Moving Sources from Ancestry.com to the FamilySearch Family Tree

I had several people today ask me how to move sources from Ancestry.com to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. To do this you need to have an LDS Account and have signed into Ancestry.com from your LDS Account on FamilySearch.org. Once you have signed into Ancestry.com with your LDS Account, if you have completed the process properly, you should be able to click on your name in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and see something like the following:

You can see where it says LDS-Ancestry Membership. If it says anything else, then you haven't signed up completely or correctly and should carefully go through the registration process again.

Note: My examples are all from the new version of Ancestry.com. The process is the same with the older version, but the older version will shortly be discontinued and so I have chosen to show the newer version of the program. In the older version there is a link that says, "Connect to FamilySearch."

If you were properly registered, Ancestry.com asked you if you would like to import up to four generations of your family from the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Because you cannot take advantage of the automated record hints without a family tree, this is a good idea. What is not a good idea is importing an entire GEDCOM file from another program. It is a better idea to let Amazon find sources for your ancestors and build your family tree from those sources. If you do decide to upload an entire GEDCOM file, be prepared to find out that some of the information you have in your file may contradicted by the sources found by Ancestry.com.

Once you have you basic information in an Ancestry family tree, you can start clicking on shaky green leaves and adding sources. If you want to transfer the sources you have attached to your ancestors and relatives, you need to connect each one to the Family Tree. This screenshot shows the link from an individual to the Hints and to the Family Tree connection:

Once you have some sources for this person to add to the Family Tree, you click on the little tree icon at the top of the page. You may be asked to sign in to FamilySearch.org again. Once you sign into Family Search, you may also be asked to choose a match to a person in the Family Tree. The tree icon will then change to either a check mark or a caution symbol. The caution symbol just means that Ancestry cannot get the ordinance data from the Family Tree. Then you will get a drop down menu like this:

You then click on the link that says "Compare person on FamilySearch." You will then get a screen with the information about your ancestor or relative on the left in the Family Tree and what you have about that person on the right in the Ancestry family tree.

You can then scroll down and compare the two entries. You can click in the boxes to move an entry from the Family Tree over to Ancestry or from Ancestry to the Family Tree. When you click to save the changes, they will be saved to which ever one you indicate.

That is how you move sources and other data from one to the other of these two programs.

Exploring the AllMyCousins App

The AllMyCousins.com app is found in the App Gallery on FamilySearch.org and is FamilySearch Certified. Here is a screenshot of the startup page:

This program is free and graphically displays information gathered from your section of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. There are currently 110 apps listed in the FamilySearch.org App Gallery and several of these have similar features. Basically, these programs, including AllMyCousins.com organize the information in the Family Tree in an alternative format and display collected categories of data such as all of the people who need Temple ordinances, or all of the people who have duplicates. Each of these programs, including AllMyCousins.com have their enthusiastic adherents.

Alternate views of the data in the Family Tree are a valuable adjunct to the main view of the Family Tree on the FamilySearch.org website because they consolidate and concentrate the data into a more manageable format.

There is an introductory video for the AllMyCousins.com app, but further Help is only available by email. It is important to watch the video to have some idea of how to use the program.

Clicking on the little hand symbols allows you to navigate up and down the Family Tree. I searched for all the people in the Family Tree related to me with the name Parkinson. I found you might be surprised at the number of people who are loaded into the program when you click. After clicking a few times to see the results, I had well over two thousand people imported. Apparently, the program was loading all of the descendants of one of my third great grandfathers. I ended up with a total of 2,259 people loaded into the program. I clicked another hand icon and the program loaded another few thousand or so relatives and after fifteen minutes or so of searching the program had loaded over 7000 individuals and I finally decided to start over. Apparently, the program was loading all of the descendants of my 3rd great-grandparents.

With all these people in the program, I did find one person who the program indicated needed ordinances and who was born before 110 years ago. (See the 110 Year Rule) By the way, I was not surprised that there was only one possibility. Green temple icons are very rapidly disappearing from the Family Tree. When the program finished importing all the descendants of my 3rd great-grandparents there were 11,111.

It might take some time to become acquainted with this program but it is another of the tools we have to analyze the data in the Family Tree.

The basic challenge of doing family history

There seems to be a definite practical disconnect between the scriptural concept of seeking out our dead ancestors and actually doing the work necessary to find, record and then perform the ordinances for them. Why are so few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints involved in this work? What can we do to involve more of the members? Here are some of the statements made by the prophets and apostles to find the names of our ancestors, take those names to the temple, and teach our family and others to do the same.

• Youth Temple Challenge
• The Promise of Protection
• Invitation to Bind Hearts
• Family History: An Invitation
• Making Your Temple Experience More Sacred

Quoting from the last of these links and the video from Elder Richard G. Scott, formerly of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 

When members of the Church find the names of their ancestors and take those names to the temple for ordinance work, the temple experience can be greatly enriched.

“Any work you do in the temple is time well spent, but receiving ordinances vicariously for one of your own ancestors will make the time in the temple more sacred, and even greater blessings will be received. The First Presidency has declared, ‘Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors’ (First Presidency letter, Feb. 29, 2012),” said Elder Scott.

 Why then is it so difficult for the leaders of the Wards and Stakes to find time for family history? I ask these questions for the simple reason that I am in a position to talk and teach about family history every day. Perhaps I am too close to the problem to see a solution? From my limited perspective, I see tremendous opportunities to find previously unknown and undocumented family members using the marvelous electronic tools we have at our disposal and yet I also see the very small percentage of people who take advantage of those tools and resources. Every time I think about this subject in detail, I go back to the statement made by Elder Allan F. Packer, Of the Seventy, in the October, 2014 General Conference. He said, in part:

Like partaking of the sacrament, attending meetings, reading the scriptures, and saying personal prayers, doing family history and temple work should be a regular part of our personal worship. The response of our youth and others to prophetic invitations has been inspiring and proves this work can and should be done by all members at any age. 

As Elder Quentin L. Cook explained, “We [now] have the  doctrine, the temples, and the technology.”16 Doing the work now is much easier and limited only by the number of members who make this a priority. The work still takes time and sacrifice, but all can do it, and with relative ease compared to just a few years ago. 

To assist members, the Church has gathered records and provided tools so that much of the work can be done in our own homes or in the ward buildings and the temple. Most obstacles have been removed.Whatever your past perception, it is different now! 

However, there is one obstacle the Church cannot remove. It is an individual’s hesitation to do the work. All it requires is a decision and a little effort. It does not require a large block of time. Just a little time on a consistent basis will yield the joy of the work. Make the decision to take a step, to learn and ask others to help you. They will! The names you find and take to the temple will become the records for “the book.”17 

Even with the dramatic increase in member participation, we find that relatively few members of theChurch are regularly involved in finding and doing temple ordinances for their family.18 This calls for a change in our priorities. Don’t fight the change, embrace it! Change is part of the great plan of happiness.

Can we see the vision?

A New Dimension to Digital Images on FamilySearch.org

Here is a view of digitized records from a parish in Denmark from FamilySearch.org that you may not have seen yet.

If you navigate to the FamilySearch Catalog and look for resources, you will see some new little icons to right of a catalog entry. Here is a screenshot of what this particular film looks like in the catalog.

The arrow points to the new little icons indicating that a digital view of the entire microfilm role is available in thumbnail images. Clicking on the film icon will take you, not to the Historic Record Collections, but to a viewer that will show the entire microfilm roll in the thumbnail images shown above. The advantage of the small, complete images is that you can navigate the microfilm much more rapidly than you can if the images were viewed sequentially, online.

You can zoom in on any image in the thumbnail and view the detail in the page. Breaks between sections of the microfilm's sections are detectable on the thumbnail views thereby facilitating the use of the entire roll. If there is no camera icon, then that particular roll of microfilm has not be digitized.

Struggling With Technology

During the 2014 BYU Education Week, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:

We are blessed to live, learn, and serve in this most remarkable dispensation. An important aspect of the fulness that is available to us in this special season is a miraculous progression of innovations and inventions that have enabled and accelerated the work of salvation: from trains to telegraphs to radios to automobiles to airplanes to telephones to transistors to televisions to computers to satellite transmissions to the Internet—and to an almost endless list of technologies and tools that bless our lives. All of these advancements are part of the Lord hastening His work in the latter days.

However, it is evident that many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggle with that same "blessing." Here is a quote from the late Elder Richard G. Scott in the April 2013 General Conference.

You live in a world where technological advances occur at an astounding pace. It is difficult for many of my generation to keep up with the possibilities. Depending on how technology is used, these advances can be a blessing or a deterrent. Technology, when understood and used for righteous purposes, need not be a threat but rather an enhancement to spiritual communication.

The reality today is that the work for the dead, that is doing our family history, cannot be accomplished without using the present technology. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is the only method now provided to qualify ancestors for Temple work except in extremely limited circumstances. Even if all of the preliminary work is done on paper, the final work of printing the Family Ordinance Request forms is done through the Family Tree program thus necessitating the entry of the family information into the program before the names of family members can be taken to the temple. If the person cannot do this, then they will need the assistance of someone who can.

In some areas of the Church, especially among those who are somewhat older, there is an attitude that their family history work is "all done" and that there is no need for them to become involved. I have even seen this attitude transformed into antagonism at any suggestion of being involved in "genealogy." Fortunately this attitude is rare, but it is extremely common that members acknowledge that they "should be doing their genealogy" but have absolutely no interest in actually doing anything in furtherance of that acknowledgement. Even more common is an almost complete lack of awareness of what is going on with the Church and family history.

I recently taught a group of older, male members of the Church. There were about twenty people in the class and when I asked if someone could log in to FamilySearch.org, only two men out of the class acknowledged that they knew how to log in. Subsequent questions asked in the class indicated that few of the members were aware of the FamilySearch Partner Programs and fewer still of the Family Tree.

This issue is usually considered to be generational. It is "common knowledge" that older people struggle with technology while the "youth" who grew up with the technology are comfortable with it. Guess what? Family history is not technology, it is research and most young people today have no idea about how or why to do family history research. Many of the now older generation have been using computers for up to thirty years or more. It is true that some struggle with the newer technology, but it also clear that the older members of the Church are still the ones primarily submitting names for Temple work.

So here we have a conundrum. On one hand, we have a group of older members who will not or cannot become involved in their family history and use the excuse that they do not "do" the technology involved. On the other hand, we have a group of technologically savvy youth who supposedly know how to operate the technology but rarely have any formal understanding of what is involved in actually doing family history research.

Very recently, I had another class of university level youth who were very computer literate. However, they kept asking the same questions: "What do we do now? How do we find our family members? It seems to me that if we want to involve the youth in family history we need to do more than arouse their interest. We need to give them a way to acquire the research tools to find and evaluate information about their ancestors. When they are challenged to find and take a name to the Temple, they need a strong dose of methodology concerning how to accomplish their goal. Simply clicking around on the Family Tree looking for green icons is not doing family history.

Perhaps we are to the point where we need "forty years in the wilderness" to clear out the older generation and their attitudes and lack of technological knowledge. But we also need that same forty years to teach the younger generation how to properly and accurately do the work without duplication.

Why "Back to Adam" does not work

Let's suppose your ancestors lived in Utah as many of the people I talk to each day do. What are the earliest records in Utah you can find for your family? The answer is 1847, the date the first pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. This fact underlies a basic limitation on records throughout the world. As we go back in time, there are fewer and fewer records to research concerning families. If your family came from Europe, what are the earliest records of your family in America? Again, that date is certain, it is 1492. Granted, there may be archaeological evidence of earlier European contact, but there are no family history records associated with that early evidence.

As we go back in time doing research about our families, we need to recognize this temporal limitations due both to record loss and the fact that fewer records were actually created. This limitation applies to each county in the United States. For example, I live in Utah County, Utah. If I consult the FamilySearch.org Research Wiki for Utah County, I find the following chart:

For each category of records there is a time limit. Although there may be alternative records to consult and go back further, I will ultimately hit the earliest date when settlers arrived in what is now Utah County. The earliest records for the County date from the date of its formation in 1852, however, the first settlers arrived in 1849.

The Newberry Atlas of Historical County Boundaries lists the earliest dates for each county in the United States.

You can use the same techniques of looking for the earliest records from any location on earth. Now, people rely on the Bible for the genealogy back to Adam. Even if we assume that the genealogies set forth in the Bible are accurate, there must be some records that connect your family back to the Bible genealogies before relying on such a source. Despite the seemingly availability of these records, those that have been used are highly unreliable. Original research back to Adam, whatever your beliefs on the subject, is just not possible.

In every case where someone claims that their pedigree goes "back to Adam," they are relying on Royal Lines. I recently wrote a post updating the connections to royal lines. See "Documenting Royal Ancestry -- An Important Explanation."

What is more important, copying these royal lines distracts us from the really important and interesting research we can do with our documented families.

What is and what is not in the FamilySearch Catalog

A comment to one of my recent blog posts raised an important issue: what is and what is not included in the FamilySearch.org Catalog? Are there records that have been added to the Historical Record Collections that do not also have a corresponding entry in the FamilySearch Catalog? If so, how do know what is and what is not available without searching individual entries? What about the digital records that are acquired directly in digital format, do these records show up in the FamilySearch catalog? All of these questions and more, started me looking at both the FamilySearch Catalog and the Historical Record Collections in more depth than usual. Here is what I have found.

For convenience, here is a link directly to the FamilySearch Catalog. 

First, we need to know about the FamilySearch Catalog. Originally, this online catalog was taken from the massive paper card catalog maintained by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Information about the Catalog can be accessed on the FamilySearch Research Wiki page, "Introduction to the FamilySearch Catalog." It should be noted that the FamilySearch Catalog now includes genealogical resources held by FamilySearch.org, the Family History Library, selected FamilySearch Centers, and selected partner libraries. It is also extremely important to understand that the FamilySearch Catalog is also integrated into the OCLC WorldCat.org Catalog. See this statement from the Research Wiki:

Also, the FamilySearch Catalog has been made available via OCLC WorldCat[1] since 2014. OCLC WorldCat is an online union catalog of over 2 billion titles at 72,000 libraries[2] in 172 countries and territories. Although it is the world’s largest bibliographic database for materials held around the world, OCLC WorldCat does not list sources housed in repositories outside their consortium.

I am including footnotes and other references where applicable. I might also note that this Research Wiki page was last updated on 2 October 2015.

Now, what is included in the Historical Record Collections?  Again, going to the Research Wiki, I find the following page: "FamilySearch Historical Record Collections." This page was last updated on 18 September 2015. Unfortunately, there is nothing on the page about the catalog entries made from the Historical Record Collections to the FamilySearch Catalog. Is there a way to tell if a collection added to the Historical Record Collections came from digital copies of microfilm in the FamilySearch Library or from the Records Acquisition Teams directly from digital cameras in the field? The answer to this question is yes, there is a way to tell the difference.

I selected one of the newer collections of images uploaded to the Historical Record Collections. In this case the collection was North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979 for Columbus County. I selected an image at random. Here is the image.

This particular collection contains 4,946,676 images. The citation to the collection is as follows:

"North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 2015. Citing Division of Archives and History. State Archives, Raleigh.

From the format of the image, it is apparent that this image was acquired via a digital camera. The reason this is evident is because the image is cropped on the sides. The images that are made from microfilm show the entire microfilm frame. Here is an example of an image copied from a microfilm record. The first frame in the series will be the microfilm number.

The dead giveaway is the second image on the roll of microfilm.

This particular film was also selected at random. For reference, it is United Kingdom, World War I Women's Army Auxiliary Corps Records, 1917-1920 with 264,610 images. The citations is as follows:

"United Kingdom, World War I Women's Army Auxiliary Corps Records, 1917-1920." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : accessed 2015. National Archives, Surrey.

Both of these collections were added to the Historical Record Collections in November, 2015. The North Carolina Collection on the 4th and the UK Collection on the 6th. I make a point of this because there are two issues here. One is whether or not all of the collections are added to the FamilySearch Catalog and the second is how long it might take for the collections to be added given the fact that this is done by two different FamilySearch departments. What I am saying here is that the people adding the records to the Historical Record Collections are not the same people adding entries to the FamilySearch Catalog. 

Now, it should be pointed out that both of these new collections have their individual page in the FamilySearch Research Wiki. Here are the screenshots of the Research Wiki pages for both collections:

Now the question; do either or both of these new collections have catalog entries in the FamilySearch Catalog?

The first collection, the United Kingdom, World War I Women's Army Auxiliary Corps Records, 1917-1920, is absolutely in the Catalog. It came from a microfilm. Here is a screenshot of the catalog entry showing the red link to the brand-new Historical Record Collection:

Now moving on to the newly acquired camera record. Is it also in the catalog? Hmm, yes it is in the catalog, but there is an issue here. It appears that the images were digitized in 2011. Were they actually done in the field with cameras or were they done as microfilm? Here is the screenshot of the Catalog entry.

Let's go back to the first image on this file and see if there is any microfilm information on the record. Hmm, there isn't any reference to a microfilm number. My conclusion is that given the date of the acquisition and the format of the record, it is likely that these images were digitized directly and are not microfilm copies. But that would only be conclusive if the images were acquired after they stopped using microfilm entirely. 

The only real way to know if each and every collection in the Historical Record Collections is in the Catalog is to go through one-by-one and search. But rather than do that, I went to the next newest record on the Historical Record Collections list. These records are the New Zealand, Auckland, Port Albert, Membership Lists and Minutes from the Church of Christ, 1875-1926 added on 4 November 2015 and consisting of 108 images. Now, this particular title does not appear in the Catalog. But is there a catalog entry?

In fact, there is an entry for New Zealand, Auckland, Port Albert Church of Christ, Church Registers for 1875 to 1926. Here is the screenshot.

 

Note the arrow pointing at the new icons in the Catalog. This indicates that images are available for this record. In fact, there are 1121 images, many more than are included on the Historical Record Collection. Here is a screenshot of the thumbnail images.

From looking at these images, it is evident that this record was microfilmed back in 2004. See this frame from the record:

So what is the new Historical Record Collection? Are these some of the same records? Here is the record description of the records in the Historical Record Collections:

This collection will include membership lists and “reminiscences” (church minutes) from the Church of Christ in Port Albert, Auckland. The records span from 1875-1926. The original records are located in Albertland and Districts Museum in Wellsford, New Zealand. 

You can browse through images in this collection by visiting the browse page for New Zealand, Auckland, Port Albert, Membership Lists and Minutes from the Church of Christ, 1875-1925.

Does the microfilm contain the same records as the collection in the Historical Record Collections?

Well, there seems to be an issue, but there may or may not be. For the time being, unless someone wants to clarify this from FamilySearch, I suggest you keep looking at all of the records in the FamilySearch Catalog whether they have or have not been digitized and also that you review the records in the Historical Record Collections on the chance that the records have not been included, as titled, in the FamilySearch Catalog.

Thanks for the comment, it opened up a whole area for consideration.