The Key to Getting Started with Family History

An LDS account is the key to the vault for church members.  Getting started using the LDS Church Resources involves getting an Account to use the resources.  Once you have the account here is a list of what you have internet access to do:

• Access ward and stake information
• Login to new.familysearch.org and do your family history, including submitting names for temple work
• Access secure church websites
• Create a profile on Mormon.org and start sharing your testimony online
• Access your personal study notebook on new,LDS.org
• Make purchases in the new online store

So it is really opening up the whole online experience on the internet without having to worry about security and privacy.   Here are the instructions and links to get you started.

1. You need your name, membership number, and confirmation date.  This is the information  you use to validate your information, temple recommends will have your membership number listed and the ward clerk can help you remember your confirmation date.
2. Go to ldsaccount.ldschurch.org and click on "Register for an LDS account"
3. Once you have identify yourself as a church member you will be given the additional privileged that allow you to see temple ordinance information, edit the information, make corrections,and compile temple work submissions.

• 
  

Cyndi's List of Family History Sites

Cyndi’s List is a genealogy site that is the very best on the Internet at telling you 'where to go'. It is an up to date, live person checked, site that knows where anything Family History can be found. It sorts the resources into categories of what and where. Then gives links as click troughs to where to go to find information on the Internet. Links are indexed according to what type of research you are trying to do or where you are trying to find information about. There are over 250,000 linked sites at Cyndi’s List, but the good thing here is that they are all visited and looked over by a live person to make sure they are worthwhile and the information is legitimate. It is simple to us, just decide what you want to find, and look where you think it might be, and that is probably where Cyndi Howell has arranged it too. In fact, she started the site when she was a beginner at Internet research and her site still has this charm and ease of use.

RootsWeb

Rootsweb - was started in 1982 by volunteers and family history enthusiast and it has never stopped adding information that is posted by it’s over 70,000 volunteers. It is full of information about how to do and find things. Rootsweb will give you a free site to post your family history on a website. They have over 3000 surname mailing lists. If you were looking for information on a Thompson line for example, you could subscribe to Thompson-L@rootwsweb.com once you have subscribed to the list you post (email) a query or question. Currently there are 1325 other people that are subscribed to the list all over the world who are also interested in the line. Your email would be forwarded to everyone of them. If they had an answer to your question or wanted further information they would email you back, but a copy of their reply would be sent to every other member of the list. These chained letter are called threads, and before you know it you are in contact with others that are also working on your line and are more than happy to help and share and work on your query. It is completely free from spam and you can only type information in, no attachments are allowed to be sent and the Rootsweb servers block hackers and advertisers from using the list. Last month Rootsweb forwarded just over 700 million email messages, all of them went to someone interested and looking for more information or looking for other researchers to share their information with. If you don’t know if you want to subscribe to a list you can read the archived messages that have been sent in the past.

Ellis Island

Ellis Island This site is the result of resent revival of the Ellis Island site. The has been many press stories about saving and restoring the site and the work is ongoing. This site has a search able data base of passenger lists for persons that were processed through the port. This is the largest Passenger list site on line but still has limitations. The first passenger arrived at Ellis Island Jan 1 1892. Before that Passenger arrived at Castle Gardens and their arrival would have been recorded in the New York Times, maybe. After 1892 up until 1954 it was the arrival point for immigrants coming to New York.

Some 21 million people were processed through the port, depending on the political climate the flow of people varied from a high of 1,004,756 in 1907 to the port being almost closed during war years, in 1918 only 28,867 were processed. If you have ancestor that entered here the information that can be found here can vary for a blotted name on a passenger list to an absolutely wonderful capsule with pages of details. The search and most of the information is free, but be ready to see many offers to accept donations or buy photos of the ships that arrived or specially printed certificates and documents. Just a note here passenger lists are the least organized and hardest resource to find. Finding one can be the key the takes your research ‘across the ocean’ and will be the clue that tells you were to look once you get there. But don’t be disappointed if you can’t find a listing, these records were mostly considered local and the archiving is poor at best.