A Family History Pioneer

As I spend some of my evenings working on indexing records online for FamilySearch, I often think of my mother-in-law, Vera. Other times I am sorting through boxes of photos and family papers, dividing and filing them into categories so they can be more easily accessed. I ran across some information that made me realize that Vera was indeed a forerunner to the online indexing program.

Vera Cook Hunsaker was called on a mission by President Spencer W. Kimball. This mission was "not to be more than three years and to be served in the Family History Department of the Church. Seventeen years later she was released from this mission.

The assignment she was working on was called INDEXING/SPECIAL PROJECTS UNIT.

The following is an excerpt from Evan Evans, supervisor of the unit helping to bring this to pass.

"The volunteers who have worked on the Welsh-will project....produced such an impressive sample of the quality and volume of the work that Volunteers can accomplish, that 40 volumes of Welsh-will abstracts together with a five-way index for each volume, were recognized in 1976 by the Priesthood Genealogy Division....which was later included in a presentation given to the General Authorities.

"...The following year a special new unit was organized in the Genealogical Department consisting of volunteers with one full-time employee....

"The groups of volunteers working on the We;sh-will project were supervised by Sister Vera Hunsaker, whose capabilities, dedication, and countless hours of work were largely instrumental in bringing this to pass.

"This...set a precedent at the department...and was the forerunner of the "explosion" of volunteer work that is beginning and will transpire in the future."

Along with her service in the church, Vera had deep closet shelves filled from floor to ceiling with pedigree charts and family group sheets she had researched in her life.

We love and miss her!