Family History Fair helps people explore their roots
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 hours, 20 minutes AGO
Kellie Yeates, left, shows attendees at the Family History Fair in Ephrata how to use QR codes on a tombstone to learn more about the deceased’s life and family. Behind her are examples of fan charts showing generation after generation of a researcher’s family tree.
COURTESY PHOTO/LADAWN REYNOLDS
Jeanne Petersen, right, staffs a booth at the Family History Fair where visitors learn ways to preserve and display their family histories.
The Family History Fair included genealogy-exploring activities for kids and teens.
Mary Gillmore presents information on using DNA to trace family connections at the Family History Fair Saturday.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | October 30, 2026 3:20 AM
EPHRATA — The Ephrata Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held a Family History Fair Saturday that allowed visitors to dig deep into their roots, with tools many hadn’t known existed.
“I’m learning that there are a lot of things that I could be doing, that are easy changes in my routine, to document not just my life but those of my ancestors,” Sarah Bair of Ephrata said.
Much of the information revolved around the church’s primary genealogy site, FamilySearch. That site accesses more than 16 billion records, Moses Lake East Stake FamilySearch Center co-coordinator Jeff Stevens told the Columbia Basin Herald in February. The user creates an account and plugs in the names of their parents and grandparents, and any other relatives they know, and the site displays the data in the form of a giant fan with the user at the center, FamilySearch also uses AI to connect users who share common ancestors to fill in blank spaces in their family tree.
“One lady got on, and she couldn’t find anything for herself or her grandparents, but we got to her great-grandparents and the whole fan showed up,” Reynolds said. “Somebody had done (research) way back.”
There was a DNA booth as well, and seminars on how to search census records and find famous people a user might be related to, Reynolds said. Beyond that, there was a booth for scrapbooking, another for preserving photographs and still more for displaying family heirlooms and publishing histories. There was an activity room for ages 3-11, and an escape room for the tweens and teens that tested their knowledge of their family tree.
Kellie Yeates had a booth set up demonstrating QR codes that can be put on headstones in the cemetery, which took the scanner to information about the deceased’s life and family.
“You can see all these collections of obituaries and pictures of people, and then everyone else can contribute their pictures,” Kendall Da Ponte said. “So anytime you go to this ancestor’s headstone, you get to learn all about them. I thought that was awesome.”
About 85-100 people came to the fair, Reynolds said, mostly in the morning and early afternoon. While family history has a special significance for Latter-day Saints, Reynolds said, the fair was oriented toward the community at large.
“We’re trying to get everybody excited about their past,” she said. “This is nondenominational. It’s for everyone. If we can get people excited about their past, it connects everybody to each other.”
Jeanne Petersen, right, staffs a booth at the Family History Fair where visitors learn ways to preserve and display their family histories.
The Family History Fair included genealogy-exploring activities for kids and teens.
Mary Gillmore presents information on using DNA to trace family connections at the Family History Fair Saturday.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
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Family History Fair helps people explore their roots
EPHRATA — The Ephrata Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held a Family History Fair Saturday that allowed visitors to dig deep into their roots, with tools many hadn’t known existed. “I’m learning that there are a lot of things that I could be doing, that are easy changes in my routine, to document not just my life but those of my ancestors,” Sarah Bair of Ephrata said. Much of the information revolved around the church’s primary genealogy site, FamilySearch. That site accesses more than 16 billion records, Moses Lake East Stake FamilySearch Center co-coordinator Jeff Stevens told the Columbia Basin Herald in February.