What is "Familysearch"? It is the LDS Church's family history website.
It is at www.familysearch.org.
If you have any website addresses memorized, it will be this one!
I can still remember when this website made its debut in May of 1999. It was an exciting day in church history and in the history of the world wide web. And it set off a chain reaction of the creation of other geneological websites by other folks and instituions and businesses.
The picture here is of the LDS church's Family History Library. This is where people come to peruse some of the millions of rolls of microfilmed records that the chruch owns and freely shares. We are grateful for the people who travelled to other countries to pave the way for our microfilmers to go in and copy these precious records. We are grateful for the microfilmers who did this "labor of love".
Www.familysearch.org is your link to some of your ancestors, many research helps AND...the holdings of this library!
Because we have www.familysearch.org, we can do many things. Here are just a few of those things.
1. We can download and print off forms such as pedigree charts, family group charts, census forms, research logs, even language helps.
2. We have a direct link to the Social Security Death Index so you can find exact death date and place(and more) of some of your ancestors. My aunt died 5 or 6 months ago but I was not sure exactly of the date and where she died so I looked her up on the Social Security Death Index (click on "Death" on the home page of www.familysearch.org) and there she was!
3. You have access to the Family History Library Catalog so you can see if there are any microfilms, microfiche, books or document collections that will help you in your research. I visited the Salt Lake City Family History Library last year and found my great grandfather's ship passenger card for when he entered the United States at the port of New Orleans. It told me the date and how old he was when he arrived. I found out he was 17 and traveling alone and he declared he was from Germany.
You do not have to go all the way to Salt Lake City to do this research!
You can order films like this on loan for 6 dollars each and view them on the microflim readers at our family History Library here in Victorville. It is fun to research at the library in Salt Lake City because you have experts to help you and the best, most comfortable chairs!
4. You can find the ancestry of milions and millions of people. Why? Because of the 4 Generation Program of the church back in the 70's and 80's when we were all asked to turn in a pedigree and family groups records of our ancestors. In the 90's we were asked to turn the information in on disks. This, along with temple work submission reports created a huge geneological database. Type in some names of your ancestors on the home page and see what comes up.
5. You can view the 1880 Census of the United States of America! (Click on U.S. where it says U.S., British, and Canadian Census Collections on the right hand part of the home page...at about the middle of the page)
I could go on and on, but I may have already overwhelmed you.
Try this: Just go to www.familysearch.org and explore the home page. Click on things and see where they take you. Print a pedigree chart. (click on Forms on that home page.) Have fun! ~Joan
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