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:

Local library, here I come!

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The St. Louis County Library headquarters

I was so pleased to see when I checked yesterday that the history and genealogy room of the St. Louis County Library is now open to the public without an appointment. The library had been closed during the pandemic and then open by appointment only, but somehow committing to a time slot was too big a hurdle for me.

Now I can walk in as usual and use the library. I am so excited. I have been keeping a list in Evernote of documents that I found on Family Search that can only be found at the Family History Library or one of its affiliates. And I have a couple of other Missouri-related facts I’m hoping to uncover that the library might be able to help me with.

Online research is wonderful and I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to do so much from home during and since the pandemic. But I’m itching to get out from behind my desk to do some research. Two years ago at this time, I was about to leave for my Kentucky research trip and I remember well the planning and anticipation as well as the great time I had on the trip.

Going to the library isn’t as exciting as a research trip to my ancestors’ towns, but I am eager to go to the St. Louis County library this afternoon. If you live elsewhere, you might check to see if your local library is now open for you to come and research!

If you’re curious about how I’ll process the documents I find at the library today, check out  How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow, a 37-page downloadable pdf published last month and available for $19.99.

How I Do It is out!

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I’m so excited to announce the release of my newest Orderly Roots Guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow! I’ve been working on this guide for ages (way too long!) and am really happy with how it turned out.

If you’re curious about how I organize my research, you may want to purchase it. As a professional organizer, I never tell people how they should organize anything, because a successful organizing system works with the way you think. But I wanted to share how I organize my own genealogy research. Over the last decade, I’ve created a system that works really well for me. My goal is that readers will be inspired to implement those things that resonate with them and perhaps modify my methods to work for them.

You can read all about the guide (and purchase it) here. At 37 pages, it’s more than three times longer than any of the other three guides. That length allowed me to go into detail way beyond what I can do on the blog.

Speaking of the other three guides, I’ve created an Orderly Roots Bundle that gives you a discount when you purchase all four guides together. And I’ve created a much more robust sales page for the guides so potential buyers can have more information on which to make a decision. I encourage you to check it out!

 

A small enhancement to my genealogy map

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A small enhancement to my ancestor mapAs I’ve blogged here before, I have an ancestor map hanging on the wall with pins in it for the birth and death/burial places for my direct-line ancestors, up to my third great grandparents. I enjoy looking at it and I love how it makes migration more visible.

I initially started with a map that I pinned over a bulletin board I already had. But that board was bowed. So I put the map onto a thin sheet of cork on top of a piece of foam core, and placed the whole little parfait into a DIY frame. But over time the edges of the map kept pulling out of the frame, so I ended up buying an identical framed map and repinning everything. (So my advice to you if you’re interested in starting a similar project is to cut straight to the pre-framed map.)

The other day I made one tiny enhancement that I wanted to share. The map came with short pushpins with colored heads. On the map, I use longer pins, also with colored heads, so that I can add flags to them indicating the person the pin represents. I took the short pushpins and put them in the areas that I have personally visited for my genealogy research. Primarily that’s cemeteries, though I have spent some time at repositories in Kentucky. Click on the link above to see a larger version of the photos where those shorter pins are more visible.

I was pleased to see that I was able to add four pushpins representing visits to Kentucky, Nebraska, Alabama and western Missouri. I’ve visited graves of ancestors in all four of my lines (Adams, Brown, Rasco and Jeffries). I hadn’t really realized that before this exercise and that makes me feel happy.

The next time I travel to a new place for research, I’ll be delighted to add a pin to the map!

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.