Family History

Yesterday I taught a short class about familysearch.org.  It went well, but it made me miss the days of teaching at the MTC, where I taught the same 7 or 8 classes every single week to a new group of missionaries.  After a few months, I was really good at teaching those classes.  I'd had time to test out jokes, stories, and examples.  I could keep what worked, and ditch what didn't.  I'd love to go back to that kind of job!

But back to family history work... It's neat to see how technology is transforming the process.  When I was in college, I wanted to familiarize myself with family history, so I took a class.  They taught us about all the different databases, like IGI.  I saved my family tree on a flash drive to open on new computers, because it wasn't internet-based.  I learned how to use microfilm (which I actually used a few years ago!).  To do temple work for ancestors, we had to save a file to a floppy disk because temple's computers couldn't take flash drives or CD's.

[And that's to say nothing of family history before the age of computers.... everything done by hand!]

Today, everything can be done through one website!  You don't have to download any [slow, outdated] programs.    You can search all church databases at once, and organize your digital family tree.  You can even upload pictures of ancestors, along with memories and documents.  Plus, access any information shared by others.  Someone I don't even know uploaded pictures of my grandparents.  It's a small world indeed.

Familysearch.org... kind of like facebook for our ancestors!

In preparation for the class, I logged in to see my family tree and saw this for the first time:

A descendant!

It certainly makes my tree look a bit different.  I'm not the starting point.

The other exciting thing that's made possible through technology is digitized records.  When the 1930 Census was released a few years ago, it was only a matter of weeks before it was made available for digital search--mostly by volunteers.  New records are constantly being added for searches online.  Millions are available for free search.

My Grandfather's family from the 1930 census (found in less than a minute).  He was 9 years old.

When we were in Colombia in 2011 we visited the church in Turmeque, the town where Hyrum's dad grew up.  We found out what hours the office was open, and explained that we were interested in creating our geneology.  The lady working there went to get the Priest, who we spoke to about our interest in family history.  He gave us permission to look through their church records, which date back several hundred years.  In fact, when we looked through the oldest books, people didn't even have recorded last names!

Church in Turmeque.  The white building to the left of the church is where the parish records are kept.

We spent two mornings pouring over the books, searching page after page for relatives.  Some books had indexes, some didn't.  Miraculously, we found a lot of information!  We left with a lot of photocopies and a lot of scribbles in my notebook that I later tried to make sense of.

It left us both with the hope of returning to research more.  We worked mostly on our direct line, but the whole family is in those books--cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, etc. There's so much information!

And in the meantime, we try to help with indexing the projects available for Colombia.  It's neat to think that some day, the records in that little church could be digitized for world-wide searches.  We would no longer have to travel half-way around the world to locate people.  And those hundreds of names hidden between the pages would be available for all to see.  Someday...

[When we were there, we actually asked them if they'd ever thought about making the records digital.  I think at one point someone tried to, but they weren't interested.]

It's incredible to think about what changes will happen within my lifetime.  I'm sure that family history as I know it today will become obsolete.  People that can't be located today will be easily found 50 years down the road.  I can't wait to see how.