Generation Gaps Filled at Church Centers : Genealogy: Mormon family history libraries are packed with clues to the past.

After a career fighting fires for the city of Los Angeles, Gerry Mathews of Fillmore spends most of his time these days sifting through 200 million names, stringing together his family roots.

It is a task he had pursued in his spare time for 30 years--interviewing relatives distant and close, roaming libraries and mailing off inquiries to halls of records across the western United States.

“I worked on it by hand for a long time,” said Mathews, 53. “I used to send my $2 to the courthouses, but maybe you’d get the records back and maybe you wouldn’t.”

Bit by bit, Mathews traced his ancestry back 200 years, when his relatives first migrated to Los Angeles. But he ran into a dead-end about seven generations back, losing track of who married whom and who died when.

It was then that he enlisted the help of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah-based ministry that maintains a genealogical library of more than 200 million names.

Within days after he contacted the church, Mathews was able to piece together more of his past. “That’s when I really got hooked on it,” he said. “Now I’m back to the 1300s.”

The Mormon Church has been documenting births, deaths and marriages for generations, carefully reconstructing the bonds that create families.

The information is collected from newspapers and county offices by church researchers in Salt Lake City, where millions of documents are maintained in a waterproof vault. The records are vital to the church’s mission of preserving family heritages and can be used to posthumously baptize relatives, a church official said.

Earlier this month, Ventura County’s newest family history center opened at the Mormon church in Fillmore.

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The Fillmore center, located in a small office behind the chapel and equipped with computers and microfiche, joins genealogical libraries in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo, Ventura and Ojai. Each of the branches are open to the public free of charge.

“It gives people the sense of being part of a larger group,” said Madeline Winmill, a volunteer who assists a dozen or more visitors at the Fillmore family history center each week.

“I found out that my husband and I are eighth cousins,” Winmill said. “We started seeing the same names in our family trees.”

Debbie Burnett, another volunteer librarian at the Fillmore office, said she has found a possible relation to Sir Francis Drake among her ancestors, prompted by a letter from a distant grandmother mentioning the English hero.

“I can trace it that far, but I’m missing a link,” Burnett said. “So I’m going to go into the church records in England and see what else I can find.”

At the Simi Valley center, Dorothy Johnson works several hours a week to track her history.

“I have my family roots all the way back to 1635 on my mother’s side,” the Simi Valley mother of five said. “But I’ve found nothing at all on my father’s side. I know his mother died young, and I don’t know her name.”

Simi Valley branch librarian Luana Swade said her office sees about 40 visitors a week.

“They just want to know about their roots,” Swade said. “Each one has their own reasons, but they all have a desire to know about their families. This is what makes history come alive for them.”

More than 75% of those who investigate their heritage at the genealogical libraries are not members of the Mormon church, said Karen Sycamore, who directs the Thousand Oaks branch.

“Once you begin to delve into this, it becomes somewhat addictive, like a puzzle or mystery to solve,” she said. “You get a sense of knowing your grandparents by the records they kept, why they emigrated when they did.”

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Sycamore said she has tracked part of her lineage to the 12th Century, and found among her ancestors a famous martyr who was executed under the rule of Queen (Bloody) Mary Tudor of England.

“It does give you a sense of pride, because you realize he was a man of great conviction,” she said of John Rogers the Martyr, who was killed for eschewing the queen’s religious beliefs.

“I would like to live up to that legacy he gave to us,” Sycamore said.

Mathews, the retired firefighter from Fillmore, said there are other rewards to tracking one’s ancestors.

“If you need a reason to have a party, what the heck,” he said. “It’s always somebody’s birthday.”

HISTORY CENTERS

Here are the locations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ family history centers in Ventura County and the hours they are open:

* Camarillo, 388-7215

1201 Paseo Camarillo

10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday

* Newbury Park, 498-9041

35 S. Wendy Drive

9 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday; noon to 3 p.m. Monday and Wednesday; 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

* Simi Valley, 581-2456

3979 Township Ave.

9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. to noon Saturday; 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

* Fillmore, 524-1536

1017 1st St.

9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday

* Thousand Oaks, 495-2362

1600 Erbes Road

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday; Saturday and Sunday by appointment.

* Ventura, 643-5607

3501 Loma Vista Road

10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday

* Ojai, 646-9127

411 San Antonio St.

10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday