Indexing Update

Indexing is so much fun, and as of June 8, 2012, 50% of the 1940 US Federal Census was indexed and I helped! It is a really great feeling.
Here are all the badges for the states I helped with. :)

Colorado

Florida

Idaho

Kansas

New York

Oklahoma

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Did you help with the indexing?

Law and Family History

So, as I am slowly delving farther into my family history major, I am learning more and more interesting things (which I hope to be able to share with you). Well, I'm taking a class this semester called Family and Law in American History. Basically it is a family history class where we learn the law behind the family history research we are doing. Learning about the laws and government of the area where you are researching is very important with family history work. While you don't have to know the mundane details, it is important to know the general ideas about what government records were recorded when, and what the laws were behind these records. Understanding this will not only help you understand records like censuses, birth certificates, wills, etc., but will also help you understand where to even start your research and where to not research. For example, if you know your relative was born sometime around 1780 and the area where you are recording didn't start records for birth until 1850 then you know not to look for a birth certificate in that area. Make sense? Well, I hope it does, and I hope all goes well in your research this week.

Family Search

A good website to use is familysearch.org. This is a website sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They have spent a good deal of money to gather records and to begin to get them indexed and online so that they can be searched. That is why volunteer indexing is so important. This website it not only a great searching website, but they also have a great website with current news on family history. The website is wiki.familysearch.org. This can be quite a useful tool to find information about areas where families may have lived.
Another useful tab is the learn tab. It contains lots of videos about family history tools and guides. The videos can be searched by level of skill, area of family history, or language. This can be an extremely useful tool because all of our family history is different and unique for each person, and there are a wide variety of videos.
Also the books tab is interesting. It contains a link that takes it to BYU archives. They have scanned lots of family history related books and created a site for searching the scanned books and then you can search in the scanned books for names or other keywords.
These are just a few of the tools on this website. I would encourage you to go look at it and explore it. This website has a lot of great tools, and can be just as useful as ancestry.com. Good luck with your family history.

Why family history is important?

Family history is a work that all people should be working on . I believe that family history can be great blessings to our lives as we work hard on it. I will admit that it can be quite hard. There are road blocks, frustrations, and lots of time spent, but I know that the rewards outweigh the hard times. There is an incredible feeling that comes when a connection is made or a lost relative is found. These names are real people, and we need to remember that as we work on our family history. I know that when we help these people get connected to their families, they smile on us with great pleasure.
One person in my life that I strongly admire is Gordon B. Hinckley who was the prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About family history he said, "We are responsible for the blessing, the eternal blessing, of all who have lived upon the earth, the uncounted, unnumbered generations of men and women who have lived upon the earth, and all who will yet live upon the earth. How great is our responsibility. We must stand a little taller and work a little harder to accomplish it." According to President Hinckley, the reason we do family history work is to connect our family on earth and in heaven, and get their eternal ordinances done so that they have the opportunity to accept it. I know that by doing our family history we will be blessed in numerous ways in our lives, and we will gain a connection to those who came before us.

For family history starters

So this blog isn't only going to be to be about my family. I also want to help others get started on anything to do with family history. You don't only have to work on your own family history. There are things that can be done to help family history work overall. The best way to help is indexing. Indexing is volunteer based. Volunteers take scanned documents and type the contents so that everyone can search them and view them. There are a lot of documents that need to be indexed and not a ton of people doing it yet. To get started go to https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing, and press get started on the right hand side. From there you can either create an account or use an LDS account (same as one used for lds.org or new.familysearch.org). After you create an account and download the software you can immediately get started. While you may only be one person, every thing that you index will be super beneficial. I find that not only can this be a great way to spend freetime, it is also super helpful to the worldwide family history work. Good luck on your indexing!