Clearing larger numbers of temple names
“Grandma don’t look good in stripes”
Table of contents
Why clear more than you can do?. 1
How to print names to take to the temple: 2
Where to get names to take to the temple. 2
Set up hope chest searching parameters. 4
(actual searching in FS using HC) 4
(How to use multiple windows on your mac/pc) 5
open four to five FS logins at the same time, 5
(phase III – more advanced searching) 6
How long does this whole process take?. 6
The programs that allow us to identify and clear temple names are completely in the realm of fantasy.
I come from the old school where years ago we had to fill out a purple mimeograph form with info on an individual; get signatures from two ward genealogy individuals; mail the completed form with signatures to Salt lake. They would check the individual against their boxes of 3×5 cards to see if the work had been done. If not they would mail back to me a form that allowed me to take to the temple to do the temple work.
         Even though I did quite a bit of temple work in those days, you can see why it is but a shadow of the current spiritually-discovered inventions that allow us to proceed in magnitudes of success.
Why clear more than you can do?
1. Think of it in terms of grandma (or cousin or great-aunt/uncle, etc) who has accepted the gospel but is in spirit prison awaiting their ordinances. They would rather be in the temple queue to be done by someone in the world-wide church than waiting for you to clear your calendar (which is justifiably quite full).
Clearing more than you can do is very helpful. Even if you can’t possibly do all the ordinances at least they are better to be in the queue to being done rather than sitting in lala land hoping someone will find them.
         When you clear more than you can do, share the excess with the temple (no expiration date) for others to do. It’s comforting that others are doing “your family history” ordinances when you are sleeping (heehee)
How to print names to take to the temple:
1. When you want temple names either take them from “ordinances ready” or “unshare” them from your temple list and take those (problem they may need preliminary ordinances for you to the specific type of ordinance you want).
         When spouse/child wants names, they should log into their individual account so the “sex” of the ordinances is what each wants.
Where to get names to take to the temple
There is no simple way to find names. It will take time, skill, energy and patience; but mainly time. But if you are willing to put in a few minutes a day, the rewards can be completly mind-boggling.
Caveat: these methods described below only work with larger databases. If you have a small pedigree on FamilySearch (FS), then method #1 described below is most likely sufficient for your needs.
1. The most common way is to use the pedigree view of FS and look for green icons that means someone needs temple work. However the pedigree view is only gpas and gmas, it doesn’t show siblings nor descendants.
Some will them use the fan chart view and go out 5-7 gen and pick an individual to be the new “base” of the fan chart, change the view to descendancy view, click on 4 generations and look for the green icon (needs temple work). The limitation of this is it only goes down 4 generations
2. Other programs that generate names of individuals that need temple work
find-a-name
puzzilla maybe
hope chest
3.identify what each does and it’s limitations
Preparing your computer
1. Computer, tablet or mobile device? Computer, the others are not efficient
2. Buy a 2nd monitor (cost $100) to hook up with your existing computer to allow you to use more space. I run 5-6 searches at the same time, thus speeding up the process immensely.
Rules to consider as you are processing names.
1. These initial programs will identify people who potentially qualify for temple work, a smaller percentage of people will need certain problems solved like bad data, insufficient data, likely duplicates before the names can actually be added to your temple file.
2. The 110 year rule
3. Insufficient data (usually yellow tree). You need basic info on a person, as a minimum name, bir/marr/dea date and place. There are two places to look for this info: a- estimate it and use “about” for the date and “of” for the place (general rule is a husb is married at 25, wife at 21, a year after married they have a kid, and every other year they have another kid).
Hope Chest
(phase I- basic searching)
- Set up computer (generally the same for mac or pc) & extra monitor where you can leave them running for hours.
- Open a note pad to record what you are doing so you can come back to it at a future time to continue.
- Open an extra browser and listen to nice music while you are working on the project
- Open the Utilities file on your computer and open “activity monitor” to see if your computer is bogging down with too many simultaneous searches. CPU shows user & idle. You need to stay below 70% for the user or the computer bogs down. Drag it to the bottom of the screen and eave it open during the searches.
- Open a tab and run an internet speed test. I like speedtest.xfinity.com – The download needs to be at least 10-15 bps download. If not, you need to check with your internet provider to see why you are so slow. The speed can be up in the 100-500’s but that is very unusual (depends on the age of your computer, whether you are using cable or wifi, the number of wifi users in your area and your individual internet plan)
Buy Hope Chest.
(buy)
The free version allows some limited searches but doesn’t allow you to maximize the use of your time. I don’t see any reason to experiment with it, just buy the paid version.
Purchase the annual version that allows you to make several labels. (cost $33/yr)
The money will save you hundreds of hours and identify thousands of names that you would hve never found.
HC a 30 day money-back guarantee.
HC will appear as an icon “extention” in your google task bar. It is an extention of google and cannot be used with other browsers like Firefox, Safari, etc
(set up Hope chest)
open HC in your chrome browser
go to HC settings
labels
Set up hope chest searching parameters
Note: I’m older than most of you, so my 7th generation ancestors were born 1750-1770 so I may have more descendants than you do; but regardless it’s a good place to start Phase I; when I go back further in Phase III, I try to find the generations of ancestors born around 1700. Some generations earlier than have too many multiple parents so that is generally as far back as I go; the exception to this is occasionally I’ll use an ancestor who was the 1st to come to the US who may have been born in the mid 1650’s. The fact that you have already search the later ancestor done in Phase I doesn’t make any difference to me since each generation further back is roughly 5 times as large as the later generation and the computer doesn’t tire with doing a duplicate search. The individual will be captured only once in HC so the duplicate search doesn’t have any negative impact.
(actual searching in FS using HC)
- Open FS and go to the fan chart view
- Change the view to “invert colors” for a white on black view which is easier for me to read
- Identify which ancestor will be searched (phase I- 7th generation; phase III -5th generation ancestors of the 7th generation individual)
- In FS, Change the pedigree view to “landscape”
- In FS, Change the “options” to show temple ordinances, marriages, invert colors. All other boxes should be unchecked.
- Click on the HC icon which will open it up
- Click on search descendants
- Select label pertaining to that individual (by default the search results go into the inbox); and click on start search.
- You will see the searching go from one generation to another (top to bottom)
- You will see each generation where the right arow is done and the name below it is pointed left indicating that person’s descendants is in the process of being searched.
- Note: Search all descendants (in FS) of generation #7, sort of like a rainbird sprinkler going across the lawn. Do this for both yourself and your spouse, since your children are who this is for, and there is no “his” and “her” genealogy in family history
- Note: If one of those 7th generation ancestors had 2 or more spouses, then you will have to search their additional spouse’s descendants in a separate search.
(How to use multiple windows on your mac/pc)
open four to five FS logins at the same time,
- Search the descendants of specific ancestors at the same time. Stack the searches on one device (computer or additional monitor) 3 on top and 1-2 on the bottom of one screen. As one search is concluded, click ok and close it out.
- Then open a new internet tab, log into FS, and start a new 7th gen ancestor’s descendancy search.
- After the search has started, resize it to the smallest possible (grabbing the corners; and hitting the + – to shrink the search generations)
- When the search box is ready, drag the new one onto the left screen so you can watch (or not) the 4-5 simultaneous searches taking place; to tell when one is completed and a new search needs to begin
(problems)
- rarely a search starts and ends within a minute. It just doesn’t see to recognize the individuals properly. I close out the search, and restart it using the wife as the principal focus of the descendancy search (since the husb and wife have the same children).
- rarely a search will have a loop where a parent is listed as a child of their child. I can see the error by looking at the search box and seeing 4-5 repetitive generations (gen of 3-6 people, then one down; another generation of 3-6 people and one down, etc). I have to expand the window to get the FS ID (Family Search 7 diget of the individual in the loop) and open it up in anther window and unlink the parent who is a child of that parent’s child.
- Occasionally a window (individual’s descendancy search) will go an hour or more and simply time out. (Awe, shucks, sorry but this timed out). When the search seems to be slowing down, I have to expand the window view to see which generations closest to the main descendant have been completed (arrow to the left) and which still need to be done (arrow to the right); then I note on a notepad the names of those children that still need a search (with their individuals FS IDs) and do a separate search on them at another time.
(phase II)
Start clicking on individuals in HC labels (temple icon) to reserve the individual in FS (or encounter problems like possible duplicates, data problem (red explanation point), or needs standardized or more info (yellow icon)
(phase III – more advanced searching)
- The reason I separate Phase I (search 7th generation ancestors descendants) from Phase III (search the 4-5 generations of the 7th generation ancestor) is Phase I is very straightforward and easier to complete.
- If someone stopped at Phase I and began to reserve the names, that would be a nice addition to their temple reservations;
- however although Phase III is more difficult to track the searches, it will generate 5-10 times as many names for consideration. The difficulties come if a given search bogs down or has a loop (parent is the child of a child) which has to be corrected.
How long does this whole process take?
- Individual descendancy searches using HC usually take 10-50 minutes.
- I usually complete phases I & 3 before I start on phase 2. This may take me a month or more to complete.
- Then I shift to phase II to actually reserve the names. This may take a year or more, depending on how many names were identified as potential temple candidates.
- The beauty of Phase II (opening the names in FS to reserve and either reserve or resolve the conflicts) is I can do it for 5-10 minutes at a time. When a name is reserved, it disappears from HC so when I return to continue the project, I don’t have to remember where I left off.
- The time varies dramatically with the sizes of an individual’s ancestoral databases. I have put together really big databases into FS the past (for example, my ancestry account has 200,000 people in it) but the last time I did this using HC in FS, it took me 2 months to do phases I & III (generated 40,000 names) and 3 years to reserve all of them (towards the end, many had been reserved by other individuals so I wasn’t reserving 100% of those in my HC label) but I thought that was wonderful that others were so active in identifying family names for temple work. I currently have 16,500 names in my “shared” file in FS.
(focus on the one)
- The most significant point, the best measure is for the individual who has accepted the gospel in the spirit world and desperately wants their work to be done. —
- For them, a database of one is more than wonderful.
- So if you end up identifying 100 or 1000 individuals and reserving their names for the temple, that is sufficient awe in and of itself. Don’t let big numbers affect you. Just focus on the one.
And if you personally can only perform a limited number of ordinances (which limitation all of us have), then take some consolation that others in the church are assisting you with qualifying your ancestors with completed ordinances that move them from spirit prison to paradise, and eventually from paradise to the Celestial Kingdom.
Possible problems when reserving a name.
As you click on the temple icon in the Hope Chest label, it will open up the individual in the individual’s temple file on family search. Most of the names will qualify immediately, but a few will need some corrective measures
duplicates, data problem (red explanation point), or needs standardized or more info (yellow icon)
