Letter from Benjamin Franklin Cummings Jr., 8 March 1893
To The First Presidency:
Dear Brethren: For about sixteen years I have been more or less engaged
in compiling genealogies for Temple work. On my first mission to New England, in
1876-7 I gave some attention to this subject, and in the spring of 1878 I went on
another mission to the same field, and was specially set apart, under the hands of
Apostle Orson Pratt, and others of the Twelve, to search ancient records and gather
the genealogies of the Saints. I did a great deal of this work while on that mis-
sion, and ever since then have given more or less time to it.
In June of last year I left home on an extended tour through most of the older
states of the Union, a leading object of the trip being to familiarize myself with
the systems of records and sources of genealogical information in them, and also
with the literature of the subject which I might find in libraries in the large
eastern cities. I was successful to a considerable degree in the objects for which
I undertook the journey.
About a year ago I made arrangements to follow this work for a livelihood, and I
begin to feel that the experience I have gained in it, and the information I have
acquired respecting it, qualify me to engage in it more extensively than I have
hitherto done, and I have a plan for so doing, which I respectfully submit to you.
Briefly it is this:
I propose to invite all American families in the Church to forward to me their
genealogies, and to obtain the same by personal solicitation, as far back and as
complete as they have been traced. These records I would arrange systematically,
and would prepare indexes, etc, to them, in a manner that would enable me to quick-
ly find any given genealogy, the family in the Church of whose ancestry it is the
record, and connections between kindred families who do not now know of their re-
lationship to each other. As a part of this plan I would purchase, as fast as my
means would allow, all the books that have been published relating to American gen-
ealogy. I already possess an excellent foundation for such a library.
With a complete collection of such books, (of which there are between one and
two thousand volumes, including sets of serial publications devoted more or less
to genealogy), in connection with the genealogies in manuscript of the American
families in the Church, as far back and as complete as the Saints can give them,
it would be, in almost all cases, a comparatively easy matter to:
1. Secure the co-operation of members of the Church interested in the geneal-
ogy of a given family.
2. Compile the genealogy of that family back to the immigrant ancestor in the
United States.
3. Divide the branches of the record among the members of the Church most nearly
related thereto, respectively.
My plan contemplates such an organization of genealogical work as will accom-
