Do Family History: Vital Records

Showing posts with label Vital Records. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Mormon Pioneers from the United Kingdom and Europe

The British Mormon Historical Society has developed a website titled Mormon History - Dedicated to the British Latter-Day Saint History. This site is dedicated to providing historical information regarding the growth of The LDS Church in the United Kingdom. The information provided on this site includes historical accounts of some of the newly converted members, missionaries, and mission presidencies.

The website has several pages including information regarding Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England. A few countries that are also included on this site and not readily apparent, are listed under the side tab(link) titled LDSEP Archive. The LDSEP Archive is an older version of this site titled the LDS European Project. I have used the LDSEP site prior to it's incorporation with the British Mormon Historical Society website. The countries included on the LDSEP Archive are Denmark, Sweden, England, Wales, Ireland, and Switzerland. Like the current Mormon history website, LDSEP has information regarding missionaries, members, and mission presidencies.

Both the LDSEP and Mormon History site contain biographies of various missionaries, members and mission presidencies. I you have LDS immigrant ancestors from the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark, this site would be a great place to learn about the history of the church in the ancestral areas. If you would like to search the Mormon History - Dedicated to the British Latter-Day Saint History site click Mormon History in the UK. To research in the LDSEP site, click LDS European Project. If this link does not work properly you can also go to the site by clicking the LDSEP link (located on the lower left hand tool bar)on the home page of the Mormon History - Dedicated to the British Latter-Day Saint History site.

Have fun searching!

Family Search Labs and Standard Finder

FamilySearch Labs is the web site of developmental software for the church This site has a developmental record search viewer that will eventually be the one the researchers will use to access the digitized records of the family history department that are currently being indexed.

It also has a nifty little online program called Standard Finder. If you enter a place or a date it will give you the standard way to enter the information so it will inter face with FamilySearch and the church on line family history inter faces

Family History Archives

The Family History Archives is another site that has come out of the new focus on family History resources from the LDS Church. The Archive will combine the resources of the Allen County Public Library, the Family History Library and the Harold B Lee library with resources from all BYU campus'.

It will include 100,000 published Family histories, thousands local histories, and thousands of images for the historical collections. Once a document has been digitized the collection will have the ability to search "every word" in any document in the collection. Currently the indexing project of the Church includes nearly 50,000 volunteer indexers and as material are indexed they will be included in the collection on an ongoing basis.

Here is a list of the participating Libraries:
Allen County Public Library
Harold B Lee Library
BYU Hawaii
BYU Idaho
Houston Public Library - Clayton Center For Genealogical Research
LDS Business College
LDS Family History Library
LDS Church History Library
Mid-Continent Public Library - Midwest Genealogy Center

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.

Welcome, Now let's get started! This is always the hard part, here are some steps that will help.

Begin with what you have - gather all the Family Documentation that you have. This would include family photos, vital records, any family history that has all ready been done. Get the all in one place. For now don't worry about organizing it, just gather it together, in fact if it will fit in a box put it there.
Record what you have - Family History has become an electronic affair, so begin your organization with a good computer program. There are may to choose from but at first Personal Ancestral File (PAF) will do nicely and can be downloaded free from the FamilySearch Website. Or there is a very good commercial program called Rootsmagic Essentials (Download link) that has a free version that actually interfaces with New FamilySearch
Now that you are this far it is time to start entering information. Start with the top page from your gathered box and record all the information on the sheet. Then put the original in a safe place. A scanner works well here. PAF will keep an electronic copy of the original in the file of the person it belongs to, and photo's can be scanned and saved in the same way. Make a habit of keeping a file back-up that is not stored on your computer.
Once you have all your information gathered and recorded, it is time to talk with other family members. Don't make a big deal out of asking, simply "I have started a family history would you have anything I can get a copy of?' Until you have something to share with others don't expect them to contribute anything, so for now copies are fine. Don't get discouraged and simply thank them for their help. Add this new information to your PAF files.
Next use the internet sites, that are listed here on the blog. They will help you determine what others have done that you want to add to your PAF Records. It is also wise to start keeping 2 copies of your data. One to be used to add this new information to your files once you have verified it is correct, and another file that you can use while you are checking out your internet finds. (One to keep and one to work with)
Share your information with others - It will amaze you how much more information your family will add once you share a copy of what you have with them. Don't really worry if it is entirely correct or complete. Once your done gathering and entering give a copy of your combined records to everyone that contributed in step 4. You will be amazed at how much your family sources will find that is extra once they see all the information combined and they are comfortable with what you have done.
Don't worry about getting everything completely right, or places where your records are incomplete, time has a way of showing you the places to look and the things to do to add to fill in the details. You will also find family members that will find errors and help you correct your information. If there is a disagreement about details, don't try to determine which is correct, record both versions. Don't try to make the details too precise, even trusted sources will have different information and there may never be a way to verify everything.
Now is the time to be prayerful and once you know who your ancestors are pray for them and about them, and the rest will come your way, sometimes in miraculous ways.