The Benjamin Franklin Johnson Family Organization (BFJFO) has begun the data gathering process throughout our large and wonderful family and we need your help.
What is the BFJ Millennial Descendant's Project?
It is a huge effort to get contact information and account for all descendants of BFJ. As one of the largest pioneer families, we want to be prepared if a time comes when we need the ability to contact each other as family members for safety and support and the information assists our genealogy work.
The Brown Book
The BFJFO plans to begin by scanning the “Brown Book” (Descendants of Benjamin Franklin Johnson), which was published by family members in Mesa, AZ back in 1980. (the book has been unavailable for about 25 years) The scanning will convert the Brown Book to digital text so it can be viewed in a free download for all members.
To publish the Brown Book there was an amazing amount of work done when technology was limited to a manual typewriter and carbon paper. The family committee then, along with other members from Alberta, Canada collected about 22,000 descendants’ names. The book lists family members beginning with BFJ and Melissa Bloomfield LeBaron’s first child, and all other wives and children up to 1980. So, as such, the names of all our family members who are younger than 40 years old are not in the pages of this historic publication.
My How We've Grown
Today we have grown to over 100,000 members. The Board of Directors for the BFJFO decided that since we are such a large family it is important to identify and locate as many of us as possible, and to be able to contact our members for important reasons during these challenging times. We are, therefore, planning to publish a new electronic version of the Brown Book called the “The Millennial Descendants of Benjamin Franklin Johnson”, expanded to include all the Brown Book entries and as many of our family members' names as we can gather. We plan to make it available to family members at no cost with payment of the regular annual dues. We hope to publish it into an application for your phone or tablet. To be able to view the electronic publication, members will be verified as BFJ relatives and receive a password to gain access. The data in the app will list family connections, and birth locations, the same as the Brown Book is formatted. Again, no detailed information, such as an address, phone, email, etc. will be published in the electronic publication, for privacy reasons, but contacts could be made through the BFJFO.
What is Needed
The BFJFO needs the current names and addresses of your direct family members to be entered into the database for the Millennial Descendants of BFJ Project. Be sure to include your family in this project by downloading the file below. Return it to the contact information at the top of the form. Let's stay connected and updated!