Family Search

I promised last week, that we would start finding puzzle pieces this week. I feel we need to cover one more important thing, before searching for pieces. I’ll quickly refer to it this week and then move on to finding pieces, but next week we have to go back over it. Check your sources!!!! A couple of weeks ago we talked about “Family Tree”. I can already hear it…”It must be correct, I found it on Family Tree.” Family Tree is not a source. It’s guidance to the sources. PLEASE…Just because you find information on someone, doesn’t mean it is necessarily correct. So until next week, please think about the source behind the puzzle pieces that you start to find.

Family Search. What is Family Search? Is it different from Family Tree? Yes they are different. Thankfully new.familysearch.org was changed to family tree, but you still have to go through the familysearch.org website to get to family tree. Remember Family Tree is an organization and collaboration tool. To read my previous post about Family Tree, click here:  http://pieceyourfamilytogether.blogspot.com/2013/07/family-tree.html  

Have you ever heard of “indexing”? As mentioned in my previous posts, the LDS church is a big contributor to the preservation and sharing of historical records. They have thousands of microfilms, books, and microfiches that are accessible through their local Family History Centers (we’ll talk about this another time). The LDS church, has decided to index ALL of their records. This will take a lot of time and a lot of help. Thousands of volunteers from around the world have volunteered their time to look through images and index these microfilms. As each microfilm is indexed, it becomes available on Family Search. As of today, 1,033,339,449 records have been indexed. That’s a lot of puzzle pieces!!!! To learn more about indexing you can click here: https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing  

Follow these steps to search the 1,033,339,449 records indexed. Go to http://www.familysearch.org.Then at the top of the page, in the middle, you will see “Family Tree”, “Photos”, and “Search”. Click on “Search”. Now enter what information you know about the ancestor (corner) that you have chosen to work. Let me know if you find any puzzle pieces.

Family search also has records that are not indexed, but have been scanned and put online. Again…these records are not indexed. You have to “Browse” through them individually page by page. But, they are very beneficial because you can search through records from the comfort of your home, instead of having to go to family history centers and ordering the microfilm. To browse records, follow the instructions to get to “Search” and then scroll down and on the left hand side of the screen in blue letters you will see “Browse All Published Collections”. Click on it and then click on the location of your ancestor to see what resources are available. The ones that say “Browse Images” are the records that are not indexed.

Have a fun week of searching and hopefully finding at least a few more pieces to your puzzle. If you get frustrated and aren’t finding anything, don’t give up, leave a comment and I’ll help you. And don’t forget to check your source.