuremberg, Germany, where everything was bombed out by the end of World War II. My uncle, who was a professional genealogist, told me the same story. Only 4 generations on my dad’s side and 5 generations on my mom’s side. He said, “You may have to wait until the millennium to get the work done.” You see, I’m an only child, and I come from a family of only one son for those 4 generations.

Then back in the late 80’s, software was introduced that helped you do your genealogy. So, I tried again to see if things had changed. I found nothing.

One year back in the mid 80’s, I left my family behind, and joined my parents in Germany. My dad’s plan was to drive across the border into East Germany and look for records there. When we got to the East German border, they had closed the gate about an hour earlier because someone tried to escape. When that happened, the borders would close for ten days. So, we never made it into East Germany. I gave up! My uncle was right; I would just have to wait until the millennium.

Then last year my sister-in-law living down in Payson, Utah, asked if I would come down and install some baseboards in her newly remodeled home. I said sure. While I was down there, she asked me how my family history was coming. I told her about my frustrations. She asked if she could “take a look since great strides have been made in finding family names.” As I was working installing baseboards, she said to me, “That fourth generation back of an only boy, actually had 8 children.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. I stopped working and looked at her computer. I was having a hard time believing what I was seeing. I finished my work and went home. I stewed over it for months. I was having a hard time believing that back in those days someone would have that many children in Germany. I took a few classes at the family history center. A few of the consultants said it was quite common to have that many children because they would die early, and the parents would keep trying to have children or they needed that many children to work on the farm.

So back in May of this year, I decided to do some family history exploring using the church’s website. I then went to ancestry.com and that is when the magic happened. I found a distant cousin living back East that opened my family history book, and took me from 4 generations to 8 generations in one fell swoop. For about a month, I did research, about 8 hours a day, day after day. I just couldn’t put it down. I was so driven that I was afraid my wife was going to say, “You’re on that computer again.” But she never complained. The one ancestor that got to me the most was a girl, whose name I just happened to find that had been lost as part of a family. I felt that she was standing next to me as I found her record. I became very emotional and started to cry. I have only been working on my dad’s side. Now the work really begins. We need to go do the temple work for all those names.