It has seemed to me that in the past 15 years, every few
years there is a big push to do work on family history, with lots of noise on
the general conference level and on the ward level about how the game has
changed and finding your ancestors is easier than ever.
In my last ward, there was a lady who was on a mission at
the family history center in Mesa and she often bore testimony of the amazing
advances in technology that the Lord was bringing to the work of family history
research. (I love you, Sister
Nance!) She was so excited so often that I just couldn’t ignore her. Because of her, I would TRY to do things in my family
history. But I never seemed
to get very far.
I’m going describe for you some of the very real obstacles I
faced in getting more involved in family history. (I’m pretty confident that you will recognize these same
obstacles are ones you’ve faced.)
Then I’m going to describe how these obstacles are being overcome.
I remember when I first started looking at family history
stuff on the computer, my dad gave me a copy of his Personal Ancestral File
(PAF), that data file that had what seemed like oodles of names already in
it. (PAF is no longer in
use.)
Clicking around my PAF file, it seemed like so much had
already been done. Who was I to
think that I could somehow add to that immense amount of data—names, dates,
places, ordinances? And
where did all those names, dates, and places come from? How did they figure that stuff
out? How could I know that
information was accurate? If I
happened to come across conflicting information, how would I know what
information was right and what was wrong?
(This problem was underlined to me when I went through the
family history information my Grandpa had accumulated by the time of his
passing. He had several printed
out copies of family trees and had circled and noted conflicting
information. I could just imagine
that his lawyer mind was probably highly annoyed by those conflicts and he was
probably trying to resolve them.)
When the International Genealogical Index came online, I was
very interested in using it to search for ancestors. But to test how effective it was, I first tried to find my
dead grandparents in it. (Start
with who you know, right?) I got a resulting list of names, but nothing that helped me
see how I could tell whether one particular record had the right person or
not. I said to myself, If I can’t find and recognize the people I
know, then how can I be sure I can find and recognize the people I don’t know? And I gave up.
Around the time Family Tree came online, I was in a ward in
which the leadership recommended that we take some time to try to merge
duplicated individuals in our family trees. I took the counsel and put some work into that. As I studied certain individuals in
preparation for merging them, I noted some startling discrepancies in
dates. I wondered, “How can people
think these are the same individuals when their dates are so different?” It made me really wonder where they had
gotten that information. After a
while it got so I couldn’t tell with any confidence what information was right
and what was wrong, and without any way of telling, I gave up again.
About five years ago, I took a class from ASU on family
history research in which the major assignment of the semester was to write a
family history narrative for each person in my four generation pedigree
chart. I learned about the records
that are used in family history research and I learned how important it was for
sources to be cited.
It was then that I realized why I had a troubles getting
into family history research to do temple work. The nature of the research requires that you accumulate evidence in the form of documents to
back up your assertions, but there was no efficient way to share that evidence
with other people who might be interested. Also, it is the careful consideration of that evidence that
helps a researcher figure out the next thing to look for, so without some way
to look at the records, it would be hard to make progress.
So, here are the main problems:
--You need a way to determine if you’ve found the right person.
--You need a way to examine other people’s work on people in
your tree.
--You need a way to centrally share documents used as evidence
so that other people don’t have to duplicate searching efforts.
Another problem that bothered me about doing family history
research was that I had this idea that I was only allowed to do temple work for
direct ancestors and their siblings.
I looked at my family tree and how far back it went and I didn’t feel I
had the research skills to make a contribution to the lines that end in the
1600s or 1500s. My concern
is often echoed by you and others in this form—“My family’s work has already
been done.”
Now, here’s the thing that is totally exciting—the church
has figured out how to solve most of those problems. The way they solved them is simple in concept, but the
way they have implemented it is very sophisticated and extremely user-friendly. They
made a way for us to attach sources we find to people in our family
tree. (Look for the “Attach to my
family tree” button.) And not just
the information on the sources is tied to the tree, but the digitized images of
the sources, so you can look at an image of the actual document (like a census)
and find out that great-grandpa Jones was a miner who lived in a rented cabin.
And when you attach sources, Family Tree does all the work
for you. It makes an entry, it
creates a citation in the correct format (for all those genealogists who are
sticklers for their citations), and it provides a link to the source so anyone
can see it.
What this means is that we can finally begin to document our
ancestors’ lives with sources and evidence and everyone will be able to see
that and help build on it. It
means I was finally able to see evidence that shows one of my ancestresses
sometimes went by “Anna” and sometimes by “Hannah,” and that made it so the
discrepancy doesn’t bug me anymore. I could tell Anna was the same as Hannah by all the
people around her in the record.
Not only that, but Family Search also makes it very easy to
attach records you’ve found to all the family members listed in
the document. I could attach that
1900 census not just to Hannah, but to all Hannah’s siblings and her parents,
so I did that, for which their
descendants will probably thank me some day when they decide to work on their
family history. If I found a
sibling of Hannah that isn’t in Family Tree already, that was exciting because
it meant I found someone who’s going to need temple work done!
Now, concerning this idea that “all the work has already
been done.” Contrary to my
previous notions, we are allowed to
work on collateral ancestral lines.
If our ancestors had siblings that married, we can find their spouses
and do their work. We can find
their children and do their
work. We can find the parents of
the spouses and do their work. They are all family. What this
amounts to is finding cousins. We
will probably have to get permission first from their descendants, but we can
do it.
Finding the sources and attaching them to your family tree
is what is going to help you make progress finding people who need their work
done. It’s going to give you
information that will help you break down the brick walls where you’ve been
stuck.
Getting youth into family history
There is a reason the church is saying the youth should get
involved in family history research, but it’s not necessarily because they are
good with technology and grown-ups aren’t. It’s because it is easy
enough that the youth can do it
because it doesn’t require nearly the time investment that it has in the
past.
The major advantage youth have in doing family history
research is they don’t have any
preconceived notions of how it used to be or any of the discouraging
memories of how hard it was.
(Adults have often tried to do it in the past, sometimes multiple times,
and have given up.)
The church is making the search process easier. Each person in your family tree has
their own profile page and in the right side there is a place called “Record
Hints” that lists records automatically found by the software that have a very
high probability of belonging to that person. (This seems to have been added just recently.) You just have to look at the records to
make sure and then you can attach them to that person with one click.
Another way the church is making the search process easier
is by including a “Search Records” link on each ancestor’s page. When I am on Hannah’s page, when I
click “Search Records” in the right sidebar, it takes me to a search screen and
the software has already populated Hannah’s info into the search
fields so I don’t have to constantly retype it. That makes it really fast. I can add more search terms or change them easily.
Also, the search results show a lot more detail now than
they did just five years ago and I can make a pretty good judgment just by looking
at them that they are or aren’t what I’m looking for.
After I have attached a bunch of records to Hannah’s profile
page in Family Tree, I can see what I’ve got at the bottom of her page. And if you run your mouse arrow over
the right side of those source entries, you will find little up/down arrows
that allow you to reorder the source list. I like to put them in order that they occurred in Hannah’s
life so I can tell more easily what records are missing. After putting them all in order, I have
1900, 1920, 1930 censuses and then I know that there is still a 1910 census
record to find.
One thing I have learned over the space of 15 years is you can only temporarily give up on family
history research. The tools
are changing and they can change really fast. If you get stuck, give it two years, just do indexing,
and then try it again. (Put it on
your calendar.) By the time you
get back into it, the search tools will have evolved to make the process easier,
more sources will be online, and you will be able to find things you couldn’t
find before.
I had a nagging desire to work on family history that bit me
back in April and eventually I decided to just jump back in and LOOK at things
in Family Tree just to see if there was anything I could do. I hadn’t touched it for something like
four years, and I had given up three separate times in 15 years. But I was astounded at how much had
changed and excited to see I could attach sources to my ancestors. Since then, I have spent just about
every Sunday afternoon searching for sources on the ancestors I know about, and
in the process I found collateral lines that needed work done. For the first time, I found
someone.
Do you know how satisfying that was? After all the times I had tried and stopped work on family
history, I FOUND PEOPLE WHO NEEDED TEMPLE WORK DONE!! (The audience goes wild, slings roses in all directions, and moshes enthusiastically with the orchestra while the world rejoices)
Other family history research tools: Puzzilla
One difficulty with Family Tree is that it is hard to
navigate around. I recommend using
Puzzilla.org instead. Puzzilla is
an internet tool that directly interfaces with your Family Search account and
creates a tree with dots on it that allow you to see as far back as 8
generations.
How does this help?
It helps you find the holes in your chart really fast. I can choose Hannah and see all her
descendants, or I can choose the option see all her ancestors. Then it
gives me a nice little link that takes me right to that Hannah’s profile page
in Family Search so I can start searching for records on her.
Other Tools: Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage
A very exciting development is that the church is partnering
with Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage so that members will have free access
to those databases. They have a
number of difference sources that FamilySearch doesn’t have.
So now what?
Go look at your Family Tree account. There’s a nice sweet spot that goes
back to about 1860 that is pretty well documented where there are lots of
records. Look at your
grandparents, great grandparents, and g-g-grandparents and find sources to
document them and their family members.
You might be surprised at what you find.
More reading
A 100-page manual on how to use Family Tree
“In Which We Bid Farewell to NewFamilySearch and WelcomeFamily Tree” at Keepapitchinin. (Keep in mind that since this was
posted, Family Tree has made attaching sources even faster than just using the
Source Box.)
2 comments:
I love Family History work, but it has been a challenge to very every thing. I found something really interesting on my dad's family. His last name had at least 5 spelling variations, and coming from a family of 5 brothers, each one picked a variation. However at some point in their history 2 of my dad's younger brothers had a falling out with their dad, and one brother changed his name completely and added Jr. So everyone thought he was adopted, or a step son, but we knew my grandmother had not remarried. He died with this name. The other younger brother took his mom's maiden name and still uses it. So it was a challenge to verify everyone, even my grandmother.
My husband was brought up in an Irish Catholic home, so he has 5 middle names. At first I thought they were random, but each of his 5 names is the name of a grandfather, a great grandfather and uncles. I found out that these are all traditional family names that run through at least four generations.
Before I "broke the code", my husband only knew Nana and PopPop. lol
Ramona, good for you for working on breaking down those brick walls! I'm sure future generations will thank you for sorting that out.
I hope you and your husband put all that information with sources into family tree!
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