Indexing Goal in December to #LIGHTtheWORLD

As part of the initiative to #LIGHTtheWORLD, FamilySearch.org has proposed an indexing goal of 15 million indexed records and 7 million arbitrated records. As indicated by FamilySearch in the announcement:

This holiday season, you can give others the joy of discovering their ancestors by taking time to index. Volunteer indexing has already made more than a billion records easily and freely searchable on FamilySearch.org—and your help is needed to add records! Your gift of indexing will help bring year-long cheer to researchers around the world. 

Throughout December we are focusing on families by indexing historical records. Will you help #LIGHTtheWORLD with your service by indexing valuable family records?

To read more and find suggestions about the #LIGHTtheWORLD initiative, see #LIGHTtheWORLD with Family History.

Why Use the FamilySearch Family Tree

There is a considerable amount of discussion among those involved in family history (genealogy) about how to record and store the information discovered about your family. One of the questions I am most commonly asked is "What genealogy program do you use?" I have written about selecting a genealogy database program a number of times, but it is still a frequently raised topic.

If you have read any of my blog posts over the past few years, you probably realize that I am very opinionated on certain subjects (that is probably one of the most understated things I have written lately). But I do try to temper my opinions when I can see a variety of different viewpoints. In this post, I want to explore the idea of using the FamilySearch.org Family Tree as a primary database. Before going too far with that idea, I want to point out that I also have family tree information on several other programs including desktop, standalone programs and online database programs such as MyHeritage.com, Ancestry.com, and Findmypast.com. There are a huge number of obvious advantages to having family trees in each of these programs. My comments here are not directed at any "either or" type situations. I can see a number of very persuasive arguments for having a closed, controlled copy of your data to augment any of the entries you have on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. But I am also getting consistent feedback from people who, for a variety of reasons, refuse to consider using the Family Tree at all.

To start out, the Family Tree is free. There are no paid upgrade options or hidden charges. Free does not always equate with adequate or the best possible option. I do not intend to get into a feature by feature comparison of the different programs. That is one reason why I have my data on more than one program: to take advantage of the options available on the different programs. Next, the Family Tree is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and FamilySearch is a non-profit company. I have nothing against making a profit or paying for genealogical services, but I do think in terms of permanence and accessibility. If I were to die and all my data was on a paid, subscription program, my heirs would either have to copy everything down or pay to continue the subscription. In either case, there is a substantial possibility that the data would be lost. Having the bulk of my data on FamilySearch mitigates that issue.

Both of those reasons are somewhat superficial and may even be trivial, but I consider the preservability of the data as one of the main issues in choosing where and how to store what I do to be a fundamental consideration.

One of the first and most common objections to the Family Tree is its most important feature; the idea that all of the users of the program can edit, change, modify or add to the existing data. The collaboration aspect of the Family Tree is one of its most repellent or appealing features depending on your point of view. The Family Tree is basically a wiki and I have been living in the wiki world now for many years and appreciate the power of wikis to accumulate large amounts of accurate information. It may appear that the Family Tree is somewhat chaotic, but over time, it has proved to be more and more accurate and organized.

Another good reason to use the Family Tree is because it is connected to a huge, online database of original source documents in the FamilySearch.org Historical Record Collections. There are differing opinions about the efficacy of the search engine, but my experience is that it is getting better all the time and having an instant connection to Record Hints and data searches is a great advantage. Of course, that is also one of the reasons I maintain family trees on the other programs such as MyHeritage.com, Ancestry.com, and Findmypast.com; to take advantage of their record hints. Direct searches in these programs are not as effective as their record hints. Some researchers may be overwhelmed with the prospect of having separate copies of their ancestry on different programs, but ignoring the spectacular advances made by these companies over the past few years is a big mistake.

To summarize, I think the Family Tree will be around for a long time and permanence is my most important criteria. At the same time, free doesn't hurt and the added bonus of record hints and searches directly from the Family Tree are also helpful. Even if you don't want to use the Family Tree as a primary database, you should not be ignoring the vast resources of the FamilySearch.org program.

How to Actually Find New Names to Take to the Temples -- Part Two

I am going to demonstrate exactly how I find names to add to my Temple list. I will show each step in the process and explain what happens if you find something different than you expect. This technique or method will work in any language with anyone's portion of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

There is an immediate tendency to start clicking out the pedigree shown to find the last person in the family line. Please avoid this tendency. Blank spaces on any portion of the Family Tree are there because no one has been able to find these ancestors for over a hundred years of research. If you and your family have not submitted any family history to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints previously, then you may have a blank pedigree. If you have no previous experience in doing family history research, this is the time to start learning about the process. Please start with The Family History Guide and learn about the process. At the same time you are learning, you can begin by adding your first deceased ancestors. If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, you may need to add them first until you reach the first dead people. If you add a living person, that living person will not be visible to anyone else using the Family Tree. In essence, you have created a duplicate of that living person that will not become visible to anyone else until that person dies. There is no reason to add living descendants, i.e. children, and grandchildren. They can add themselves.

Now it is time to begin the process of finding people to add to the Family Tree. You start with yourself. There is really no need to add in a lot of information about yourself unless you really want to do so. Again, any information you add about living people will only be visible to you until you die. Next, you move to your parents. I have skipped giving a screenshot of my parents because for my demonstration, I am choosing to show my Parkinson line where I am currently finding a considerable number of people to add to the Family Tree. So, I am starting with my paternal grandfather, Leroy Parkinson Tanner.

The goal of this process is to find the name or names of identifiable individuals to add to my Temple list. For many of the steps in this process, I would be able to move quickly to the point where I have been doing research, but for demonstration purposes, I will go excruciatingly slow and explain every step. If I click on Leroy Parkinson Tanner's name in the pedigree view, I get the following pop-up information card:

At this stage, the information I am seeking is whether or not this particular person was baptized a member of the Church. I also want to see if the information about this person is well documented. In this case, I happen to know that Leroy Parkinson Tanner was born in the covenant (BIC) to parents who have been sealed in the temple. There are already 36 sources and 77 memories about Leroy. Since my goal is to find new people, I will not stop to add more information or sources to Leroy at this time. I will move on to his parents.

Because the Family Tree is unified, anyone can view these people by merely searching for them using their ID numbers. The ID numbers are the series of numbers and letters that are unique to each of the people who have been added to the Family Tree. We can tell if we have duplicates in the Family Tree by noting that the same individuals show up with two or more ID numbers. In this case, I am now to my first Parkinson ancestor, Eliza Ellen Parkinson. Both Henry Tanner and Eliza Parkinson were born to parents who were already members of the Church. So, I will be moving on out the pedigree that is shown in the Family Tree. Remember, if you are following this procedure with your own portion of the Family Tree, you may have already reached the end of a family line. In this case, you are ready to begin doing additional research. This would also be the case if you have reached the first person in any of your family lines who was not a member of the Church during their lifetime. If you or your ancestors joined the Church during the last 100 years or so, you will find these people after very few generations. In my case, I have to go back quite a number of generations to find the first ancestors who never joined the Church during their lifetimes.

Consequently, I need to keep moving back a few more generations. The next generation is Eliza Ellen Parkinson's parents.

If you are confused about what I am doing. Here is a screenshot of the pedigree as it appears in the Family Tree to this point.

At each point in this process, I must determine the reliability of the information in the Family Tree. Here are the summary cards for Eliza and Thomas Parkinson, her father.

In each of these cases, the family has done extensive research on these individuals. The number of sources and memories, per se, does not mean anything. In this particular case, when I first started doing research on Thomas Parkinson, there was no documentation in the form of sources listed supporting any of the birth, marriage or death dates for Thomas Parkinson or his ancestral family members. The lack of documentation or sources indicated that very little information had been added to the Family Tree about this family. Before going any further back in time to another generation, I needed to substantiate the dates already present in the Family Tree for Thomas and his family. There were no documents recorded that connected him to those individuals recorded as his parents and grandparents.

The process of finding the Parkinsons in documents and records took a considerable effort. Here is the extension of the Family Tree showing the ancestors of Thomas Parkinson and his wife Mary Ann Bryant.

The key document that began the process of documenting this family was the discovery of his father, James Parkinson, and his family in the 1841 England and Wales Census records. Here is a copy of the Census record for the family.

The Census record gave information about the exact location of the family in 1841. Subsequently, I was able to find documents that traced the family from England to Australia and then for Thomas Parkinson, to the United States. He either married Mary Ann Bryant on the ship coming over from Australia or in California when they arrived. Thomas and Mary Ann had joined the Church in Australia and were emigrating to Utah.

The process of documenting the entries as they exist in the Family Tree is crucial to extending the family lines as well as finding additional people who are not already recorded. You must have a level of confidence that you are working on the right family and that the people shown in the Family Tree are correctly identified.

I am now ready to move on to the next stage in the process. In this case, I am going to choose a new family line and concentrate on the Bryants. Initially, I had no particular reason to explore the Bryant family line, but I have learned that there is a spiritual component to this process. You need to be sensitive to feelings and promptings that may come to you during your exploration. After all, we are looking for our ancestors who may have already been taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and accepted baptism. So, remember to pray about the process and listen to the Spirit.

In the next installment, I will begin with Mary Ann Bryant.

Past posts in this series:

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/12/how-to-actually-find-new-names-to-take.html

How to Actually Find New Names to Take to the Temples -- Part One

President Henry B. Eyring, Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in the April 2005 General Conference as follows:

Many of your deceased ancestors will have received a testimony that the message of the missionaries is true. When you received that testimony you could ask the missionaries for baptism. But those who are in the spirit world cannot. The ordinances you so cherish are offered only in this world. Someone in this world must go to a holy temple and accept the covenants on behalf of the person in the spirit world. That is why we are under obligation to find the names of our ancestors and ensure that they are offered by us what they cannot receive there without our help.

He went on to say:

With those opportunities there comes greater obligation to keep our trust with the Lord. Where much is given, much is required.5 After you find the first few generations, the road will become more difficult. The price will become greater. As you go back in time, the records become less complete. As others of your family search out ancestors, you will discover that the ancestor you find has already been offered the full blessings of the temple. Then you will have a difficult and important choice to make. You will be tempted to stop and leave the hard work of finding to others who are more expert or to another time in your life. But you will also feel a tug on your heart to go on in the work, hard as it will be. 

As you decide, remember that the names which will be so difficult to find are of real people to whom you owe your existence in this world and whom you will meet again in the spirit world. When you were baptized, your ancestors looked down on you with hope. Perhaps after centuries, they rejoiced to see one of their descendants make a covenant to find them and to offer them freedom. In your reunion, you will see in their eyes either gratitude or terrible disappointment. Their hearts are bound to you. Their hope is in your hands. You will have more than your own strength as you choose to labor on to find them.

At some point in time, we need to stop talking about the doctrine of doing the work for our deceased ancestors and relatives and actually start doing what is necessary to find them. All of the wonderful suggestions and programs we have to help people get interested in family history need to focus on doing the actual work. As President Eyring points out, this may turn out to be difficult work. I can state with absolute surety that we have the tools to significantly advance this work right now. I have been grappling with the challenge of finding my own ancestors for over thirty years and I have used every advance in technology as it has come along and we now have adequate tools to go forward. I know this is the case because I am consistently finding new people to add to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree.

No matter what you see when you look at the Family Tree and initially begin the process of discovery, you have to take the same steps. You may see that many of your ancestors have submitted names for generations back in time. You may also see that some of your ancestors have done very little. In many cases, you may find that no work has previously been done and you are the first in your family to start the process. Wherever you find yourself in the Family Tree, you have the opportunity to make significant progress.

Here in Provo, Utah along the Wasatch Front, it is common for people to appear to have extensive genealogies already recorded in the Family Tree. This is usually the case with families that count many of their ancestors as some of the original members of the Church with ancestral names like Tanner, Kimball, Smith, Cannon, Woodruff and others. My experience over the past few years suggests that the more information you already have in your part of the Family Tree, the more opportunities you have to make significant progress in finding new people whose names can then be taken to the temples.

Many other people have bought into the idea that the "youth" of the Church will solve the problem for them. They look at the fact that the "youth" are comfortable with the technology and therefore they can somehow automatically understand how to do genealogical research. Well, I have taught thousands of people in the last few years about family history, including many youth and older people. I have found that age is not a major factor in having the interest and ability to handle either genealogical research or the technology. For example, I have been using computers now for over 45 years, far longer than any teenager and many of my contemporaries have the same amount of experience. I find as many youth who are challenged by technology as I do mature adults. In fact, I find many of the youth who do not have the attentions span or the research skills or even reading skills to understand the research process at all.

So let's get started. What is the first step? I just finished a series of posts on Genealogy's Star blog that is entitled "Jumpstart Your Family History in Ten Steps." The link is to the last post in the series. I am also going to post a webinar on the same subject within the next few days. The webinar will be broadcast online on December 5th, 2016. No matter where you start, you need to become acquainted with your family and your ancestors. This is the case whether you are from Utah or from Vietnam or Zimbabwe. It is true that finding information about someone who lived their life in the United States or Western Europe is easier than finding someone in some other countries, but the principles and procedures of finding them are the same.

President Eyring in his Conference talk pointed out the same principle:

Because your heart has already been turned, the price may not seem high. You begin by doing simple things. Write down what you already know about your family. You will need to write down the names of parents and their parents with the dates of birth or death or marriage. When you can, you will want to record the places. Some of that you will know from memory. But you can also ask relatives. They may even have some certificates of births, marriages, or deaths. Make copies and organize them. If you learn stories about their lives, write them down and keep them. You are not just gathering names. Those you never met in life will become friends you love. Your heart will be bound to theirs forever.

Some of us need to turn our hearts, but most of us simply need to start working. I was trying to help one of my grandchildren with a school science project. When I mentioned to him that he needed to finish the project, he collapsed on the floor and tried to disappear. I have often had the same feeling. We think the work is overwhelming and we do not have the time to do anything. But the key here is to pick ourselves off of the floor and get started actually doing the work. Look at the Family Tree. Start by learning how and why it is there and what it is. You can do this by using The Family History Guide.

In the next few posts, I am going to take a detailed look at the process of discovery by using the Family Tree to find some new people. I have been doing this for some time now and have already made significant progress. I hope this case study will motivate you to take similar steps to discover your own ancestry.

Can You Believe This?

My daughter-in-law asked me to look at this entry for Christen Pedersen, MJNM-VQ1. Here is part of the rest of the story:

This is the first screenshot of the list of wives for this person. Here is the next screenshot.

Here is the next screenshot. These are all for Christen Pedersen MJNM-VQ1.

Wait, the list goes on. Here is the next screenshot down.

Yep, there is even more. Here is another screenshot down the list.

Finally, we get to the bottom of the list

Guess what? I have seen worse. But not one with so many Data problems. How did this mess come about? Most of these types of issues come from multiple submissions of the same person with different wives over the last 100 years. In this case, the problem, even if there was one originally, was caused by multiple merges primarily done by the same person. By the way, there are seven possible temple sealings to spouses available for this person. No, this person was not a polygamist.

How does the average user (or even an advanced user) of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree untangle this mess? There is no real way to do so without spending a huge amount of time. The first step is to step back and verify that your family line actually connects you to this person. You must determine with solid sources that you are really related to Christen Pedersen MJNM-VQ1. If you happen to be related to one of the listed wives, and you have supporting sources, you need sources that show you are related to Christen Pedersen also in the form of specific marriage information. You then have to determine if he was, in fact, married more than once. You then need to verify that the children listed are the children of Christen Pedersen and your ancestor. If so, then all you have to do is detach all of the other wives and children.

In looking at the places where all these people are said to be born, I suggest that there is only one or at most two of the people that actually belong here.

Good Luck.

The Impact of The Family History Guide on Family History

A short time ago, I became formally associated with The FamilyHistory Guide or TheFHGuide.com when my wife and I agreed to serve on their Advisory Board. We were motivated to help out this non-profit corporation due to our belief in the importance of the program in educating those who wish to participate in family history and increasing the numbers of people who are involved in family history worldwide.

The Family History Guide is a free, innovative educational website that is already beginning to have a profound effect on the genealogical community. The Family History Guide is also one of the programs featured on the FamilySearch.org Portal, used by all of the nearly 5000 Family Centers Worldwide.

The website has several different educational functions. First, it is a self-paced, structured and sequenced, individual learning program. You can start from any level, complete beginner, to more advanced topics and work your way through the subjects you choose to learn. There are several online videos that explain the entire program. Here is a list of some of the current video offerings on the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel:

• The Family History Guide by James Tanner
• Introduction to The Family History Guide, Version 2 - Bob Taylor
• Training with The Family History Guide, Version 2 - Bob Taylor

Next, the website also provides a complete set of lesson outlines for teaching individuals, families, groups, and Family History Consultants the resources and methodology of family history. In addition, the website contains a fully developed tracking system to monitor your own progress or the progress of those you are teaching.

As a result of our involvement with The Family History Guide, I will be teaching quite a number of classes at RootsTech 2017 at The Family History Guide booth. I will also be teaching for some of the other vendors, but most of my teaching will be done for The Family History Guide. The schedule of the classes will be posted at The Family History Guide booth and also available on a handout. We will also have a volunteer staff there to help answer questions about the program.

16 video series for training Family History Consultants added to BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel

1 - FamilySearch Registration and Settings - Judy Sharp

The Brigham Young University Family History Library has uploaded 16 new videos to assist in training local Family History Consultants. These videos can be accessed through the BYU Family History Library website or through the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel. You can subscribe to the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel and receive notification of any new videos that are uploaded.

These videos were produced by Judy Sharp for the Library. There had been some discussion lately about the need for shorter videos that could be integrated into a meeting or class for Family History Consultants. There are now 221 videos on the BYU Family History Library YouTube channel available for your review and use in instructing others.