19 New Items mentioned in FamilySearch Updates

I just received an update of the latest FamilySearch Update. There are two posts with a total of 19 new or to-come items outlined. Here are the links to the two posts:


What’s New on FamilySearch.org—May 2015, Part 2
Coming Soon to FamilySearch.org—May, 2015 

OK, so if there is a Part 2, I can assume there is a part one? Yes, there is a Part 1:

What’s New on FamilySearch.org—May 2015, Part 1

That post adds another nine new items, some of which I have already written about. I am very happy to see some of the changes. FamilySearch.org is constantly improving the experience of working on the Family Tree. 

FamilySearch Memories publicly available online

This warning message has appeared for sometime on the Memories section of the FamilySearch.org website. Apparently this general admonition was not enough and a new banner has been added to the Stories section:

Anyone adding content to the FamilySearch.org Memories portion of the website needs to understand that the word "public" means exactly that. All of these stories, photos and documents are completely discoverable by a Google search. In addition, the FamilySearch.org website has some rather strict guidelines. There are several very important provisions in the "Submission Agreement." For example, the Agreement states:

By submitting content to this site, you represent and affirm that you have the legal right to do so, and that the submission of such content will not violate any third party’s privacy rights, publicity rights, contract rights, copyrights, or other proprietary rights. By representing and affirming your legal right to submit content, you accept legal responsibility for the use of your Contributed Content by us or by other visitors to the site.

There is further a rather extensive license granted to FamilySearch by the user of the website:

Licenses and Rights Granted to Us 

By submitting content to FamilySearch, you grant FamilySearch an unrestricted, fully paid-up, royalty-free, worldwide, and perpetual license to use any and all information, content, and other materials (collectively, “Contributed Content”) that you submit or otherwise provide to this site (including, without limitation, genealogical content and discussions and content relating to deceased persons) for any and all purposes, in any and all manners, and in any and all forms of media that we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate for the furtherance of our mission to promote family history and genealogical research. As part of this license, you give us permission to copy, publicly display, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise distribute your Contributed Content throughout the world, by any means we deem appropriate (electronic or otherwise, including the Internet). You also understand and agree that as part of this license, we have the right to create derivative works from your Contributed Content by combining all or a portion of it with that of other contributors or by otherwise modifying your Contributed Content.

This new banner is helpful reminder that uploading content to FamilySearch.org does entail some rather extensive privacy, copyright and other legal issues.

Community Trees added to Genealogies on FamilySearch.org

You may not have been aware of the Community Trees program. It is an extremely valuable, but highly focused database of compiled genealogical data on specific localities or during certain time periods. FamilySearch announced that the Genealogies section of FamilySearch.org will now be able to search the Community Tree databases directly. This search capability has been added to the Genealogies section of FamilySearch.org. Here is a screenshot showing where this capability was added:

Here is a description of the content of the Community Trees program:

Community Trees are genealogies from specific periods and localities that have been linked according to family relations. Community trees often include supporting sources. Most of the genealogies are joint projects between FamilySearch and others who live in a particular area or have expertise in the area or records used to create the genealogies. Each community tree is a searchable database with views of individuals, families, ancestors, and descendants, as well as options for printing. 

The scope of projects may involve members of a small villages or townships who work together to form a family tree of all known residents of the community for a given time period. Some are projects involve genealogical and historical societies that work with FamilySearch to index several sources of data to link them to common, lineage-linked genealogies of a targeted geographic area. 

The scope could also be focused on a particular record set and locality. The goal may be to identify and reconstitute all families of a particular place from a village, county, or even a country. Many of the current projects were produced by FamilySearch's Family Reconstitution team and are for communities from medieval times. 

GEDCOM downloads of the community trees may be available, depending on restrictions that have been set for access to the records. No information for living people is usually available in the public views of these community trees. Edits and corrections to the databases are usually restricted by project partners; please contact these partners to offer suggestions, corrections, and new information. Some partners may have additional information or enhanced versions of the genealogies on their own websites. These databases will be updated if they are a work in progress.

According to FamilySearch's post, these trees have extensive sources and should have a low error and duplication rate. At the bottom of the search form above, you can see a blue button that contains a drop-down menu that enables you to search all of the databases, the Ancestral File, the Pedigree Resource File, the International Genealogical Index and Community Trees at one time or search each one separately. 

Some of the most interesting compilations on the Community Trees program include the Paget's Heraldic Baronage collection and the Royal and Noble Houses of Europe. The Royal and Noble Houses of Europe includes the following:

This database contains individuals ranging from A.D. 100 to the 1800s; includes ancestors and descendants of Clodion "der Langhaarige" ancestor of the Merovingian kings; Gorm "den Gamle" of Denmark; Charlemagne of the Franks; Wladimir I Swjatoslavitsch "der Heilige" Grossfürst von Kiev; Louis IX of France; Edward I of England; Charles I of England; and Spanish Kings of Navarre, Castile and Léon with many other European royal, noble, and gentry lineages with Colonial American connections.

This particular database has over 380,000 lineage linked entries for an extensive source for the most accurate royal lines available. If there is a "little used" resource from FamilySearch the Community Trees program has been long overdue for publicity. The amount of information in this set of collections is monumental. The major limitation is and always has been that the collections were only helpful if your particular lines fell within the focus of the collections. However, now, with the ability to search the entire set of collections from FamilySearch.org, the site becomes much more valuable.

A Brief Chronology of Family History in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Introductory Note

The modern doctrine of salvation of the dead as taught by the prophets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dates back into antiquity with several references in the Bible. It is surprising that there are so few published timelines that focuses on this specific aspect of LDS doctrine and practice showing milestones in the development of the doctrine and practice and including modern technological developments that have proved to impact both the doctrine and the practices associated with the that doctrine. The following is an attempt to begin a timeline with that focus. I have omitted specific references to many of the doctrinal developments and mainly listed those events and procedural changes that make up the actual practice of doing genealogical or family history research and submitting names for Temple ordinances. I have used the Church History section of LDS.org Timeline and the book:

Allen, James B., Jessie L. Embry, and Kahlile B. Mehr. Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894-1994. Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, Brigham Young University, 1995.

I have added to and expanded the brief timeline contained in the book and added in some more events from the technological developments outside of the Church.  See Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline), History of Computing (http://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html), History of Personal Computers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers), History of the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet), Internet Hall of Fame, Internet History (http://www.internethalloffame.org/internet-history/timeline)

Timeline

• June 1829-April 1830 – The Melchizedek Priesthood was restored.
• 6 April 1830 – The Church is organized in Fayette Township, New York.
• 27 March 1836 – The Kirtland Temple was dedicated.
• 3 April 1836 – The sealing keys were restored by the ancient prophet Elijah to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.
• 15 August 1840 -- Baptisms for the dead were publically announced by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois and the first baptisms for the dead performed in the Mississippi River.
• 4 May 1842 -- First endowments were given in the Nauvoo Temple, in Nauvoo, Illinois.
• December 1845-February 1846 -- Temple ordinances were first administered in the Nauvoo Temple.
• 5 May 1855 – The Endowment House in Salt Lake City, Utah was dedicated.
• 6 April 1877 – St. George Temple was dedicated and the first proxy baptisms for the dead were performed in the Temple.
• 1890 – Herman Hollerith invents the punch card system for processing the 1880 U.S. Federal Census.
• 6 April 1893 – The Salt Lake Temple was dedicated.
• 13 November 1894 – President Wilford Woodruff received an important revelation regarding the necessity of sealing families by virtue of the Priesthood authority. The Genealogical Society of Utah was founded to advance this work.
• 1910 – First publication of the Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine.
• 3 October 1918 – President Joseph F. Smith receives Vision of the Redemption of the Dead, now contained in Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
• 1927- 1969 – The creation and use of the Temple Records Index Bureau card index for checking name submissions to the temples. 
• 1938 – The Genealogical Society of Utah began its monumental microfilming effort of records around the world. 
• 1941 -1942 – J. V. Atanasoff and Cliff Berry, build the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), a computer with memory at the Iowa State College (now University).
• 1943 -1946 – John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert build the first commercial computer at the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania.
• 1944 – The United Kingdom develops the Colossus at Bletchley Park.
• 1947 – William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen create the first semiconductor transistor.
• 1948 – Claude Shannon publishes The Mathematical Theory of Communication and identifies the “bit” as the basic unit of data.
• 1948 – 1957 – IBM designs the IBM 610, the first personal computer.
• 1951 – The first UNIVAC I delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• 1953 – Grace Hopper invents the first computer language later known as COBOL.
• 1956 – IBM develops and sells the first hard drive memory storage system.
• 1958 – Jack Kilby creates the first integrated circuit at Texas Instruments.
• 1958 – The first large-scale computer network, SAGE or Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, was developed.
• 1958 – Bell Laboratories invents the modem. 
• 1958 – U.S. Government develops the Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA net, the precursor to the Internet. 
• 1961 – The Church began its Records Tabulation program for extracting names from original records for temple ordinances. 
• 1963 – The Granite Record Vault was completed.
• 1963 – The American Standard Code for Information Exchange or ASCII is developed.
• 1964 – The Church opened its first Family History Centers. 
• 1964 – 1967 – The Rand Corporation develops the first packet switching of message blocks to revolutionize data communications. 
• 1965 – The first Wide-Area Network (WAN) is developed by Lawrence Roberts at MIT and Thomas Marill. 
• 1966 – The Church began the Four Generation program. The records submitted became the Ancestral File. 
• 1969 – The Church held the first World Conference on Records in Salt Lake City, Utah. 
• 1969 - 1990 – The Church implemented the Genealogical Information and Name Tabulation system or GIANT program for automated name processing and included the data in the International Genealogical Index.
• 1969 – UCLA team sends the first data packets.
• 1972 – Ray Tomlinson invents email. 
• 1973 – Ethernet Invented at Xerox Parc. 
• 1974 – Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn publish “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection” and use the term “Internet” for the first time. 
• 1977 – Apple Computer is incorporated.
• 1977 – First commercially successful home computers; TRS-80, Apple II and Commodore PET.
• 1978 – The Church began the Stake Record Extraction program
• 1981 – IBM releases the first IBM PC.
• 1981 – Temple work was automated through the Temple Recording System.
• 1984 – Apple releases the first Macintosh Computer.
• 1989 – The Genealogical Information System (GIS) was renamed FamilySearch.
• 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web. 
• 1989 – Brewster Kahle invents the Wide Area Information Server or WAIS.
• 1990 – The Temple Recording System was replaced by the Ordinance Recording System. 
• 1990 – 1993 – The GIANT system was replaced by TempleReady.
• 1990 – The FamilySearch compact disk technology provided automated access to the Ancestral File, the International Genealogical Index and the Family History Library Catalog.
• 1991 – World Wide Web is opened to the public.
• 1993 -- Mark Andreessen and Eric Bina create the Mosaic browser at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
• 1994 – Family Record Extraction and Stake Record Extraction were combined in one program.
• 1998 – FamilySearch began digital imaging of records.
• 1998 – The first blogs appear online. 
• 1999 – The FamilySearch.org website was opened to the public and immediately crashed. But it was soon in operation and 1.5 billion hits by October, 1999.
• 2001 – Work began on the new.FamilySearch.org website.
• 2005 - 2014 – new.FamilySearch.org began beta testing. The program never was finally released and was discontinued in 2014 still in beta. 
• 2006 – FamilySearch Indexing program is introduced.
• 2011 – First RootsTech Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. 
• 2013 – FamilySearch.org Family Tree formally introduced at the RootsTech Conference.
• 2014 – FamilySearch announces partnerships with Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and Findmypast.com.

As I got into this project, I realized that there was virtually no end to the detail that could be included. You are free to make comments and added additional significant events you feel are pertinent. 

93 Apps now listed in the FamilySearch App Gallery

The newly updated and revised MyHeritage.com Mobile apps for both Android and iOS are an example of the 31 apps listed in the FamilySearch.org App Gallery. Unless you have a link directly to the App Gallery, you will find that that it is tucked away two click-levels down from the startup window. For some, the link may also appear as one of the rotating links of the startup page. Here is an example of one of the rotating links that show up on my version of the startup page today:

When you go to the App Gallery, be sure and click on the link that says "All Categories" or you will think that there are fewer offerings than there really are. There is a link that says "View All" but it does not really show all the apps. Here is a screenshot showing the "View All" link location:

"View All" certainly does not mean all, there are separate view all links for each category. Instead, to see all the programs, you must choose the category of "All Categories." Here is the Category Link with arrows showing both the Category link and the "All Categories" link on the pull-down menu:

When you click on the "All Categories" link, you will see a list of all 93 available apps:

You should also note that there are three options for viewing the apps sorted in different ways.

There is also a rating system of one to five stars for each app, however, many of the apps are yet unreviewed. One of the sorting processes sorts the results by "FamilySearch Certified." There are about 35 apps that are not yet certified but are listed in the App Gallery. Although there may be some advantages from being "FamilySearch Certified," it certainly does not mean that the apps are not useful. Here is an example of a page of apps with certification. The arrow points to the certification link.

You also need to focus on the way the apps can be used. The term "apps" has now been generally extended to mean application or program. It used to have a mobile connotation, but has now expanded to all types of computer programs for individual computers, mobile devices and on the web. You can see in the above screenshot that some of the programs are for the Web, Windows, and Android. Other categories include iOS, Windows phone, Mac OS, and iPhone/iPad. If an app is available on the web, then it should be able to be used by any device connected to the web. However, some of the web-based apps may not be designed for optimal use with a mobile device.

You can read about the process of becoming FamilySearch Certified on the FamilySearch website entitled, "Becoming a Partner."

Off for another trip to Southern Utah

We are off on another expedition to Southern Utah. We feel like we need to start taking advantage of living in both Utah and Arizona by camping in some of the fantastic areas in both states. When we travel to these areas, we always find people visiting from all over the world. It is not unusual to camp next to a family from Japan, Germany, France or some other part of the world. We are also seeing a lot more groups from China. I decided long ago that if the whole world was coming to Arizona and Utah, why should I go somewhere else. Besides, I love the rocks and deserts of both states more than any place else I have been. This will mean we will be offline for a few days. Take some time to read some of the past blog posts or look at the photos on WalkingArizona.blogspot.com.

Plumbing the Depths of FamilySearch Family Tree

The past week or so has been a challenge in maintaining an understanding of what is going on in FamilySearch.org's Family Tree program. There has been a fair amount of discussion over the issue of the mysterious appearance of Alternative Names, but I got a telephone call about an even more challenging issue. Here is the message that appeared:

The record referred to in the message is this one:

There are a number of things wrong with the entry for this person as shown by his Descendancy View"

The red exclamation point icons indicate that the birth year for the mother, Nancy Denham born in 1803 is after the listed marriage year of 1800. The child, Rebecca Gilpin, was also born before her mother, Nancy Denham Gilpin.

Aside from those problems, there are some other more serious issues (if the issues can get more serious) when we look at the message concerning the IGI (International Genealogical Index) extraction issue. Clicking on the link that says "Learn More" takes us to the following Help Center document:

The link to this article is https://familysearch.org/ask/salesforce/viewArticle?urlname=Dividing-incorrectly-combined-records-in-Family-Tree&lang=en.

Most of the article deals with the issue of incorrectly combined or merged individuals. I looked through the history for Ignatious Gilpin and did not see any evidence that his record had been combined or merged. However, there is nothing in the record to indicate that a wrong combination was not done previously in new.FamilySearch.org. It also appears that the source for the marriage, from the IGI, is attached to the correct person. If this is the case, then the dates for his wife, Nancy Denham Gilpin, must be wrong.

There is a note in the rather long Help Center article that says:

Note: Begin by researching and gathering as many facts as possible for each person. Identify which facts belong to the person represented in your family tree and which should be moved to another record. It is better to do the research and not guess before making changes.

This is good advice at any time. The issue of the wrongly combined or merged record is corrected as follows:

An Incorrect Merge Is Corrected by Undoing the Merge in Family Tree or Creating a New Record for the Other Person.

• To determine where a bad merge occurred, a user can examine the Latest Changes on the right side of the person's Details page. Click Show All Changes. The changes resulting from a merge are marked with a green box.
• See Undoing a merge (72004) and Restoring a record that was deleted after a merge (71934).
• This process will only be used if the bad merge occurred in Family Tree. If the merge is not shown in the Latest Changes, this indicates the records were incorrectly combined in new.familysearch.org.

If you determine that the records were incorrectly combined in new.familysearch.org, it will require the creation of a new person, unless someone else has already created a new record.

By this point, it seems clear that very few Family Tree users are going to be able to identify or rectify this type of problem. Trying to untangle this family, for example, is a major operation. The instructions in the Help Center article go on to explain the multi-step operation involved in cleaning up this entry.

Here is another quote from same article with even more interesting information:

Incorrectly combined records from new.FamilySearch.org, Ancestral File, and so forth
Ancestral File was a database that listed the names and vital information of millions of individuals, organized into pedigrees. The information was taken from pedigree charts and family group records submitted to the Family History Department beginning in 1978. When the database for new.FamilySearch.org was created, submissions from Ancestral File were sometimes incorrectly combined with each other or with new submissions in new.FamilySearch.org to create a single record for two similar but distinct persons. In new.FamilySearch.org, users could separate combined records, but the Separate feature seldom corrected all of the errors. In fact, sometimes it caused more errors. Consequently, new.FamilySearch.org has been turned off and is no longer available. Unfortunately, the incorrectly combined records from new.FamilySearch.org are displayed in Family Tree.

Here is the crux of the whole article in this next statement to members:

FamilySearch is working on, but has not yet released, a tool for FamilySearch Support to move ordinances from one ID Number to another. The coming tool allows FamilySearch Support to see the information that was present when the ordinance was performed.

Regarding the concern about the duplication of ordinances, patrons can reserve the ordinances and hold them in the reservation list until the new tool is available to move the ordinances over. When FamilySearch Support moves an ordinance over, it should drop from the reservation list.

This last statement is interesting in light of the notice from FamilySearch about releasing names from the Reserved Lists.

I am not, even now, sure what all this means other than rectifying the obvious errors in this particular entry are going to be very complicated and may result in a loss of the ordinance information. If you run across this message, be sure to read through and follow the instructions from the Help Center how ever they are currently shown.