The Worth of A Soul....

...is great in the eyes of God.

As a genealogist, I am accustomed to hunting nooks and crevices for lost souls, kindred spirits, that elusive...clue which leads to the next great find.

But I have to tell you. I have spent the last three Sundays, 10 hours per, on the hunt (different families.) Ancestry.com (the new and NOT improved version) and Familysearch.org/tree have just become so cumbersome to use, that it really sucks all the joy out of the hunt. It really does.

As I said, the past three Sundays, I have spent literally 10 hours per Sunday, glued to a couch, slogging through those miasmic databases. All to add 1 person the first Sunday, and 2 the second Sunday. 

Today by 6:40pm California time, a tiny beacon of light. I spent all afternoon, not really finding much new info (ok, one "child" now 80+ years old just passed away a few weeks ago, found her obituary). Then, perhaps the Almighty (or the departed/deceased) wanted to throw me a bone: I found the name of a child in a related family. I knew about the child previously from a Family Group Record FGR his youngest sister had filled out decades ago. So I knew he was male, and I calculated he was born between 1912/1915. 

I found his parents marriage record in 1913 so that narrowed it further. Then a stroke of luck, or inspiration. I found a death certificate for a child in those years with a mother whose name was transcribed a garbled "close enough." Fortunately, the original death cert was available online, so I took a gander. Eureka !! Inspection of the handwritten document showed the mother was indeed the same as mine; my reward is the child's first name: James. I quickly altered my records at home and online.

I spent much of this afternoon perusing records at Findagrave.com, a treasure trove of information accumulated by volunteers who painstakingly walk the hallowed grounds of cemeteries, many of them abandoned. A true labor of love, so that somewhere, someday, a relative may find them and "claim them" as their own. 

And so it was I came across a solitary tombstone with a little (lost?) lamb motif:

I did not know at 4 o'clock today to whose family she belonged, but it was a surname I was researching, in the county I was researching. I was struck by the plaintiveness of the gravestone, so I added it as an individual record to my database.  Perhaps someday I would find her family.

A few minutes ago I shuffled through some Family Group Records in my collection, many of which contain the same, tired information over and over. 

And then, a light! There, in spidery handwriting, a family group record filled out by the youngest sister. It listed the same information I had seen before: parents, unnamed baby brother, brother Ray, and then a line I had never before seen: Sister. Manona. born and died around 1920.

Perhaps this is what the Savior meant when He said: 

"What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

And then when he has found it, he lays it upon his shoulders rejoicing.

And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying unto them, 'Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." (Luke 15:4-6, 24 NKJV)

Hours searching high and low through mountains of genealogy rocks. There must be a tumultuous celebration happening on the 'other side' today.

After nearly 100 years, little Manona is finally, safely, back home with her family, where she belongs.