Genealogy Websites

An over view of “Top 21^st Century Genealogy Websites – A Baker's Dozen”

     (not in the order that he presented them, only Ancestry and Genealogy Bank are subscription)

   This is a free webinar available at familytreewebinars.com in their “Archived Webinars” section

   It was presented by Thomas Jay Kemp on 24 July 2013

   He currently works for Genealogy Bank and gives presentations in many genealogy conferences

   He established Four Qualifiers: Good value, Core content, Save time, and “Permanent” site

Family Tree - this is where you can “publish” your family history in “The Book of Life”

Ancestry - Tom was quite insistent that you preserve your data to both of these first two websites

Genealogy Bank - They have digitized many newspapers, “the next big thing in genealogy”

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov - this is the Library of Congress newspaper website, much smaller

online individual cemeteries - use Billion Graves, or FindaGrave, or http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov

online individual states - there are >20 states available, for example http://genealogy.az.gov

Google - dominates the internet, use http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

census.nationalarchives.ie/ - this is the 1901 and 1911 census of Ireland

Archive.org - you can even upload your own family history book here

scribd.com - this is also a good place to start publishing your own family history

Pinterest.com - this is a good place to create clusters of your own photographs

Facebook.com - this is an effective means of making contact with living cousins

WeRelate.org - this is one that he did not mention that meets all four of his qualifying criteria

Descendancy Research

We attended a class last week involving a current buzz word here in the valley, namely, “Descendancy Research”, which refers to going back several generations on your pedigree chart, then putting that selected ancestor in the primary position by clicking on “View Tree”, and then coming forward two or three generations to your cousins who were born prior to 1903 (i.e., to avoid violating the 110-year rule). Keep in mind that the general problem that we are trying to prevent could be abbreviated as orphanhood, which I will explain in a moment.

The scriptures warn of the earth being “utterly wasted” and threatens a curse of some kind. Because all relationships will dissolve in the grave if they are not sealed (D&C 132:38), every person will become an orphan unless the appropriate sealing ordinances are performed for him/her in the temple. The pertinent Melchizedek priesthood ordinances are a major part of what distinguishes this latter-day dispensation from the previous dispensation.

We are responsible for contributing to the Church's Family Tree database and furthering the enterprise that will overcome this threat.

The Church policy statement uses the terms “family” and “families” and does not use terms like “in-laws” or “blood lines” or “DNA.” In performing our family history research, we seem to be expected to decide who are our family members, and that conversation usually involves those terms that are not used in the policy statement. Although some of us may want to draw a line somewhere, one could ask why a line needs to be drawn anywhere. Should we not just be trying to prevent that non-family term, orphanhood?

As a final note, you should also notice that the church policy statement is not about adding people to the database. The policy statement that everyone subscribes to is only encountered when you are adding some ancestor to your reserved list.

Alternative to Searching a Film

When you are looking at a Person Page in FamilyTree and click on “Search Records” (see earlier posting), you will open up a new browser tab in FamilySearch.org and see a listing of “Search Results from Historical Records” under a summary of the automatically selected search parameters.

[As a side note, you could (maybe should) go over to the left side and change those automatically selected search parameters, (for example, you could add the spouse's name or the parent's names) and click on Search again.]

[As another side note, if the list of possible records of interest is very long, you can now summarize the list by clicking on the new “Collections” tab to the right of the “Records” tab near the top of the page. This will create a shorter summarized list of records, wherein you can select the category of records that you are most interested in perusing. This is faster that scrolling down through all of the pages in the list.]

Getting back to the point of this posting, when you find a pertinent record, click on the record (as though you were going to add it to your Source Box – see earlier posting) and scroll down to see the Batch #. If you click on this batch#, you will open up a search window for that batch, which typically has thousands of records. This batch is the transcribed version of the film in the Family History Library (the film number is also shown right below the batch number). You can go over to the left and enter in pertinent search parameters (such as the given name and surname of the person you had just done the “Search Records” for in FamilyTree, or that person's parents, or that person's marriage place/date, or whatever) and click on Search. All of the new search results will be records from this particular batch/film.

You can see that this technique involves searching a film without renting that film and turning the crank. It is usually helpful to also do a search for other related ancestors in that batch.

Parish Register Research

Yesterday, I met a missionary on the British floor of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, whom we had first met when we started graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin fifty years ago. When her husband completed his PhD, they went to North Carolina and they are now serving a mission in the library. When you're having fun, it's a small world!

Another missionary showed me how to access and use a free internet website for searching parish registers in England. Julie Mosman probably told me about this a while ago, because she is very involved in indexing Cornwall county data.

The free website is at www.freereg.org.uk. Because it does not end with “.com,” your internet browser will probably want you to type the “www.” when you type it onto your URL line. Using this free website is an alternative to renting the film and turning the crank, and it enabled me to put families together much more quickly. I confirmed some of the results by looking at the film for the parish I was searching and was very satisfied with the accuracy. My searches were included in the more than 33,000 that were done yesterday.

The steps for doing a search are:

1. go to the website

2. click on the underlined “Search Parish Registers” link (on the left side toward the bottom)

3. click on the underlined “Search now” link (again, on the left side of your screen)

4. decide which record type you want to search for (baptism, marriage or burial)

5. fill in the form with your ancestor's surname (you could experiment with the Soundex box)

6. decide whether you want to find a specific forename or leave that line blank

7. fill in the year and decide on an appropriate range

8. choose to narrow your search by selecting a County (from the list over on the right)

9. choose to narrow your search by selecting a Place (from the list over on the left)

10. finally, click on the “Search” button

11. then, evaluate the results and modify your search appropriately

This freereg website is a companion to freebmd and freecen. All three are projects of FreeUKGEN, which is devoted to helping people with their family history in England. Rod Neep (of Archive CD Books) founded freereg in 1999 and the search engine became available in 2006. You can learn more about these volunteer projects at the website. There is an FAQ link for addressing the more obvious questions.

In general, parish registers (freereg) started in 1538, civil registration (freebmd) started in 1837, and the first census (freecen) in England was in 1841. If you still have some other easy questions, I would be happy to try to help you.