Family Search Wiki

Lots of people have asked for help finding puzzle pieces in foreign countries. Countries, that I have absolutely NO experience. Fortunately, someone out there does have experience. Family Wiki is an online guide where those that have experience with specific countries, share their knowledge and resources.

Here are step by step instructions:

·         Go to http://www.familysearch.org

·         Then click on “Search” (Located at top middle of page)

·         Then click on “Wiki” (Located at top middle of page)

·         Then search a place, for example: Malmohus, Sweden

·         There will be a number of search results. For Malmohus, Sweden, I clicked on the 3^rd result down, which is the County page for Malmohus, Sweden.

·         From there it gives me a history of the county and individual parishes/towns within the county and the parish/town page.

·         After clicking on one of the parish pages, it didn’t give me a lot of information. So, I’m going to search just “Sweden”

·         After clicking on search result “Sweden”, I found lots of information and resources. For example: getting started with Sweden research, research tools, maps of jurisdictions, where to find vital records, and lots more.

I have mentioned this in another post, but also try “browsing” family search records to see what is available online for the specific country that you are looking for. Some records might not be indexed yet and won’t show up when you do a search. For example: Family search has Husförhörslängder records (Kind of like census records) under the browse section, but these have not been indexed. I can browse these records for free online; I just have to do the dirty work of searching each individual record. For instructions on "browsing" read this post: http://pieceyourfamilytogether.blogspot.com/2013/07/family-search.html

What places are you currently searching? Where have you found resources and search help?