Wednesday, February 11, 2009

FamilySearch.org










It's time to get serious about Internet researching. I would suggest after trying a SEARCH ENGINE APPROACH to look at www.familysearch.org. This site is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or the Mormons) who place great doctrinal emphasis on family history. The results of decades of genealogical research are available FREE to everyone on this website.  They also have a FREE download of PAF Personal Ancestral File 5.2, a software database for recording and sharing the results of your searching.

To start on this site, select one ancestor you are researching-someone deceased and type in as much as info as you know about them. Then click SEARCH and check out any hits you get for a match with your ancestor. (Record any results on your Research Log and print the new info out and attach to your log.) This website has a quite a collection of options for searching, lots of tutorials, research guidance, videos and links to help the beginning to advanced genealogists. Check it out. It's also a great place to find INTERNET COUSINS when you check for SUBMITTERS of the information here. Remember as always any information is only as accurate as the submitter who donated it. Check for documentation of the facts that are supplied. Have fun!

The goal of this website is to digitize and index ALL family history records in the WHOLE WORLD and make them available FREE online for anyone doing research. What an ambitious goal! Check out the results of this project as they are available to search at pilot.familysearch.org. Also see wiki.familysearch.org for free research advice. Exciting developments are in process. You can help, volunteers are needed at familysearch indexing.org.

7 comments:

  1. I admire your determination in this!

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  2. You should make a book out of all these tips Lin..There is so much interest that I am sure people would buy it. You could use Blurb.com and sell it...

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  3. This sounds very interesting, Lin. Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into it once my life settles down again.

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  4. I admire this goal. And I am interested in your church's doctrinal interest in family history. That has hooked my interest. I will follow up.

    Thanks, Lin.

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  5. For years Tom did research at the local Family History Center at the Burien LDS Stake Center. He ordered and used microfilm. That work was the basis of his extensive family records.
    Since then he has been following other sources, and this year subscribed to Ancestry.com. He has been spending time each day researching or updating us records, filed on paper charts and electronically.

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  6. Okay... I'm going to try this RIGHT NOW... I'll let you know what happens.

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  7. I really don't like this very much. It's extremely time consuming and totally frustrating.

    I'm determined to give researching my ancestors a fair shake, so I'll visit our Family History center and see if I can't get some one on one help.

    I tried to google "John Frost Hubbard"... what a convoluted mess that turned out to be.

    I'll keep trying other search engines (is that what they're alled?) and let you know.

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