Will We Keep Pace?

In a recent article in the Church News of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was quoted as stating the following:

The leaders of the Church, he noted, “have given timely emphasis to the importance of hastening the work of salvation. But I wonder sometimes if we, as servants of the Lord, believe that we primarily and solely must hasten this supernal work.” Faithful and diligent members play a vital role in helping God’s kingdom roll forth across the world, Elder Bednar explained. “But, the Lord hastens His work; we do not. First and foremost, we always should remember that this work is the Lord’s work, and He does the hastening.” 

Elder Bednar identified two “profound implications” that “grow out of the truth that the Lord directs and moves His work forward:” 

• Will we keep pace? 

• Will we learn and teach the Savior’s way? 

Elder Bednar suggested that members ask themselves if they as individuals and as a Church will choose to keep pace with the Lord’s hastening. “Or will we insist on doing things the way they have always been done, or the ways we are accustomed to or comfortable with?” 

Again, he said, each member can choose to learn, repent, change, and teach more effectively in the Savior’s way. “Or will we be so entangled in the traditions and patterns of the past that we will be unable to keep up with the pace of the Lord’s hastening?”

I think this counsel applies directly to not only the missionary work of the Church but also the work of redeeming the dead through our efforts in family history. Too many of the people I come in contact with in the Church make excuses about not being involved in family history because of the rapid pace of the change in the way that the work is done. Others complain about the need to learn new skills, particularly those pertaining to computers and the Internet, in order to do the work. I even talk to researchers who refuse to use computers at all.

In this regard, let me point out some important facts:

• In order to process ancestral names for Temple ordinances, it is necessary to enter the names into the FamilySearch.org Family Tree program with only a very few exceptions.
• FamilySearch, the wholly owned and operated family history entity of the Church has placed billions of family records across almost two thousand collections to enable members around the world to find their ancestors.
• FamilySearch has entered into beneficial agreements providing free access to all the members of the Church to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and findmypast.com. All of the members are being invited over the next few months to be part of this fabulous program.
• FamilySearch helps maintain over 4,745 FamilySearch Centers around the world.
• FamilySearch has phone support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• FamilySearch has introduced new features to the Family Tree program that makes it possible to find cousins who have not received the benefits of Temple work.

The list could go on and on. Are we as genealogists and family historians going to find ourselves in the category of those who are "so entangled in the traditions and patterns of the past that we will be unable to keep up with the pace of the Lord’s hastening?”

The Basics of Researching LDS Records

Many of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have joined the Church during their own life time or are first or second generation members, will be doing primary genealogical research for their ancestors almost immediately, but for some of those whose ancestors joined the Church many generations ago, there is a completely different challenge in getting started with finding ancestral family members who need their ordinance work completed. From my own experience, at first it appears that "all the work has been done." This is usually not the case, but finding the records and moving beyond research that my have been done in the past is not as easy as looking for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation ancestors.

One very common fallacy about this work that has been done is that FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a "source" for finding names to take to the Temple. I often hear of Wards or Stakes challenging their members, either youth or adults, to find a name within a specific time period as a challenge. This can be a simple as adding the names of parents or grandparents for recent converts, but for descendants of longtime members, this sort of challenge is unrealistic and can be very frustrating. The information in FamilySearch.org Family Tree comes mainly from 5 large historic databases; The Ancestral File, The Pedigree Resource File, the International Genealogical Index, Church Membership Records and Temple Records. None of these databases are particularly good for finding ancestors whose Temple work remains undone. Both the present Family Tree program and its predecessor, New.FamilySearch.org have indicators for potential Temple ordinance availability in the form of green arrows. In the Family Tree program there is also a ordinance alert called Temple "Opportunities."

For those who have joined the Church recently or whose ancestors were not members, the job of adding names that have not had the ordinances done previously is rather straight forward. It involves adding names to the Family Tree program from personal family records or, in many cases, those that are relatively easily obtained through research. For people with families that go back generations in the Church, the job of finding available names is more complex. It is not impossible that individuals, even in very researched family trees, may have been missed for Temple ordinances, but it has been now many years since the introduction of New.FamilySearch.org and Family Tree and members have been "mining" these programs for Temple ordinances for that period of time.

Nevertheless, there is a persistent belief that Family Tree is a source for even more names for Temple ordinances. In many cases, rather than follow the warnings and search for duplicates, the users have simply redone the ordinances. To some extent, that problem has been addressed in Family Tree. But it is still incumbent on the members to check carefully to see if the ordinance work has already been done. This is especially true for any ancestor who was already a member of the Church or their descendants.

For more specific information about research ancestors who were members of the Church, see the following links:

• Tracing LDS Ancestors
• Websites for LDS Research
• Ten great LDS family history databases
• Finding Records of LDS Ancestors

These articles and the video should get you started. Remember, it is very likely that anyone you find in FamilySearch.org Family Tree has already had all of their ordinances done, whether or not they are shown in the program. There are exceptions but you need to proceed with caution. 

FamilySearch opens access to Ancestry, MyHeritage and findmypast to all members

The general membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began receiving invitations to join Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and findmypast.com using their LDS.org Account. I do not know how far this invitation is going out around the world, but it will be sent to all the members eventually. The invitations are being sent by email. The notice states as follows:

We’re excited to announce that Latter-day Saint users of FamilySearch.org can now receive personal access to Ancestry.com, findmypast, and MyHeritage at no cost! 

Access to these commercial family history websites, used in tandem with enhanced FamilySearch tools, will open new doors of discovery, elevate your ability to provide temple blessings to ancestors, and increase the joy that comes from connecting generations. 

Starting today, you can sign up for personal accounts with all three sites and use the features of each in searching for ancestors. In the future, you will be able to connect data between your FamilySearch Family Tree and the online trees of each of these websites. In addition, you will be able to submit names for temple ordinances starting with each of these websites. More information concerning online tree integration and temple submissions will be available by the end of 2014.

I am afraid, as has already happened, that many members will either ignore the invitation or throw it in the trash. I am also sure that using some or all of these programs will be a new experience for a huge number of members since all three of these websites are available to the general public only as subscription sites. Here are a few suggestions from the experiences we have had already with signing people into the programs;

• Do not ignore the emails. They are personal to the recipient and cannot be forwarded to other family members or friends. If you try to do this, the links will not work.
• We have not gotten any instructions about how to replace the email invitation if it is lost, although I have received two such invitations so far.
• Go ahead and sign up for all three of the programs, even if you do not think you will use them right now. You may be surprised at how helpful all three can be in the future.
• I know that many of the Family History Centers will be gearing up to teach classes on all three of these programs. Meanwhile each of the programs have help centers and a great deal of support. See my post entitled, "Online help for findmypast.com, Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com."
• If you already have a subscription to one or more of these websites, I suggest following the instructions very carefully. You will see that there is a provision for an existing account. This includes even a trial account or inactive account. If you have or have had an account, you can convert that account to the free LDS account based subscription.

You should seriously consider putting your family tree on all three programs. You will find that they work best when you have a family tree uploaded or entered into each program.

I will certainly be writing more on this subject. For now, if you have any questions, feel free to address them to me in the comments to this, or any other post.

Selecting a Specific Family for the Primary Position when Opening Famiily Tree

A new feature added to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree program is the ability to select the person you would like to see when you first open the program. Most of the existing desktop genealogical database programs have always had this feature, but it is a new innovation to FamilySearch Family Tree. The process of selecting the starting person is quite simple and involves entering the start-up person into your preferences file.

The complete process is explained in detail in a blog post by Jeff Hawkins entitled, "Selecting an Ancestor to Appear in the Main Position When You Sign In."

FamilySearch continues to add functionality to the Family Tree program and it has become very full-featured. However, the basic issues with the merge function and the attachment to the New.FamilySearch.org program have yet to be resolved.

Where are all those FamilySearch Blog Posts?

In the not-too-distant past, FamilySearch issued only intermittent blog posts. They would go a few weeks without putting out any information and then, in a burst, launch a huge number of posts all at once. That has changed. FamilySearch posts new information almost daily. In the last week, which is typical, they have posted more than one blog post a day. I do not automatically reproduce every single blog post. I usually pick those that have my personal interest or which I think have more than daily significance. So, to see the whole picture, you might want to subscribe for yourself.

In addition, when I choose a post to discuss, unless it is a specific announcement, I usually comment on the content. But where are all of those blog posts? Online, they are all posted to FamilySearch.org. Here is how you find them. First, go to the startup page and scroll to the very bottom. Here is a screen shot showing where the link to the blogs is located:

Don't worry about the pictures. Most of the content on the FamilySearch startup page is user driven. So the photos and links that occur are customized for your personal use. Clicking on this link brings up the FamilySearch Blog. Here is a screenshot of today's listings:

What you might not realize is that you are looking at only a small part of what has been posted by FamilySearch. Look at the right-hand side of the page and you will see a list of Categories. You might not realize that each of these "Categories" is a completely different set of blog posts. If you subscribe to the FamilySearch blog, you may or may not be getting all of these blog posts, depending on what you have told FamilySearch in your settings on FamilySearch.org and on LDS.org.

Here is a screenshot with the list highlighted:

Each of those categories has a completely different list of blog posts which do not necessarily show up in the main list each day. Here is an example of one of the categories, the Family History Library:

You could go through and subscribe to each category or you could sign up with FamilySearch and receive email notifications of every category. Just be aware that you will likely receive more than one post every day, sometimes four or five or more.

Saving and Printing a Portrait Pedigree

As announced by FamilySearch.org on 7 July 2014 in a blog post by Jeff Hawkins, Family Tree now has the function of printing a portrait pedigree. See Saving and Printing a Portrait Peidgree. Here is a full-page example of a portrait pedigree of my Great-grandfather:

This is a nice addition to a reunion program or to be included in a book or other publication. You can print the portrait pedigree either from a Portrait view or from the Details page for any individual. It is also a good incentive to find the photos missing from your ancestors.

Online help for findmypast.com, Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com

A fellow blogger, John D. Reid, of the Canada' Anglo-Celtic Connections blog, pointed out a link to another blog entitled, "An Introduction to Findmypast's search tools." This got me thinking that the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will shortly all have access to not only, findmypast.com, but also both Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com. I figured it would be a good idea to provide some links to support and help pages for each of these programs.

findmypast.com
This is likely the least known of the three programs, depending on your prior genealogical experience and also depending on where you live. If you are from the United Kingdom, it is likely that you have heard of the program, even if you are not familiar with it. It is U.K. based and has million upon millions of records relating to the U.K. and more records all the time from the U.S.

Once you sign in to the program and try to begin using it, you may well need some assistance in understanding how it works. I would suggestion beginning with the step-by-step getting started guide. It may seem elemental to some, but it important to follow through each step so you can see how the program works. You will find that some of the suggested records are not included in your LDS Account access to the program. You may also wish to utilize over 75 videos on the findmypast YouTube.com channel. These tutorials and videos should give you a basic idea how the program operates.

MyHeritage.com
In order to get started with MyHeritage.com you will need to begin a family tree. Yes, this is in addition to your family tree on FamilySearch.org. If you have a program that synchronizes with Family Tree, such as Rootsmagic, Ancestral Quest or Legacy Family Tree, you can create a GEDCOM file and upload that file to MyHeritage.com. Once you have a family tree on the program and log in with your LDS Account, you should start receiving Smart Matches to other family trees with the same individuals and Record Matches to sources from the millions of records MyHeritage.com has online.

Links to MyHeritage's video tutorials and other resources are located at the bottom of the startup (home) page. There is a long list of video tutorials and articles from the MyHeritage.com Help Center. Just as findmypast.com has a series of YouTube.com videos, MyHertitage.com also has a sizable online library of videos. It also has its own YouTube channel.

Ancestry.com 
Although most experienced genealogists in the United States have had some experience with Ancestry.com, there is always a lot to learn about the website and its resources. Fortunately, Ancestry.com has an equally impressive number of online helps. With an LDS Account access to the program will include access to the Learning Center. In addition, Ancestry.com has a free download of over 33 Reference Guides. In addition to the impressive resources on the website, Ancestry.com has a YouTube.com channel with over 590 videos.

Please do not forget to ask for help from your local Family History Consultants. If they cannot help, you might want to let them know about all the help centers and videos available. You can also get help in a FamilySearch center around the world.