History in a family photograph

MICHELE MARR

One of my most prized possessions is an old hand-tinted photograph.

In it, lined up shoulder to shoulder like a chorus of seated cabaret

dancers, are four women -- each representing one of four generations

of my family.

Actually, one is a girl -- my mother, I’d guess as young as four,

maybe as old as six. Crowning her dark, bowl-cut hair is a huge pink

bow. Her matched pink, cap-sleeved dress is short, its neck adorned

with a collar of intricate white lace. A sheer white hanky hangs

threaded through a gold bracelet an inch or two above her right

wrist.

With her small, fair hands set firmly on her mother’s right

shoulder, she appears quite pleased to be photographed. So does her

great grandmother -- someone I’ve known only as Grandma Trickey --

who looks scarcely larger than she.

Grandma Trickey’s eyes are narrow with age. My mother’s are wide

with youth. Between them are my maternal grandmother, Frances Anna

Cieutat, and her mother, Ora Edna Phillians.

To scan from the youngest to the eldest is like watching a

computer-aided age progression. Ora is much larger than her mother

and her daughter, but the chin, the jaw, the lips, the nose, the

cheeks, the eyes, the brow, the facial features are all shared.

I’ve spent hours, I have no idea how many, studying this

surprisingly unfaded photo. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for,

but I expect it is part of me.

With the exception of my mother, I don’t know much about these

people who chose to document their link to one another in a photo.

Grandma Trickey was gone by the time I was born. Ora Phillians, known

to me as Mama, died when I was nine. My grandmother died five years

later at 53.

With the exception of my mother, I can’t tell you where any of

these women were born. I never knew their husbands or their fathers.

I don’t know where they went to school. I don’t know if Grandma

Trickey had other children. I don’t know where she or Mama

worshipped, if they did.

Surely they believed in God. Or did they? What were their life

dreams? What was it like for them to be born in the 19th century and live into the 20th? Did they hope or did they despair?

I know infinitely less about my father’s parents and ancestors, of

whom I have no photographs. I never met his birth father or his

adoptive father. I met the woman I knew as Mrs. Massey, his mother,

only once or twice.

From the time I first became aware of my family members who were

as good as strangers to me, I’ve tried to envision what it would be

like to know more about them. Many times I’ve imagined researching

their lives and writing their stories.

Then, in the face of indifference from the rest of my living

family, I’ve dismissed my notions as folly. Skilled as I can be at

research, unearthing particulars about my ancestors from their

sketchy remains seemed, even on the most optimistic of days,

daunting.

But as I stood at the reception following a recent tour of the

Newport Beach Mormon temple talking with Joyce Hanson and Melanie

Rasband about the church’s “Our Family History” guidebook, I began to

believe the daunting might be very possible.

I’d found a sample of the guidebook on a table where I had stopped

to review my notes from the tour. Browsing through its contents

stirred up all my wishful thinking about getting to know my own

ancestors.

The guidebook’s sample family tree, tips on family history

research and references to fertile sources of genealogical records

made the task look, if not easy, actually doable.

I was wondering aloud about where I (not a member of the church)

might find such a well-assembled guide to getting started on my

family research when Melanie handed me a postcard with a message that

began, “As a Memento of Your Visit to the Newport Beach California

Temple Open House, we would like to offer you a special gift,” the

gift being a copy of the family history guidebook.

The postcard went on to explain, “Temples are built with the

belief that families are eternal. Because of this conviction, we are

pleased to help others discover the joy that comes from researching

and learning about their ancestors.”

Several months ago, I stood inside a building at Ellis Island,

jealously watching a fellow tourist use its computerized database to

find information about one of his family members who had arrived in

this country there.

I didn’t know at the time that it was the patient efforts of

thousands of volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints that had transformed reams of microfilm and photocopies of

hand-written and typewritten documents into digital files, which they

donated to the National Park Service for use by the Statue of

Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

For each visitor to the Newport Beach temple who requests a copy

of “Our Family History,” church volunteers are preparing a binder

that includes a multi-generational family tree, in addition to the

guidebook’s tools for further research neatly tucked between

handsomely illustrated index sheets.

The depth and breadth of the family tree provided depends on the

amount of information one is able to give to the volunteers (on a

supplied card) about one’s parents and grandparents, including their

names, birthplaces and dates, and the places and dates of their

deaths. The volunteers work with as much or as little information as

is known, spending as much as six hours per request to create a

family tree.

The postcard invitation says, “There is no cost or obligation.”

Joyce Hanson and Melanie Rasband assured me there isn’t.

And they assured me as well, as the postcard states, “All research

is confidential.”

I’ve mailed in what little information I have about my family. I

haven’t felt like this since I was a child waiting for Christmas

morning. I’ll soon have the first phase of My Family History. God

willing, I’ll be adding more to it.

Tours of the Temple are available only through Aug. 20, on Mondays

from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., and Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m.

until 9 p.m. The temple is at 2300 Bonita Canyon Dr. in Newport

Beach. Tickets are free (but limited) and available by phone at (800)

537-6214 or online at o7www.lds.org/reservationsf7.

If you aren’t planning to visit the temple but would like to know

more about how to research your family’s history, a wealth of

information is available at o7www.mormon.org /familyhistoryf7.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].

f7