We are family
I decided to finally make a visit to the New York Family History Center and Genealogy in Manhattan to do research on my great-great grandfather, John Fields. Family Search has 4,600 local facilities in 126 countries where anyone can access genealogical records and receive personal assistance with their family history. These centers include the world-famous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, large regional facilities in places like Mesa, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, and smaller centers that are usually found inside Latter-day Saint meetinghouses.
The Manhattan center was packed with people researching, Elder Adams agreed to talk with me and gave me a quick tour. I learned that the Mormon Church obtained copies of post–Civil War records created by the Freedmen’s Bureau. When the slaves were set free, the Bureau opened schools, managed hospitals, gave food and clothing and legalized marriages during the reconstruction era. Elder Adams told me that by gathering the handwritten records on roughly 4 million African Americans., the project would digitized the footprints of those born into slavery. FamilySearch, along with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, galvanized organizations and people worldwide to help get the files indexed and digitized.
As my tour of the church and family center was coming to an end, I asked Elder Adams why on earth the Mormon Church cared so much about African Americans reconnecting to their roots. As Elder Adams and I walked down the corridor of the family center together, he looked over at me and answered very sweetly:
“We are all brothers and sisters in the afterlife.”