The President's Pen - August 2024
Dana Palmer’s wonderful presentation reminded me how far we have come and how good we genealogists have it today. Like many of my fellow genealogists, I began my ancestral search by quizzing my parents about family names and origins. Suffice it to say, these limited and tantalizing tidbits of knowledge left gaping holes that desperately needed to be filled. From my mom, I knew we were Swedish and English, my father’s surname was decidedly German, and their family stories – while entertaining – were not always accurate. I needed to find some official records to confirm what I had been told. Enter the LDS Libraries in Salt Lake and Los Angeles with their reference books, microfiche, and manually operated microfilm readers. Tedious, but it worked.
Fast forward several decades into the digital age and we now have access to many excellent avenues for researching our ancestral past right at our fingertips. Dana’s talk on Saturday about the resources available at FamilySearch.org took us on a whirlwind tour of the world’s largest free genealogy website with its new and impressive database and advanced search techniques – all the bells and whistles we never knew that we needed and all in one handy location!
One of the key points Dana made was to begin with broad searches and narrow our results as needed by using filters—lots and lots of filters. Just like it sounds, we are straining our results through finer and finer screens to achieve the best results. Don’t forget to try different search formats, such as name, location, or collection. Also, be forgiving of transcribers who misspelled our ancestor’s name and substitute wildcards – * and ? – when the alphabet isn’t actually being helpful. Even if our ancestor had an easy-to-spell name, we can expect to encounter spelling discrepancies. Just go with the flow.
From places to time periods, there is always something more to learn about where and when our ancestors lived. This is where the FamilySearch Wiki comes into play by providing research advice and tips to help move our research forward. The Wiki allows us to search by keyword, place, topic, or collection, offers useful tools for understanding foreign languages, and best of all, has articles on how to use the FamilySearch website to its greatest advantage. Think of the Wiki as the Help Desk at our favorite big-box store. It will steer us in the right direction so we don’t wander up and down the aisles until we run out of patience. We’ve all been there.
To sum up, with the aid of Dana’s detailed handout, we’ll be able to make the most out of the FamilySearch.org website and maximize our efforts in finding those elusive ancestors. The next time you log on to FamilySearch.org, be sure to keep her outline handy and bring it along when we travel to the Orange County FamilySearch Center in August. Let us know about your success with this valuable asset right at your fingertips. Happy searching!