I’m sure that lots of you have had a guilt-inducing lesson about doing you genealogy. (We had one today.) The thing that I hate about these lessons is that while they provide “inspiring” (more like “guilt inspiring”) quotes from prophets and apostles, they offer no tools on how to help people actually DO genealogy. At the end of the lesson, the teacher asked, “What can we do to get more motivated about family history?”
I decided to answer that question. I said “Come out our family history class and we’ll help you.” I am one of those weird Mormons that actually LIKES doing family history, and I am a family history consultant in my ward. When I was called, a member of the bishopric told me that they are trying to call enough members of the ward as consultants so that everyone who wants to come can have a one-on-one session on how to do genealogy. I can tell you that there are some amazing tools out there, and genealogy isn’t nearly as hard as it used to be. Let me tell you about these tools.
When I first started doing genealogy a decade ago, the official church program was Personal Ancestral File (PAF). PAF was a pretty good program for its day, but that was before the internet revolutionized genealogy. Basically, every church member had their own file, and you did research by yourself. If you wanted to submit names to the temple, you had to first check with the Family History Library in your stake (if your stake had one), and see if the temple work had been done already. When I took names, I found many names had been done. However, it also depended on whether the staff loaded the latest CD. The system caused ordinances to be completed multiple times, and I submitted names that had already been completed. While good for its day, by today’s standards it was a very poor system and created much duplication of temple work and ordinances.
Family Tree
The church has moved to the internet age and has officially abandoned PAF. Their internet website has had several changes as well at http://www.familysearch.org and the latest iteration is called Family Tree. The best thing about Family Tree is that you can do most of the work at your home instead of having to go to a family history center. The amount of duplication is going to be cut dramatically (but not entirely eliminated.) There are still a lot of duplicates out there, and if you are new to family search, this is probably one area that is pretty easy to do, and will help a lot.
Roots Magic
For those of you heavily invested in PAF, you can export your PAF to a GEDCOM file, and then upload the GEDCOM file to Family Tree. If you liked the report features of PAF, I would recommend that you can download a free version of Roots Magic. It is has more functionality than the website , and was written the folks who originally wrote PAF, so you will find not only the features you liked in PAF, but is like PAF on steroids! The free version is pretty fantastic, but if you choose to pay for Roots Magic, there are even more features. I purchased Roots Magic 4 based on a recommendation of a relative, but have stuck with the free version of version 6 and it works great. I do miss some of the paid features, but I’m tired of paying for upgrades so I am learning to live without. You can synchronize your data with FamilySearch.
Ancestry.com
The church has recently announced partnerships with Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and FindMyPast.com. I am bummed that Familysearch does not support GEDCOM export (it only supports GEDCOM import), but since I have Roots Magic, I uploaded my GEDCOM file to Ancestry.com, and have discovered a treasure trove of information. As I have become more proficient, I have started documenting census records, as well as certificates of marriage, birth, and death. There is some really great info on Ancestry.com, and I have discovered discrepancies of dates with FamilySearch. Ancestry.com has a cool feature where it prompts you with possible matches for censuses, death records, etc, and I have found these suggestions are right 95% of the time. Truly Ancestry.com’s suggestions make genealogy much easier.
How do you get the free Ancestry.com account? Well, that can be a little tricky. Some friends of mine told me they simply sent a message to FamilySearch and got access. It didn’t work quite that way for me. On the FamilySearch website, I clicked the “Get Help”, and asked for access. A few days later, I got a form letter telling me that I couldn’t get access yet. However, about a month later, I did get access. So I recommend you all give it a try. Your results may vary. But I will say that the free account is actually better than the paid account. My sister has a paid account. With the free account, you can link individuals on Ancestry to FamilySearch, but the paid account does not have the button. I tried to figure out how to link it for my sister, but the Ancestry.com help was pretty pathetic. I don’t think there is a way to link them unless you get the free account. (If you know of a way, let us know.)
My Heritage
I’ve just started working with MyHeritage.com. It bills itself as a social networking way to compare family trees across the internet. I uploaded my GEDCOM file, and now I am getting messages that other people have confirmed links to my family tree. One thing I like about MyHeritage has been the ability to find ancestor photos that I did not have. That has been a pretty cool feature. However, I think it is light on documentation. While you may get ideas of who a person’s parents were, or where someone was born, it didn’t appear to me to be well documented. If I find info I do not have, I will add it to Roots Magic, but then I will try to verify the info in Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. There is a lot of poor quality genealogy out there, so I‘m a little leery to trust MyHeritage data just yet. People are known to copy bad information, so I’d be a little careful on trusting all the info there.
Find My Past / Puzilla
I haven’t tried Find My Past website yet, so I don’t know much about it. There are some other cool websites. The church has a website at http://www.puzilla.org. A lot of people think that you should always push backwards and do 9 or 10 or more generations back. This can be very hard to do, unless you get lucky and find yourself in a kingly line. The idea behind Puzilla is to take an ancestor and move forward to find information. For example, pick the descendants of your great grandfather’s brother or sister and move forward in time. A lot of the time, these people’s work has not been done, and census records, social security death records, etc are easy to find. So if you’re stuck on a line, try to work forwards instead of backwards, and you may find a lot more luck. I’ve played with this website, but I didn’t find it very easy to use. Perhaps some of you can give us all some pointers on how to use this better.
Related to Famous People?
There is also a website from BYU in which you can see if you’re related to famous people, pioneers, or other categories. I discovered that I am 14th cousins with Mitt Romney. (That means you have to go back 14 generations to find a common ancestor), as well as 6th cousins with Steve Young. On the bad side, I’m 13th cousins 5 times removed from Governor Boggs (of Missouri infamy.) These two can be fun websites.
Let’s finish with a poll and a question. Do you have any comments/helps/suggestions for genealogy?
[poll id=430]
Wheat & Tares 
Thank you for this information.
My small town has a small genealogy center but the volunteers are not helpful. Some of them are nice but do not have a lot of knowledge and they are busy doing their own work.
I have always been the only person in my family that did genealogy, to this very day. I will never get access to the family Bible with names and dates. So I have not gotten very far along.
This was very helpful to me.
Firstly, I don’t let anyone guilt trip me. I have Jewish guilt, that’s enough. And I totally love Family History, so no one needs to remind or encourage me. I’ve used all the websites you mentioned and they are a huge help. Having spend countless hours over a microfilm reader and tromping through cemeteries, this new online wave is fantastic. My only complaint is that the programs and websites do not interchange information that easily. I have used Rootsmagic and its predecessor program but it does not interchange with Ancestry. I also have Family Tree Maker from Ancestry and it does not interchange with Family Search. So it’s a pain to move information around. FTM does not have a Temple ready component either.
But I have met a number of extended family members through this work so it have been a joy just for that alone.
I did a lot of genealogy about 10 years ago. I was inspired to do it and inspired in some of the work, it seems God wants us to figure this stuff out. Since then I’ve met some nonmembers who are hooked. Thanks for this overview of resources.
Yes Jeff, I agree. That is a big problem with moving information between programs. I was surprised to hear Family Tree Maker from Ancestry does not interchange with FamilySearch. I heard that it does, and was thinking about buying it, but it’s like $49 I think. I was excited to see that Ancestry will sync with FamilySearch, and Roots Magic will sync with FamilySearch, so that is a roundabout way to synchronize. (However, some of the sources in Ancestry don’t sync yet–but we are promised that they will.) It is kind of a pain to use all the programs, but they all have their benefits. I often have them all open at the same time, and switch between programs.
One excuse I heard a lot as a family history consultant was that “all my genealogy has been done.” That may be true–since newfamilysearch came online, I myself have found a grand total of zero new names to take to the temple. But I’ve cleaned up a lot of messes (sometimes more than once). Now that I can attach sources, I’m finding I need to clean up the mess only once. And that’s worth something even if I don’t find any new names because it helps prevent duplication of ordinances and keeps people from wasting time fighting over whether John Smith and John B. Smith were the same person.
And if all your genealogy has been done, you should have lots of pictures and stories to upload. Those serve to motivate other folks to get involved, so time spent uploading them is time well spent.
Photos are a fun thing to add to FamilySearch. The nice thing is you can upload a photo, and then tag heads just like you can in Facebook. I think the process could be improved, but it is nice to attach faces to these names. I have found that most of the photos I see in my Family Tree were uploaded by me, but it is nice to be surprised and see photos someone else has added. I think photos are one of the easiest, and funnest ways to do family history.
. I must confess that Family History is one area where I’ve been a “slacker” (insert a GIF of James Tolkan as Principal Skinner from “Back to the Future”).
Appreciate the pic of Lord Vader making an interesting discovery. However, IAW typical procedures used by most vital statistics department of a typical American county (or similar throughout the world and presumably the Star Wars Galaxy), Leia’s adoption into the Organa household would be what’s recorded, and when picked up by the LDS researchers (how many Family History Centers on Corsucant?), she’d be listed as the daughter of Viceroy Bail and Queen Breha Organa of Alderaan. Methinks Lord Vader had a staffer looking for the child (how he didn’t know Padme was carrying twins escapes me…) and would have used the “Holonet” extensively. Of course, if that staffer “failed him for the last time”….
Never hurts to research one’s lineage. My sister, who is now decidedly inactive, traced our paternal lineage to a line that is supposedly directly descended from King Llewellyn the Great of Wales. Assuming that’s so, however, I don’t have the right to go to the UK and confront “Bonnie Prince Chuck” and tell him, “step down, fool, I’M the REAL Prince of Wales” (and I don’t want to be thrown into prison or a looney bin by the London Metropolitan Protection Command for such an idiotic act), since the good Welsh King back in the 12th century did live the maxim, “It’s good to be da King!” (thank you, Mel Brooks). That is, probably one-third of all those with Welsh ancestry likewise can trace their lineage back to Llewellyn, as the practice of “Droite de Seigneur” (and not “prima nocte” as stated in “Braveheart”), while not historically confirmed, was de facto known since many a “nobleman” were a horny old bugger
Does anyone recall when a speaker at sacrament meeting would stand silent for 30+ seconds at the beginning of their talk on genealogy? Then they would say something to the effect of: “Your ancestors don’t like waiting either.”
While I haven’t seen that particularly moronic tactic used for about 20 years, I remember at the time finding it not only irritating but ignorant. Are we supposed to believe that all those spirits have absolutely nothing else to do until their proxy ordinances are completed? The thought makes reason stare.
““Your ancestors don’t like waiting either.” Never had that happen. Would have involved the gag reflex.
Ironically, the ones waiting the longest have no records.
For those who clicked that you know your way around FamilySearch but haven’t found many records, you may want to try again. FS has recently added a feature called Hints. It’s a new enough feature that unless you have obsessive genealogist cousins working on every family line, it should show you record hints. You should be able to check if they’re the right person and add them.
For those who think their genealogy is “all done,” FamilySearch has some great new tools for you. There’s Puzzilla, which MH mentioned, and there’s also the new Descendancy view.
To use the Descendancy View: Go to your main Family Tree screen where you can see your pedigree and choose Descendancy. Go to a set of your fourth- or fifth- or sixth-great grandparents and start working your way down through their family. It will show you where sources need to be added, where hints are available, where there are data problems, etc. If you see incomplete families, you can add children and grandchildren using census and other vital records, and often, even in situations where you thought all the work was done, you’ll be able to find new temple work to do. (Only doing work, of course, for your own relatives, but none born within the past 110 years unless you have permission from their immediate families.)
I’ve been doing genealogy for several decades and never had work to submit until I started to use the Descendancy view. It’s great!
After you exhaust the hints, you can find Sources by doing searches in FamilySearch and Ancestry, and also using the card catalog for each program to look for sources by locality. For research assistance, use the FamilySearch learning section (see the help menu in the top right) and the Wiki.
FindMyPast is mostly for sources in the UK. (England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland.) If you’re working on lines there, you’ll definitely want to use it.
For Church members who have not received or have lost the email to sign up for free Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage memberships, here’s the link where you can do that:
https://familysearch.org/blog/en/create-free-account-familysearch-partners/
I might also caution folks. If you already have an Ancestry account and try to sign up for a Church-sponsored account, they will nto refund any money to you and you may lose access to records you have paid for. it’s better to wait until your renewal time. But you will not have all the access that you may have had before.
Best tool ever for getting rid of genealogy guilt: a father that is certain no one else will do it properly or correctly (isn't that nearly the same thing?) and won't let anyone else participate. I have lived guilt free for years knowing it is better to keep the peace in the temporal family. Love at home, right?
I am really impressed with the new mobile app, Family Tree / Family Search.
Or, that spirits perceive time in a linear fashion, and have feelings of impatience; both of which likely are aspects of an embodied existence.
If my ancestors don’t like waiting, maybe they shouldn’t have been illiterate or poor or maybe they should have been christened and documented properly. Did they ever think of that?
That's a lot of victim blaming you are doing there from your position of chronologic privilege. Did you ever think of that?
“Chronologic privilege.” I think that’s what my kids have, when they bounce out of bed on camping trips and I’m still trying to iron the kinks out of my back about midday. 😉
“Chronologic privilege” I could write a post…. Oh wait. maybe not.
My understanding is that they are very busy in the spirit world. But busy people still wait for certain things–just like we do here. I don’t like waiting and assume no one does. I have known instances of the departed appearing and wanting their work done. Anyone who does geneaology can attest to witnessing help from the other side. If you aren’t doing your genealogy, you are missing out on some potentially amazing spiritual experiences. And it keeps your ancestors from being able to progress. They are most appreciative to leave spirit prison and go on. If you put yourself in their position, you can’t help but want to do it out of love. Especially when you read the census records and learn what they did for a living, how many of their children died before vaccines and antibiotics. Where they lived, in tenements with 30 other immigrants. Incredible lives have been lived in hardship and I just have to remember their stories and when I go through hard times, I think of certain ancestors and know if they could do what they had to, then surely I can do what I have to.
I feel close to these people and am looking forward to meeting them in the hereafter because I feel like I already know them.