Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

FamilySearch has finished digitizing its microfilm holdings!

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Rows and rows of microfilm storage at the Family History Library

FamilySearch announced today that it has completed its massive project to digitize its microfilm holdings. A staggering 2.4 million rolls of microfilm have been digitized.  The project, which began in 1998, was anticipated to take 50 years. Thanks to the development of faster technology, the timeline was shortened by 27 years. Amazing.

FamilySearch’s archive is freely available to anyone with an internet connection and a free account. This digital archive contains information 11.5 billion individuals in over 200 countries.

According to this informative FamilySearch press release about the achievement, “To explore FamilySearch’s free collections of indexed records and images, go to FamilySearch.org and search both ‘Records’ and ‘Images’. The Images feature enables users to peruse digitized images from the microfilm collection and more. A free FamilySearch account will be required to access the service.” I’ll add that I find a lot of digitized images by searching the Catalog by location.

FamilySearch began microfilming documents in 1938. In the past, duplicates of the microfilms were lent to researchers through local Family History Centers, which was much more convenient than having to travel to see them at the Family History Library. In 2017, FamilySearch ended that program when it began to transition to all-online access. It couldn’t be more convenient. (The microfilm collection will be preserved.)

Today’s freely available archive has been in the works for 83 years now. Modern genealogists are the beneficiaries!

Check out this video describing the achievement:

It’s not too late to sign up for Amy Johnson Crow’s excellent FamilySearch workshop!

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Just a couple of weeks ago I posted about a workshop, Getting Savvy with FamilySearch, being offered by my friend, Amy Johnson Crow. The $99 workshop has four 90-minute sessions, September 14, 16, 21, and 23. All sessions start at 7 pm eastern time.

The first session was last night. It was so good that I wanted to post again to urge you to consider signing up. All four sessions will be recorded, so if you sign up today, you can watch last night’s session, which Amy posted today. The recordings are available for an unlimited amount of time.

Last night’s session was about searching historical records and collections in FamilySearch. I’ve been using the site for a long time but I picked up some tips and tricks about searching that I can’t wait to put into regular use. During the Zoom session, participants are able to practice what they’re learning with their own research. And they can ask questions in the chat that Amy answers in real time.

I’ve been a big fan of Amy’s presenting skills from the first time I heard her speak at a conference years ago. She’s a clear and thorough communicator. I always leave her talks with new, valuable knowledge.

This is a great opportunity if you feel you could be more effective in tapping into FamilySearch’s 5 billion images. Amy told me she’ll be closing registration on Thursday (tomorrow). So now’s the time to sign up, if you’re so inclined!

Quick Tip #25: Take another look at handwritten documents

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. I have to remind myself of this one with more frequency than I’d like to admit.

Take another look at handwritten documents

We’ve all encountered names that have been poorly indexed. That’s because handwriting can be hard to transcribe. I find that I sometimes misinterpret handwritten words or numbers and enter them incorrectly into my Reunion software. That can lead to wrong assumptions and wild goose chases.

If you find you have conflicting evidence, take another look at the original document to make sure you recorded the evidence accurately. (It happened to me just yesterday, where I discovered that I’d written down that a woman had three living children, when in fact the number written on the census was five.) You may find a transcription error on your part that clears things up.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

August 2021 30 x 30 wrap up!

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It’s the end of another 30 x 30 challenge! How did it go? Please use the comments to let us know how your challenge went.

I had a good month and the challenge certainly helped me prioritize genealogy research. (I’m so grateful for that!) I didn’t research every day–I missed four days total. But I was able to have a few sessions that were longer than 30 minutes, so my average was 37 minutes a day for the 30 days.

I started the month with a 20-document backlog of documents to be processed. In the first five days of the challenge, I focused on processing those documents and got the backlog down to 3. Then I found I needed to do a little more research, which added documents to the backlog, so it wasn’t until August 12 that I got my backlog completely eliminated. Then I went to town researching a particular collateral family group in my Rasco line and my backlog ballooned to as high as 32. Here we are at month’s end, and I still have 27 documents in my backlog. I hope to eliminate that by the end of September (though I’m not starting a new challenge until October).

I also spent a couple of sessions on the box of inherited documents I’m working on. All in all, it was a fun month combining new research with processing the documents from prior sessions. Doing daily research is so helpful to me and I hope to stick with it in the coming month!

How was your month? Please let us know in the comments!