Steve Rockwood: 0:02

It was neat to be a Rockwood, in fact. I remember I raised my family in Denver and we were here visiting relatives one summer and my little I think he was four or five years old at the time he said, dad, in Colorado we're nothing, but here in Utah we're something, because he learned about all the stories of multiple generations here in Utah.

Crista Cowan: 0:27

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. In just a few minutes, you are going to hear the story of how I met my next guest and I felt a little tricked, but he has become a dear friend over the last decade that we have known one another. Steve Rockwood is the president and CEO of FamilySearch International and if you're into family history at all, hopefully you're well aware of FamilySearch and the work that they are doing. So, even though I work for Ancestry, familysearch and Ancestry are very collaborative in this space, and I'm so excited to have an opportunity to just sit down for an hour and dig into a conversation with Steve, and you'll get to hear some pieces of that conversation coming up next. So, steve, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.

Steve Rockwood: 1:37

Oh, I can't thank you enough for the invitation. Thank you for taking me away from the business day and just enjoy a few minutes with you. This is a wonderful respite.

Crista Cowan: 1:47

Well, good, well, you and I met in kind of an interesting way, and it's a story that I actually love to tell. The Jewish Genealogy Conference was in Israel the summer that it had been announced that you were taking the helm at FamilySearch and you came up to me and introduced yourself, but did not tell me your new job title nor your last name, and you asked me a lot of really interesting, probing questions about my involvement in family history and the genealogy industry, and I think I overshared because about a half hour later I realized who you were. I think I overshared because about a half hour later I realized who you were and while Ancestry and FamilySearch have always had kind of a friendly rivalry, we are not competitors. We are certainly partners in the work that we're doing, and so I was thrilled to get to know you, but I always was a little bit worried about what I might have said to you.

Steve Rockwood: 2:44

Thrilled to get to know you, but I always was a little bit worried about what I might have said to you. This is the first time I've heard that, so that was a night over nine years ago.

Steve Rockwood: 2:49

It was the summer of 2015. I promise you, I was not trying to do reconnaissance or anything like that Cause I was literally just a sponge. It had literally been announced just two days before it was announced, that I would be the CEO and president, and literally I was already scheduled to jump on a plane to participate in that conference. And so I was a sponge.

Steve Rockwood: 3:17

My questions were sincere and genuine because I needed to learn from you. You're one of the great figures in this industry, and so I couldn't have had more luck or blessing to meet you right off the bat.

Crista Cowan: 3:29

Well, thank you very much. Well, for the last nine years, I have admired so much what you've done at FamilySearch, but I would just love to hear a little bit about the story about how you ended up as the president and CEO of FamilySearch, and was there a family history journey into that? Was it just a business journey at you know? Was there a point at which you caught the family history bug?

Steve Rockwood: 3:49

One of the things I love about this industry that there are very few of us are like you and others who, I think, discovered this at a very, very young age, usually thanks to parents or especially grandparents, and you were so in tune and enlightened at a young age that then you pursued it. Unfortunately, I'm not in tune and enlightened. I came from the business side, where I had worked in corporate and then I started my own company and it was a little unique company. Back in the day it doesn't sound unique anymore, especially post-pandemic, but I had created a company that was an outsourced call center company and the unique thing was all my employees worked from home. It was a pure HR play and we would go into corporations like Disney and American Express and others and say who would you like to represent your company? A typical call center agent, which is great, I had run call centers before or people that would never, ever, ever work in a call center, no matter how much you paid them.

Steve Rockwood: 4:53

These are retirees, they are all college educated and the technology at the time in the late 80s 90s, allowed us to do that sort of thing, and then the late 90s allowed us to do that sort of thing. So when I had done that and we were several years into it FamilySearch had heard about my model and so they asked me to come and talk to them about it, build a home-based, but in this case global, and a volunteer-based versus employee-based because of the family search model contact center. And my wife and I thought, well, that's a good 18-month gig, we'll go and help out, because we were just honored by the invitation to do so. And here I am, 20 years later, still on, and we ultimately sold that company in 2012. And once we did that, we then started helping with all the international growth and I was a director over international.

Steve Rockwood: 5:55

That took me to Germany with my family. We had a time there launching FamilySearch and other languages from our Frankfurt office, launching FamilySearch and other languages from our Frankfurt office, and then each year thinking, okay, is now the time to go back in the industry? Is now the time to go back in the industry? Until they asked me to take Dennis Brimhall's place, we were still living in Colorado at the time. So that's my boring story.

Steve Rockwood: 6:21

So, like a lot of us in the space now in third grade, we didn't say someday I'm going to be in family history, but it's been an absolutely incredible ride and personal journey for me that I just feel so grateful for.

Crista Cowan: 6:39

Sounds like it. That's amazing. I did not know all of that backstory. I knew you had come from the international side of FamilySearch, but prior to that, yeah, that's fascinating. So at what point in your time with FamilySearch did you start looking into your own family history? Was there a spark or a moment or a story that caught your attention?

Steve Rockwood: 7:02

Well, luckily, I did have family history experiences well before, and my family history experience was in two flavors. First, we had a book. We had a book in our house and I know my cousins all had the same book in their house and it was the Journal of Albert Perry Rockwood, who was a seventh-generation Bostonian just outside of Boston. The Rockwoods first came to the colonies in the 1600s, in the 1800s, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was in the vanguard company of Brigham Young. When they first came to the Salt Lake Valley and said this is the place he was there and so we had that book. And so as a young boy, I confess I didn't read the whole journal but I certainly looked at the pictures and I saw the pictures of him and his family and so it was neat to be a Rockwood. In fact I remember I raised my family in Denver and we were here visiting relatives one summer and my little I think he was four or five years old at the time he said, dad, in Colorado were nothing but here in Utah were something, because we, he learned about all the stories of multiple generations here in Utah. So that gave me a sense of belonging. That gave me a sense of of pride.

Steve Rockwood: 8:43

But it kind of all funneled to Albert Perry Rockwood and I realize now the reason why he was kind of the standout ancestor is not because he was in the Vanguard Company and that, although that was extremely compelling for a young boy it's because he kept a diary, he kept a journal, he kept a journal. And my other ancestors, who were just as important and just as amazing, I just didn't know because I didn't have their diary, they didn't have their journal. So that's when it started. But now to answer your question, ever since coming to FamilySearch and having my ancestry account and using all the resources in the industry, I'm now having discoveries of those ancestors that didn't have the journal.

Steve Rockwood: 9:33

And certainly Albert Perry Rockwood's wife, who is my great-great-grandmother, is one of those key standout ancestors for me. I love his prominence standout ancestors for me. I love his prominence. He was a captain of industry and of public service here in the state of Utah, but his wife was a young girl in Denmark that also learned of the church, came across the Atlantic Ocean by herself, came across the plains in a wagon company by herself, literally landed in the Salt Lake Valley, had no one waiting for her, by herself.

Steve Rockwood: 10:12

Didn't speak, the language Didn't speak the language, was taken in by a very generous family and later met my grandfather, and that's why. So it's the untold, unjournaled discoveries that I love, and I know that you love the same.

Crista Cowan: 10:30

Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's really interesting because I do. I have an ancestor who also kept a journal and the stories that get perpetuated because they recorded their own stories in their own words kind of become the foundation for how we identify, whether it's as a Rockwood or for me it's an ancestor who helped found Lehigh Utah. Like that becomes kind of this foundational part of our identity. But those untold, undiscovered stories still affect our lives. We just don't know it until we make those discoveries, because the way the choices they made affected their children and grandchildren and so on. And so when you start to make those discoveries and uncover who those people were, there's this like not just a connection to them but also kind of an excitement and almost an ownership because we made the discovery. Yeah.

Steve Rockwood: 11:18

And I'm thrilled that those. Whether it's a full journal or just a record or a photo, I'm thrilled and grateful that someone actually preserved it and kept it, because in the 70s I was being instructed as a young teenager in that to keep a journal. So I tried and I started keeping journals. But what did I do? I would read it a year or two later and so embarrassed, I'd rip it out and say no, not that right. So actually I was my own, I was destroying my own history at the time, but now I believe that the young people of today are actually the most journaling generation the world has literally ever seen, and I don't mean that they have a diary with a lock and key on it, but how they're documenting their lives online and with social media is incredible. We don't also always need to see the breakfast du jour posted, but amongst all of that daily, some stuff profound, some not is this incredible goldmine of history, and so my hat's off to the young people of today, and that's why we design everything that we can for them.

Crista Cowan: 12:37

Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because I'd give anything to have a photo of my grandmother dressed up for a school dance and yet I just did a photo shoot for my nephew and his friends for their school dance. We've got 80 photos of them. So you're right, they very much are documenting their lives and it'll be interesting to see two, three generations from now how those stories get transmitted, with all of that data.

Steve Rockwood: 13:03

There's a great term whenever it comes to record keeping. It's found in ancient written documents and in scripture even, and it says for a wise purpose. For a wise purpose, these records were kept, and the wise purpose gets revealed generations later sometimes.

Crista Cowan: 13:20

That's beautiful. I love that.

Steve Rockwood: 13:22

Well, as you think about all the things you've learned about your own family stories over the years, now that you've been involved in the industry and maybe dug in a little bit more, any stories or experiences with family history that are particularly close to your heart, Very much so because I come in and, by the way, I love how you personally and how Ancestry has characterized the drivers and the passengers Because I came into the industry and, quite honestly, most of us non-genealogists and there's thousands of us right that are not quote genealogists are now in the industry, enabling what we can, bringing what we do to the table. But I'm a passenger and it's the drivers, the drivers of today in my family, and I can contribute to the whole space and to the whole industry. So with that, I wanted to go look at the people that didn't have diaries, like I said, and I have this secret sauce, a little weapon that I have, and it's called my 93-year-old mother and I have an absolute angel of a mother and while my dad's been gone over 33 years, I don't think my mom would mind if she didn't wake up tomorrow. She misses dad and we believe that she'll be with dad, but the fact that she's still with us is just an incredible blessing to me and to her posterity in that. So we just love learning from Grandma Marion and during the pandemic, when everyone was concerned about senior citizens and that we brought her from her she was very comfortable in her condominium. We brought her down and forced her to live with us for months, but at the same time I had a college student who also had to come home and live with us. So there I had my youngest son and my mother living together and I saw what happens when you connect those generations that we had never, ever, ever heard before, especially what it was like when there was a polio epidemic or a polio problem and when her brothers went to war and when they had things in the window that showed that they were in quarantine. And so she goes. I've been there, done that, I've done this before, and so that was fascinating.

Steve Rockwood: 16:23

So, from her, one of the ancestors that she's always talking about is her grandma Chandler, and she knew her grandma Chandler. Her grandma Chandler lived in Ogden, utah. My grandpa Chandler had worked for the railroad. He had a railroad accident, lost his arm, later died. So grandma Chandler was a widow for quite a while and lived in a little apartment in downtown Ogden and my mom was a college student a high school and college student and then grandma Chandler died when my mom was 22, just about to turn 23, I think so.

Steve Rockwood: 17:07

We had when I was young, but especially now, we kept hearing about Grandma Chandler, grandma Chandler, grandma Chandler, grandma Chandler and Grandma Chandler, from what we can tell, didn't keep a journal. So what I do? I look at what Ancestry has, I look at what FamilySearch has, I start seeing photos and this and then we said we need to capture this magic of Grandma Chandler. And then, post-pandemic, just last summer, just six months ago, my wife and I flew to Chicago with my mom. We picked up my brother and sister-in-law in Chicago and we drove down to Vincennes, indiana, where Grandma Chandler was born and where Grandma Chandler grew up and grandmother, reflecting back when she was a little girl, up to teenager and college age, on the stories that she had always heard about Vincennes Indiana, it was just this magical place in my mom's mind and it lived up to the magic when she saw the corn growing and she got. This is so beautiful, you know, and and it's a historical place as well for for American history in that.

Steve Rockwood: 18:29

But to watch a passenger, my mom, um, um, have grandma Chandler come to life in this point in this chapter, and to have me and my brother, and then we had a nephew join us who also lived in Ohio at the time and to have we had four generations there just soaking it all in. That's what I love about this industry.

Crista Cowan: 18:55

Yeah, yeah, and that's really like we've talked before on the podcast, about the importance of place and there's something about being in the places where your ancestors lived and, and you know, feeling that connection to that place. But really it's not about the place, it's that the place connects us to the people.

Steve Rockwood: 19:15

That's right, and it's also about the drivers who make those places come alive for the passengers. So while I'm there, I'm just so grateful for the drivers, because we did have a few members of the Chandler family and of the her maiden name was Bruce, uh uh, Carnan, of the Carnan family and the history that was there. And while we're there, I didn't have time to truly prepare for the trip the way that you would. You wouldn't have been very proud of me, but I was just so busy with work and that and then we hopped on the plane and went.

Steve Rockwood: 19:52

But we walked into the local historical society there and he has An, has ancestry on the screen, he has family search on the screen. He, he opened it up and he made that trip magical for us because he's a driver. So it's just, and I I imagine that most of your listeners are drivers and many are grateful passengers that are becoming drivers and I just want to thank you for being not just the driver of your own family but being a driver for the whole industry. Thank you, and I hope you realize the thousands and thousands, tens of thousands and certainly millions of passengers, your blessing because of the work that you do and others do, whether it's the archivist driver, whether it's the historical society driver, it's the family historian.

Steve Rockwood: 20:49

I don't know how this works, Crista, but I literally have the opportunity to go all over the world. No matter where I go in the economy of humankind, no matter where I go in the economy of humankind, somehow, some way, there's always at least one Crista Cowan in every single extended family, and I personally think that's not coincidence. I think there's an inspired reason for that, and it's those few that are connected to absolutely every single extended family out there that are blessing the rest of us as passengers and that's what I felt that trip, that's what I feel every time I'm with you, that's what we feel at RootsTech. It's those drivers blessing the millions of passengers, and I think the great opportunity for us is to introduce more and more passengers to the work that you do.

Crista Cowan: 21:39

Yeah, yeah, I've used that analogy on stage at RootsTech last year, the idea of you know, I took 10 of my family members on a trip in a 15-passenger van and I literally was driving. But there's also, I think, ways for everybody to become involved, because my dad sat in the seat directly behind me with the Ancestry app opened on his phone and when people were asking questions he was helping to pull up the stories that I had put into the tree. So he got to be kind of the backseat driver and then I think everybody also kind of brings their own pieces of the story right, because in that van it was an interesting experience, because it was my dad and five of his first cousins and their only surviving aunt and two of my siblings. And we're on this trip and I'm sharing the research that I've done. But they're sharing the stories that they've heard, because everybody got to listen to grandpa or great grandpa tell a story and they all heard it a little bit differently.

Crista Cowan: 22:41

And so as you talk about your mom and her sharing stories with you, but then, maybe a little bit of a different way, she's sharing those stories with your son. That's what happens in families and I think one of the beautiful things that we can do is when we have those come together moments, whether it's a trip in Indiana or a family reunion in Utah. We have the opportunity to bring all the pieces of the story together and it creates a whole new beautiful thing. And so I'm just curious to know, like you took that trip, you've heard those stories Like what did you do to document that or capture that?

Steve Rockwood: 23:16

Great question. First of all, I'll tell you what ended up happening in day two, and we were only there for a couple of days, but my grandpa, who had died, and my mom didn't know her grandpa, but he knew her grandma. He had been born in Florida, illinois, which was just west of here. It was an hour trip. So during that time and throughout the three days that were this they're there. I was kind of on the trip with everyone because I was playing catch up.

Steve Rockwood: 23:45

I was online doing exactly what you did. All right, what does Ancestry know? What does Family Search know? What do the other sources know? And what really unlocked it for me was your newspaper collection and other newspaper collections that the Historical Society had showed me newspaper collection and other newspaper collections that the historical society had showed me. So I'm sitting here literally adding color to the names, dates and places with all these newspaper stories, and so what do we do? We then upload that and we make sure and attach that to them. We took photos. It was so cool. Here's my nephew. He's the one on the ground moving the grass that had grown over.

Steve Rockwood: 24:22

Oh like physically on the ground. Yeah, he's on the ground moving the grass, carving out the grass that had grown over the headstones, and that so we could take pictures and complete the profiles online, right. And so, yeah, you document that. But then you also want to document the stories themselves, and this is where we continue on with grandma. So, back to what I think is the most journaling generation. Granted, their dad is quote in the industry, but they're participating, not because dad in the industry. So I have a son who regularly interviews grandma in a podcast type approach like this, and we capture the memories, we capture her face, we capture the voice. He's now doing it with me and my wife. That was a christmas gift. So we're thinking, oh, he thinks we're getting old too, so we better capture this as well. And so he and his brothers call us and we do this, and so, yeah, we're doing it with multimedia, we're doing it with the resources that Ancestry, familysearch and others have, and it's just so fun to capture it while it unfolds.

Crista Cowan: 25:30

I love that.

Steve Rockwood: 25:31

But it was the newspapers that actually made everything really come to life those three days.

Crista Cowan: 25:37

Was there a particular snippet or something that you remember that?

Steve Rockwood: 25:41

Oh yeah yeah, it talked about like they used to announce everything back then in the newspaper, right. And so we saw the announcement of her wedding and what she was wearing, and my mom had never, ever, ever heard those stories, right. And then there were a few interesting stories about interesting things.

Crista Cowan: 26:02

Hey, you know what People are people?

Steve Rockwood: 26:05

No, it was bad but it was just family stories that we'd never had before. Dynamics, yeah, dynamics, yeah, it was cool.

Crista Cowan: 26:11

I love that. Yeah, so I love this idea of collecting the stories in central places, and we can do that on Ancestry and we can do that on FamilySearch. But this idea of collecting the stories in central places and we can do that on Ancestry, we can do that on FamilySearch, but this idea of documenting grandma's stories and your stories, where do those things live?

Steve Rockwood: 26:27

So we started because of video, because a lot of the online providers like yourselves and us, we don't store video, so for very good reason. So there's YouTube channels now that we capture the video, so for very good reason. So there's YouTube channels now that we capture the video. We're capturing the photos and the written stories on Ancestry, on FamilySearch and that sort of thing the sources now that we have because of newspaper that's easy to attach. So that's how we're capturing it. I've shown a few of those at RootsTech. The same son captured my mom did remarry and was happily married for several years, and then my stepfather died as well. He captured some recordings of Grandpa Bob, who died of pancreatic cancer just a few months after being diagnosed. Those are on a very sacred YouTube channel for us to remind ourselves.

Crista Cowan: 27:20

I love that. That's fantastic. Well, as you kind of think about right, your mother has been the grandma right and now you have grandchildren, as you think about the stories you want to share with them, whether it's about yourself and your wife and your family, or whether it's about your ancestors, like you know, what stories are you sharing with them? How are you, how are you going about that?

Steve Rockwood: 27:45

The stories that we share usually there's. I'm not looking for that compelling thing, it's. It's primarily based on what illustrates the character you know. Yes, when did they live, how did they live, who did they love? But what was it that they learned and what can we learn from them?

Steve Rockwood: 28:03

So my mother's other grandma, laura Jane Holman my mother never knew, because Laura Jane Holman died of breast cancer Just after coming from the United States excuse me, from England to the United States, to Logan, utah. She gave birth to my grandpa and then, when he was in 17, 18 years old, she suffered of breast cancer. Back then the treatment of breast cancer was brutal, but we saw the character of this incredible woman, character of this incredible woman. She died, having met my grandpa's girlfriend at the time, had this wonderful exchange and then she died and my mom and my grandma and grandpa got married. My mom didn't know Laura Jane Holman. I never know Laura Jane Holman, but my grandkids and my kids know Laura Jane Holman intimately. We have one photo that I know of, but that one photo shows the dignity of the character that Laura Jane Holman has.

Steve Rockwood: 29:14

So it's usually the character. What do we learn of their character? Who were they? And that makes the most humble, non-journaling ancestor. So it's usually the character. What do we learn of their character? Who were they? And that makes the most humble, non-journaling ancestor a hero, and so those are the sort of stories that we try to share. The same is with Grandpa True. My boys never, ever, ever met my dad. My dad died two months before my oldest was born. But they know grandpa true really, really well and they know, more importantly, his character.

Crista Cowan: 29:45

Beautifully said. Thank you for that. Well, as we wrap up our time together, I would love to keep hearing more stories, because it sounds like you've got a lot of them. But as you think about kind of the future of family history as an industry, but also maybe even more intimately in your own family, what is it that you hope for the future?

Steve Rockwood: 30:07

Going back to the young people. They inherently are documenting their lives. They're inherently willing to share that. They inherently want to be part of a greater cause than themselves. I think they're gifted people in how to reach out and help other people. All of those are character traits that are core to someone who wants to be the Crista Cowan of the future. They probably just don't know this subject matter yet, so for me it's let's leverage the inherent incredible character of the young people of today, all over the world and, granted, some of them might be Crista Cowans, because there always are, they're always that 3% of the population.

Steve Rockwood: 31:01

But how do we get the other 97% to actually discover this much, much earlier? Everyone ages into interest in this Everyone does but they need to know and they need to feel what you know and feel when you're engaged in this much, much earlier. That 11-year-old girl needs to know who she is, where she came from and, most importantly, from whom she comes Her identity, the ability to navigate through life in a very complicated world. She needs to know it now. So not only do I think this is the future, I think it's our charge is to treat those passengers much sooner, much younger, and engage them in story not just in names, dates and places and watch them become drivers much, much younger.

Steve Rockwood: 31:57

I personally think that you and many of the Crista Cowans that are in the FamilySearch library, many of the Crista Cowans that are all over the world I believe we can create many, many more Crista Cowans, but you have to overtly do it. We've been at Family Search, been designing everything since 2011 for young people to engage, and not just to engage, but actually to lead out, and that's where I think it happens. Everyone says the future is the next generation, but for our space and for this industry, it really, really is, and I'm just thrilled that we're really honing in on that generation to help them age into it decades before the rest of us age into it.

Crista Cowan: 32:42

Yeah, and I love that you've got that sweeping vision. It's very appropriate for your role to have that broad vision. When I take what you just said and bring it down to a really personal level, I want that 11-year-old girl involved, because the number one regret that every genealogist I ever talked to has is that they didn't talk to their family members when they were still around. And you think about your grandfather's mother dying when he's 17, and now her children and grandchildren do not have access to her and to those stories. And I want that 11-year-old girl to make sure she gets the personal contact and the stories. You know it might not be a journal, but words from their mouth are even better, and so I love that you still have your mother with you and that you've shared a little bit of her with us today and that she is sharing those stories with her children and her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, and that intimate connection becomes, I think, so important to be able to have that and to perpetuate that. So thank you for sharing her with us.

Steve Rockwood: 33:47

Well, and thank you for staying on target with that message, because my mom's parents they both lived in their 90s and I never asked, as a teenager and as a young adult, the questions that I should have been asking. I remember Grandpa. He grew up in the sugar industry here in Utah and so his whole life was that career and he would start to talk about the sugar factory and that and we all thought, oh guys, why did you ask that question? Now we're committed here for the next, Like everyone does, right? If we had only been a little bit more sober and if I had been a Crista Cowan at that point, I would have realized the magic that was happening and I would have asked different questions. But here's the difference my boys are asking those questions. My boys are doing what I didn't and they're doing it naturally. That's why I think what we're talking about these young people today it's natural in them. It's not something we have to try to ignite.

Crista Cowan: 34:41

Well then, we will just get out of their way, right. That's right, well, fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here, Thank you for sharing your stories, thank you for the work you're doing in this industry. I think we're making things accessible to people that were not accessible before and hopefully, inspiring them to to not just come along as passengers, but to hop in that driver's seat.

Steve Rockwood: 35:03

Do we really have to end? I don't want to have to go back to spreadsheets and stuff, but no, thank you, and thank you to your listeners Once again. We honor, we honor the drivers of this industry and we honor the drivers of the families and we are the drivers of this world and I hope you realize how much we love and appreciate you and what you do.

Crista Cowan: 35:23

Thank you. Thank you very much.