Indexing - Assigning to specific Stake/Ward

If you are participating in FamilySearch Indexing, please make sure all your information is correct.  By providing this information, you are better able to receive the proper help and support.

You can log in to the Web site and have yourself assigned to the correct stake--or, in the case of a community volunteer that is not LDS, a local stake--so that you can get help locally from a stake indexing director. To be assigned to a stake, use the steps below:

• Go to http://indexing.familysearch.org.
• Click Sign In in the upper right corner, and enter your user name and password.
• Click Sign In.
• Click on Edit at the bottom of the screen.
• Click in the Group or Stake field.
• Type in the name of the stake that you would like to be a part of.

If you aren't sure what the official name of the stake is, you can type in the name of the city, state, or country and scroll through all the options for that locality.  If you see several options for the locality, the correct stake does not seem to be in the list, or you are not sure which would be the correct stake, contact FamilySearch toll free, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mountain time at 1-866-406-1830 for further help from Indexing Administration.

• Select the desired stake from the drop-down list by clicking on the stake.
• Click Save.

You should now be assigned to a stake.  Also remember to type down the name of your ward as well.

If you would like to contact your stake indexing director or group administrator for any questions you might have, you should:

• Log in to the indexing program.
• Click on Help.
• Click on Support.

How to Begin

A great way to begin is by printing out all the information you may have in a pedigree chart.  If you have a FamilySearch or Geni account, a fan chart can be created for free here.

Having a visual map of your ancestors is a great help.  You can now see what has been done and what there is next to do.

However, the greatest success in doing family history is by seeking for God's help and guidance.  The next step is to look over the pedigree/fan chart and see what names stand out to you.  Then take that/those name(s) to the Lord in prayer and ask for His guidance.

When you feel inspiration to follow a name, gather the information you have about them.  The most important information is their name with dates and places.  With that in hand, start searching databases. Great places to start:

• FamilySearch
• Ancestry
• FindAGrave
• Google

Make sure to have a Research Log and write down the searches you do.  It's good to include what information you've searched under.  Try different possibilities:

• first and last name
• first/last name and date
• first/last name and place
• only last name and date
• different spelling of names
• etc., etc., etc.

Sharing

Remember, not only is genealogy research helpful for improving and expanding our own records.  It is also very important to share our findings with others.

It is so much easier to gather family history records when the research work has already been done.  When you've finished gathering information, share it with others so they don't have to do the same searches that you did.

With internet, it is so much easier to share information:

• email documents and web finds
• post/reply to forums like RootsWeb and GenForum
• upload family tree on sites like Geni.com and Ancestry.com
• creating a blog or website using sites like WordPress, Blogger, or Weebly

Also, there are several options for online storage so you always have your electronic data accessible when you visit family:

• iCloud: http://www.apple.com/icloud/
• SkyDrive: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/home
• Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/tour
• GoogleDrive: https://drive.google.com/start#home
• SugarSync: https://www.sugarsync.com/

Don't hide your finds in a shoe box in the back of a closet.  Make sure it is accessible to relatives across the world-wide web.

The Bare Minimum

Here is the bare minimum of genealogical information to have in your personal records.  The more information, the better.  But this is a great framework to start from.

Your family records should provide at least:

• the given name or the surname of your ancestor
• the person’s gender
• enough information to uniquely identify the person

This "unique" information may include dates, places, and names and relationships

of other family members.

For the spouse, at least have the given name or the surname of the spouse.

For family records, know the given name or the surname of at least the father.

Migration Records

While searching for pioneer ancestors, try using these useful and free migration sites:

The Mormon Overland Travel, 1847-1868, is the most complete listing of individuals and companies in which Mormon pioneer emigrants traveled west to Utah from 1847 through 1868. It is an incomplete listing, as rosters have not been found for all companies. It also identifies sources to learn more about the experiences of each company. You can search for a specific person using the search or you can browse the list of companies alphabetically or chronologically. 

The Mormon Migration website offers the inspiring first person accounts of over one thousand international converts who turned their faces toward Zion from 1840–1890. The autobiographies, journals, diaries, reminiscences, and letters link to over 500 known LDS immigrant voyages and they provide a composite history of those who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, traveling by land and water to gather to Zion. Immigrants from 1840–46 gathered to Nauvoo, Illinois. Beginning in 1847, the Saints, driven west, gathered in the Salt Lake Valley. The immigrant accounts of their travels to the Great Basin describe not only their experiences crossing the oceans, but also their trek to frontier outfitting posts, and entry into the Salt Lake Valley (1847–1869).

The Ellis Island Archives: More than 22 million passengers and members of ships' crews entered the United States through Ellis Island and the Port of New York between 1892 and 1924. Information about each person was written down in ships' passenger lists, known as "manifests." Manifests were used to examine immigrants upon arrival in the United States. Now you can search these millions of records for information on individual Ellis Island passengers.

Indexing

FamilySearch has a great volunteer program for indexing records.  Indexing takes scanned and digitized handwritten or typed records and allows volunteers to write down information such as names, dates, and places.  With this information, searching through records is faster and easier to do.  Instead of searching through pages and pages of microfilms, a person can easily go online, type in the name they are searching for, and (with luck) find that name in the database.

Not only is participating in indexing a great volunteer opportunity to help prepare records for search databases.  It also teaches you how to read old and/or sloppy handwriting.  Even with all the indexing and transcribing, family historians and genealogists still work with reading handwritten records.  And to be honest, many of the records are hard to read.  At times, it take a lot of work to decipher the handwriting.

With indexing, a person learns to recognize different styles of writing.  It may be difficult at first, but you will learn and improve on the skill.   The more records you index, the easier it will become and the more you are preparing yourself for the day when you find an important family document and need to decipher the handwriting.  You will be thankful for the practice.

If you haven't already, consider volunteering at:  https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing

If you are already an indexer, keep up the good work.  It may be hard and frustrating at times, but you will improve.  Just imagine what it would be like if one day a record you are indexing happens to have the name of one of your ancestors.  How would that feel to you?  Your work is allowing another person to search for their ancestor and find that name.  They will feel that same emotion you just imagined feeling.

Also, if you have been invited by FamilySearch to become an arbitrator (after indexing a specific number of batches), seriously think about accepting the offer.  It can be even more difficult to arbitrate because you are comparing the same record done by two different indexers and you have to make the decision of which is right.  But don't let that scare you away.  It too will be a great teaching tool.  It improves your skills as an indexer (for you should continue doing both arbitrating and indexing batches) and it lets you take another role in preparing these records for internet accessibility.

It is a great family history opportunity.  Don't let this experience and practice pass you by.  Consider joining in on the volunteer effort - whether it is through FamilySearch or another organization.

Gathering Information

Besides relying on your memory and the memory of family members for information, another way to learn about your family is by gathering records from around your home. It's amazing what treasures have been forgotten around your home. Seek them out.

President Boyd K Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles suggested this idea:



After gathering your own information, look though it and see how much you learn not only about yourself, but your family members.  Your birth certificate has record of your parents.  Photographs has record of family and friends.  Diaries are typically full of names.

This shows you that gathering information about one individual will open the doors to learning even more about their family members.  Collect all of your records into an easy-to-access file.  Then start over with an empty cardboard box and collect information about your parents, grandparents, and ancestors.  See what you can discover about them.

Research Logs

Doing your family history can be busy work.  Looking through dozens of books as family history libraries, surfing through websites, searching through databases, scanning through microfiche and microfilms, etc.  If you're not careful, you'll begin to repeat your search or forget where you had found some valuable information.

A great resource to utilize from the very beginning is "research logs."  It is a list of all your search efforts.  You can write your own list, create a spreadsheet, or the Church has a great template available for purchase from the Distribution Center or found in the Appendix of the Member's Guide to Temple and Family History.

This is what it will look like:

To begin, fill out the ancestor's name, objective, and locality.  This will help as a reminder of what you are searching for and keep you focused.  Now you are ready to start your search.

Filling in this form as you go will help you see what you have already accomplished and where you need to go to next.  It may at first start feeling like a waste of time when all of your search options result in nothing.  But writing down your failures along with your successes will be beneficial in the long run.  It not only keeps you from repeating that search again in the future, but it also gives you a list of source materials you can check into for other ancestors.  Although a source may not provide results for one ancestor, doesn't mean it won't be a treasure trove for another.

If you create an ancestor's source book from all the successful sources you have collected and copied, make sure to number each document and write that number in the "Doc. number" column.  This way, the research log can act as a type of "Table of Contents" for your sources.

Have a research log for each of your ancestors to help organize your search efforts.  You'll be thankful later on when you have notebooks, boxes, and cupboards full of source copies.  This will be a great help for finding reason in the midst of chaos.

Pedigree and Fan Charts

In family history, pedigree charts are a great visual.  But the numbers of ancestors quickly multiply.  Using the Ahnentafel genealogical numbering system:

(First Generation)
 1  Subject

(Second Generation)
 2  Father
 3  Mother

(Third Generation)
 4  Father's father
 5  Father's mother
 6  Mother's father
 7  Mother's mother

(Fourth Generation)
 8  Father's father's father
 9  Father's father's mother
10  Father's mother's father
11  Father's mother's mother
12  Mother's father's father
13  Mother's father's mother
14  Mother's mother's father
15  Mother's mother's mother

It quickly becomes obvious how fast an ancestral list multiplies.  That is just mapping the direct paternal/maternal lines.  Imagine a family chart and numbering system that includes all the children, spouses, and collateral lines .  This comic (shared on Mountain Genealogists by Cyndi Beane Henry) is a great expression of what it is like to try and fit everyone into the family tree.

When beginning family history for the first time, having a visual like a pedigree chart is a great way to see what work has been done and where work is needed.  New.familysearch.org is a great place to start as it shows your personal pedigree according to the information the church archives already have collected on your family. 

Yet, even viewing the pedigree chart on new.familysearch.org, it takes time and effort to click on all of the extension arrows to see further than the first three or four generations.

Therefore, TreeSeek.com connected with FamilySearch.org and Geni.com to provide people with a free genealogy fan chart.  All you need to do is:

1. Go to createfan.com (or click on the "Print My Fan!" link on the right column of this blog)
2. "Login" with your FamilySearch account
3. Click on "Create"
4. A pop-up window should appear.  Click "save file."

And voilà ...

A colored genealogy fan chart in pdf form that goes back nine generations.  It is a fast and visual way to see which of your ancestors are missing from the family tree (at least according to new.familysearch.org).  Now you can send it to a local copy place and print it any size you want.  It can be used as a genealogy reference guide or given as a great Christmas/birthday gift to family members (especially if you can obtain their FamilySearch login information so they are at the center of the fan chart).

Happy charting!

If interested in filling out charts the old-fashioned way (aka, by hand), different types of blank charts are available through Misbach Enterprises, a partner of TreeSeek.  The site includes several free PDF charts.

Getting Started

Where do you begin when starting your own person family history? The answer: YOU. Don't let the concept of genealogy scare you.

In The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it say, "the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children." Our family is important. That is why we have the sealing ordinance to bind in heaven what has been bound on earth through family ties. However, if we are just trying to collect the bare necessity of individuals just to finish their ordinances, then we are missing out on the true purpose of family history. The Spirit of Elijah helps our hearts turn to our ancestors. It gives us a desire to want to know who they are and how they lived. Don't cheat yourself of that amazing feeling.

Here is a great "Getting Started" video. Notice how it first begins with you. You should sit down and write out what you already know. Then, go to your family members and ask to sit down to question them what they know. Family history is about learn who we are and where we come from. Don't feel awkward about asking family members about genealogy information. You are showing them that you care about their life. You are letting them know how much you love them.





Also, a common question is "Which ancestor should I start on?" Here's a good "Genealogy in 5 minutes" video about that:





How did you get started? How did you decide which ancestor to begin with? Add your comments below! Or write your own post on the subject to familypearls (at) gmail (dot) com to have it posted next on this blog.