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The Search for Our Ancestry: Changes in Popular Sites: FamilySearch

Angelo Coniglio | Aug 7, 2013, 6 a.m.

I have written several times about online sites that can be very helpful in genealogic research. While there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such venues, I’ll revisit the most used—and likely the most popular—sites to discuss new features.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, or Mormon), because of its reverence for ancestors and the belief that well-documented ancestry can help ensure family togetherness in the hereafter, has had its members travel the world and make microfilm photocopies of all manner of original records from the United States and dozens of other nations: civil birth, marriage, and death records; church baptism, marriage, and death records; and so on.

These microfilms are available to anyone for rental and viewing at LDS FamilySearch Centers (FSC), located in a great number of communities, worldwide, and also at certain public libraries. And the LDS has begun to index information from these records and make their images available online for free.

Whether a researcher plans to rent microfilms or to use free online information, he or she should become familiar with the LDS genealogy site, FamilySearch. Readers may have become familiar with the old site (http://www.familysearch.org), which is being phased out, though some portions are still accessible.

The new FamilySearch is just that: new, and it will take some getting used to.

To use the new site, go to https://familysearch.org/. New users should immediately go to the upper right of the page and click “Sign In.” This will lead you to a page where you may click on “Create a new account” and register for free, with a username and password that you will have to remember for future use.

Once you’ve signed in, you’ll see a colorful and somewhat busy page with a number of options. A tempting choice is the one labeled “Family Tree.” Unless you’re an experienced researcher, I’d suggest you set that option aside until you know more about your ancestors and the process of developing a family tree.

My strong suggestion is to click on the link titled “Search” at the top of the page. This will bring you to another page (https://familysearch.org/search) with several options, and again you’ll be presented with the opportunity to type in the first and last name of an ancestor and begin searching. Again, resist the urge. Go to the bottom of the page, where you’ll see this list under “Browse by location”:

  • Africa
  • Asia and Middle East
  • Australia and New Zealand
  • Canada
  • Caribbean, Central and South America
  • Continental Europe
  • Mexico
  • Pacific Islands
  • United Kingdom and Ireland
  • United States

Click on one of the choices, and you can then surf for the country, state, province, county, town, etc., that you’re interested in. You’ll be presented with a list of the various types of documents for which images of original records are available online. These will be options for your search, but before continuing, consider the approach you must take if the locality of interest is not found in the listings of online records.

In that case, you must search to see whether the LDS has microfilms of documents that have not yet been indexed for online access. To do so, go back to the search page (https://familysearch.org/search), but this time, click on the link titled “Catalog.” Save this issue for future reference, and next time I’ll review the LDS microfilm program.

 

  Write to Angelo at genealogytips@aol.com or visit his website, www.bit.ly/AFCGen.
He is the author of the book The Lady of the Wheel (La Ruotaia),
based on his genealogical research of Sicilian foundlings.
For more information, see www.bit.ly/SicilianStory.

Angelo F. Coniglio's 50Plus Author's Page

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