Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Tuesday's Tip: FamilySearch Deserves Another Look

Have you looked at FamilySearch.org during the past year?  Or even more recently?  If not, you will definitely be surprised at what is now available.

Because I am still indexing, some, I am aware of some of the new collections that are being added.   But I haven't thought about making sure others are also aware of this.  So what happened?

I was teaching a beginning genealogy class.  I mentioned using familysearch.org for copies of original records.  One of the younger ladies, who had worked on her family history about 15 years ago and then had life experiences interfering with her research, was in the class to see what was new.  She said she NEVER used familysearch because it only had family trees that were mostly wrong.  And she only used ancestry.com.  Well, I felt the need to quickly inform her that things had changed a lot in the last 15 years.  The next week she came back and said she was really sorry she hadn't been using it during the past year once she picked up her research again.

So, I want to encourage you to look again at some of the collections.  From the first page, choose search.  Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on United States.  On the next screen choose a state.  Then make a choice.  Yes, there are still many collections that are only indexes, but there are also more and more actual images online and indexed. 

Please understand that I am retired; I don't get compensation of any type for mentioning web sites.  I just don't want any of you to miss out on some of these great documents.