TIPS. There can t be many family historians. to get the most from FamilySearch

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1 TIPS to get the most from FamilySearch Sharon Hintze reveals how to maximise your research via the leading genealogical organisation There can t be many family historians who haven t heard of FamilySearch. Put simply, it s the biggest genealogical organisation in the world. Sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it holds billions of records from hundreds of countries and is gathering more digital images every day. The FamilySearch website (www. familysearch.org) is on the favourites list of every discerning online genealogy researcher. And it maintains a staggering 4,500 FamilySearch centres worldwide, which are open for public use. Best of all, almost all of its services are free! No subscription reminders. No fees. Its vast archives might be daunting to some, so here are 50 pointers to help you get the most out of FamilySearch. Sharon Hintze is the director of the London Family History Centre

2 50 TIPS FamilySearch.org is the most comprehensive online repository of English church records 1 Browse the best collection of English church registers FamilySearch is well known for the huge collection of records formerly known as the International Genealogical Index (IGI). The IGI consisted of both partial transcriptions of parish and nonconformist records, as well as donated family history records. With the relaunch of the FamilySearch website, the transcribed records were separated from the donated family records. Most of the old IGI church record transcriptions now appear as England Births and Christenings, England Marriages and England Deaths and Burials. This collection alone comprises nearly 100 million individual records. But that isn t all. There are another 14 million transcriptions that have associated images, and no less than 2 865,000 pages of browsable images of English church records. (Browsing means looking at a record page by page online.) FamilySearch is by far the largest resource for English church records on the web. The online church records are just the tip of the iceberg. Most English church records don t appear anywhere online, even though the situation is improving. So if you want to consult a church record, you can either travel to the county record office or archive that holds the record, or you can take advantage of the enormous collection of English church records on microfilm by ordering a film to be sent to a FamilySearch centre near to you. See below and tips 16 and 17. VISIT A FAMILYSEARCH CENTRE NEAR YOU There are nearly 100 FamilySearch centres in the British Isles. They were formerly called family history centres and are usually in LDS churches. Entry is free to all. Find your nearest centre by starting with the tab FamilySearch Centers on the FamilySearch home page. At a centre, you can access online genealogy sources like FamilySearch, findmypast, Ancestry, TheGenealogist and Origins for free, as well as getting personal help from centre staff. Volunteer staff are happy to help you with your questions and show you tips for using the online resources. You can also read a microfilm which you ordered to come directly to the FamilySearch centre of your choice. See tips 16 and

3 The National Archives is currently home to the London Family History Centre STEP BY STEP 3 Boyd s Inhabitants of London in a trice STEP ONE There s an updated FamilySearch feature called Community Trees at It presents lineage-linked genealogies from a variety of sources. On the home page, start with See Community Trees (although probably come back later to read the Search Strategies for Community Trees ). Save time by resisting filling in the search boxes on the home page until you have focused your search to a particular tree. The See Community Trees page shows a geographical alphabetical list of places and then trees. Choose London. Residents of London. STEP TWO When you ve chosen a tree, the database for that tree will open alphabetically. Click on Search and you will find a very powerful, targeted search screen based on Boolean logic. 4 WHEN IN LONDON, VISIT EUROPE S LARGEST FAMILYSEARCH CENTRE If you re in the London area, pay a visit to the London Family History Centre. Until March 2013, the centre is temporarily located at The National Archives in Kew, so you can benefit from the resources of both. The centre has extra online resources beyond those available at other FamilySearch centres and also keeps a large collection of microfilms on site. The microfilms are the largest collection in one British location of English parish records. Other records held on microfilm include a complete collection of record copy wills for both the Principal Registry and the District Courts, as well as records for many Ecclesiastical Court probate records. There is a strong group of Irish resources, including BMD indexes and some registry entries, Irish church records and land records such as Tithe Applotment and Griffith s Valuation where the original survey books can be viewed on microfilm. The complete LDS collection of microfilms for Jamaica and Barbados is available. There are also many films of church records for both Wales and Scotland. To consult the online catalogue in advance, see You ll be surprised to see how many records which have not been digitised online are available for the British Isles and beyond. Highly recommended. STEP THREE Finally, your result will be shown in a pop-up box with all family connections and information indicated by the original source. Voilà! 5 Keep up with the latest genealogy apps Bookmark to learn about new developments in technology for family historians. Articles appear every few days on topics such as smartphone apps, using a Mac for genealogy, browser plug-ins and other cool stuff. There s even a section giving hints on what to consider when purchasing mobile devices or scanners. And there are also short articles explaining about file formats or social networking and genealogy. 18

4 50 TIPS TEN AMAZING SEARCH TIPS Search by given name only, 6 together with a place name A narrow time frame helps in this kind of search and the place name can be very localised. Clearly this strategy will be more successful with less common given names, such as Susannah or Elijah. 7 Search by surname only Again, a localised place name and a narrow time frame will help. Remember to try variations of the surname since some variants might not be picked up by the search engine. This is sometimes helpful when a person has more than one given name and the given name is not consistent in different records. 8Search without any names at all! Enter a birth year and a small place name only. Change to another birth year if you need to, but only use a single year. For example, enter 1833 and Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England. This can be useful for finding people you have seen in censuses but who you can t find christenings for when christenings are present for other family members. Use a wildcard (an asterisk) in 9 both given name and surname Just remember that for each name, you must specify at least three letters. So a search for J*n is not possible. Wildcards are most successful when you use a narrow or single year date and a specific place, such as St Gregory by the Wall, London. Use up to three wildcards 10 in a name So try Th*b or T*b*u* when trying to find Thibou and its variants, or B*rch*l when searching for Burchill/Burchall/Birchal. Very helpful for non-english names which may be recorded phonetically on census enumeration sheets. Use a wildcard* to represent 11 letters at the start of a name Try *hins for Richins or *skeep for Inskeep. You may need to be creative, but results can appear which can t be otherwise found. Use a wildcard to represent 12 letters at the end of a name Who would have guessed this was possible? So try Shake*, which will return Shakespear, Shakeshaft, Shakemaple, etc. Remember that wildcards are most effective when you use narrow or specific dates and as local a place name as you have available. On a parent search, enter 13 the surname in the search box with no given name Look for the Search by Relationships sections of the search screen. Click on Parents and enter one or both parents names. Choose your birth year range as needed and enter as specific a place name as you know. Results will appear if you enter no place name or a wide year range, but they are likely to be too numerous to be helpful. For illegitimate children, use the same strategy, but just type in the mother s given name and surname, together with dates and a localised place. Use exact match when 14 that s appropriate Experienced researchers often avoid exact matches (especially on more than one field) since they may return too few results. However, for a common surname such as Smith, by using exact match you can search only on your person s usual spelling without bringing up all possible versions of Smith/Smyth. Just click on the small square box to the right of the surname field. Works for given names as well as well as for place names. Check all the transcribed 15 entries from a batch search So if you have found a person where the entry shows an associated batch number (a transcription project number), it may be helpful to see all transcribed entries from that project. Look for the place to enter the batch number at the bottom of the initial search screen. If you enter only the batch number and no other information, you ll get the whole transcription project in alphabetical order. Enter the surname you re looking for to see everyone by that name in the batch. For further hints on using batch number searches, see A big thank you to Phil Dunn from FamilySearch in Salt Lake City, Utah for his help on search techniques. 19

5 STEP BY STEP ORDERING MICROFILMS Even though the number of online records and indexes is rapidly increasing, the majority of records still aren t on the internet. Time to place a microfilm order STEP ONE Search the catalogue of available films on by going to Catalog at the top of the home page. You can search by place, title, keyword etc. For records from Bradford, enter Bradford in the place search field. Choose a topic such as Church Records, then survey the available filmed church record list until you find a relevant record. 17 And how to order it STEP ONE Go to If you don t already have an account, register for a FamilySearch account. You will then be asked to designate the FamilySearch centre nearest to you. Films must be ordered for delivery to a centre; they can t be read at home, nor transferred to another centre. Notice that, for technical reasons, you can t order a film to be sent to the London Family History Centre. If you want a film to be delivered to London Family History Centre (temporarily located at The National Archives at Kew), contact them at / Most family history forums are meeting places for people to exchange information and help each other. The FamilySearch forum ( forums.familysearch.org) is a little different; very often, the person answering the query is a real expert. Prominent genealogists or FamilySearch research professionals may well be the people who lend you a helping hand. There are all kinds of geographic threads, but you can also use forums to give feedback about collections, images or the Family History Library catalogue. The more you participate, the more help you get (and will be able to give). 19 FIND YOUR AMERICAN CONNECTIONS STEP TWO Open the entry for the records you want, then click on Film Title to see the film numbers for the different records. STEP THREE If the film can be viewed online, the catalogue will advise you of this. If you live in the London area, you should check to see if this film number is in stock in the London Family History Centre s on-site film collection. See 18 Get research help online STEP TWO Once your nearest centre has been chosen, enter the LDS microfilm number for the records you want to use. Choose whether you want the film available for 90 days (short-term loan) or indefinitely (extended loan). The cost for a shortterm film in the UK is When you enter the number, the film s description will appear on the screen. Continue adding film numbers until finished, then check out and pay electronically. You ll be notified when the film is ready for viewing at your selected location. FamilySearch offers a huge range of online American resources. Firstly, there are indexes to most US censuses since Then there s the bonus that the closure period for US censuses is only 70 years (instead of the UK s 100 years), so you can search for relatives in US censuses as late as Even better, the 1940 US census is being released during 2012! Remember that US censuses record only the state of birth, rather than the specific birthplace. But the birth state or country of both parents are shown on many censuses which is useful considering the large numbers of people who immigrated to the US in the 19th century. Sadly, pretty much the only US records indexed on a national basis are the censuses and some military records. So BMD records are held by state. But FamilySearch has hundreds of record sets for US states, many with online images, and new sets are added every month. Choose United States on the geographical areas on the home page. GETTY IMAGES 16 How to find a microfilm

6 50 TIPS Ten Commonwealth countries with records on FamilySearch.org Australia Transcriptions of 750,000 BMD records for selected jurisdictions; index to Bounty Immigrants, index to selected NSW newspaper cuttings, Queensland cemetery records and more. 21 Bahamas Browse through Civil Registration entries arranged chronologically Barbados Indexed transcriptions of baptisms, marriages and burials. Although baptisms start in the 18th century, marriages and burials begin in Microfilm references to the images are given; microfilms can be consulted at London Family History Centre. 23 Canada A wonderful collection including census transcriptions, provincial BMD records, Royal cemetery records, Roman Catholic Church records, Canadian Mounted Police obituaries and more. 24 Ghana Browse records from the census for towns in the Central, Eastern, Volta and Western regions. When you choose a region, the list of towns covered appears so you go directly to it. 25 India Transcribed entries for BMD records for mostly Anglicans living in India. Records start in the late 18th century and continue until independence. More than 1.3 million entries. No images are available, but these can be consulted on microfilm through a FamilySearch centre. A collection of Hindu Pilgrimage Records in Hindi is available to browse. 26 Jamaica Indexes and images for civil registration starting in Not all parishes are included yet. Also, transcriptions and indexes with images for many parishes before New Zealand Indexes and images to Immigration Passenger Lists as well as images for probate records South Africa 28 Records include Dutch Reformed Church registers, Methodist parish register and estate files from the Orange Free State Zimbabwe Death Registers and Death register indexes Major genealogical information is contained in each record Home to a wonderful collection of various Canadian records GET STARTED WITH RESEARCH IN A NEW COUNTRY Search the Research Wiki under the Learn tab. Type in the name of the country in the search screen and you ll be given a historical overview, a description of records and resources, and helpful lists of relevant websites. For example, under South Africa, a full list of websites is included along with information about records and historical background. Records of ancestors that emigrated to Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, can be found on FamilySearch.org 21

7 7 steps EXPLORE MAPS OF ENGLISH JURISDICTIONS One of the cleverest tools on FamilySearch is found at It shows several types of jurisdictional boundaries such as parish boundaries or Poor Law Unions. The boundaries can be viewed separately or more than one at a time, although more than two can be visually complicated. 38 READ RECORDS IN OTHER LANGUAGES Use the word lists (small bi-lingual dictionaries for genealogical terms) in the FamilySearch wiki. Go to Learn on the home page and then Research Wiki, before searching under Word List for a list of available languages. 40 Enter a parish or locality into the search screen. The tool orients its information as layers over Google Maps. Move to the Layers tab and check County Background if you don t want to see the Google street or satellite map. If all the parish names are not visible, zoom closer Find which jurisdiction for all layers applies to this location by clicking on the blue Google place-marker. Locate contiguous parishes. This can be done visually or by going to Options. 33 Identify the Civil Registration District and view contiguous districts. Ancestors may have crossed a district boundary to register a birth or death. 34 Poor Law Unions are often comprised of several parishes, so it can be helpful to see these boundaries in context of the parishes. 39 Attend an online class or talk FamilySearch offers a comprehensive international group of classes and talks. There are 351 courses which range from five-minute genealogy episodes to 60-minute lessons. British topics include records for Anglican clergymen, records for Broadmoor Hospital, apprenticeship records, disability and war in the 20th century, overseas BMD records and dozens of other specialist subjects. Irish topics include church records and Ulster and Scots-Irish resources. There are also English and Irish beginner lessons. And don t forget the 240 courses for other countries you may be interested in Write letters in 17 European languages Go to Learn at the top of the home page, then Research Wiki. Search for Letter Writing Guides, then astonish your family by writing a letter in perfect Polish! 35 Orient parish boundaries to the modern world by not ticking the County Background box. The Google street map will appear and you can work out how to access the parish by road. Or switch to satellite view for a greener perspective. 36 Look back in time by switching the view to Ordnance Survey which brings up an 1851 map. 37 GETTY IMAGES Perform a radius place search to see which neighbouring places are easily reached by foot. This is found under Options on the info box for the blue locality symbol TOUR THE ARCHIVES OF LONDON PARISHES FamilySearch has made a major effort to comprehensively document where London parish records can be found online. Consult the Research Wiki (under Learn on the home page) and then search for London parishes. Parishes consolidated after the Great Fire of 1666 are shown separately and each parish has a table which shows which records are online on which website. If only this had been available earlier! As it s a work-in-progress, some things may change in the near future.

8 50 TIPS Find a probate jurisdiction before 1858 CHECK IT OUT ON YOUTUBE Tired of looking at records? Ready for a break? Spend a few minutes enjoying genealogy on the FamilySearch YouTube presence. Go to Nothing is particularly long and almost all of it is really interesting. Prior to 1858, probates were administered by ecclesiastical courts of the Church of England. You can use the FamilySearch wiki in order to find out which court had primary jurisdiction over a specific parish. Go to Learn on the home page, then to [county] probate. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish. BROWSE RESOURCES FOR JEWISH ANCESTORS 44 The Knowles collection is a lineage-linked database founded on the work of Isabel Mordy. It s based on records for Jewish people living in Great Britain and can be consulted on search.org/showtree.php?tree= Knowles. It s continually expanding. 45 Consult Jewish Genealogy Research on the Research Wiki for key internet links and basic information about a wide range of relevant topics. Point your mouse at Jewish_Genealogy_Research GETTY IMAGES 46 Search Browse records for countries like Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia or Austria, as these often contain crucial Jewish records. Some of the record sets which are titled Church Records are divided by religion and thus display Catholic, Jewish and Protestant records separately. Other record sets such as Austria, Vienna Population Cards also contain many Jewish records, as do Hungary Funeral Notices British Jewish records which have been microfilmed are all available at the London Family History Centre. Consult the catalogue online at 48 Jewish emigrants may appear in passenger lists for Netherlands, for New York, for Bremen etc, all of which are available on FamilySearch.org. 49 FamilySearch may well have microfilmed the records you need. Regularly check online images and the FamilyHistory Library catalogue for recent additions. There are myriad ways of researching Jewish forebears STEP BY STEP 50 Indexing projects for everyone s benefit Where do the indexes everyone uses for censuses and other records come from? Some are prepared by commercial firms, but many are prepared by volunteers. FamilySearch has a large programme of indexing projects covering dozens of countries. Depending on your language skills, you could index records from Jamaica to the Czech Republic. It s a great opportunity to serve the community from your own home. STEP ONE Look for the Indexing tab at the top of the FamilySearch homepage. To get started, download the indexing program to your computer. Follow the instructions to create a FamilySearch account to identify you and your indexing projects. Then sign in. STEP TWO Choose a project. Click on Show all projects to see the complete list and to get an indication of the complexity of the record. STEP THREE Type what you see in the record in the fields shown below the record image. There are help notes for each of the various fields you ll work on. If you can t finish your batch, return it into your file and work on it later. Each batch remains assigned to you for a limited time, so if you leave on holiday during one, someone else will be assigned to finish it. You then choose a different batch and start again. You ll quickly learn how to do it. 23