Have you ever wondered where you come from? What were your ancestors like? Where did they live? What did they do for a living? Where did they migrate to? Do you have things in common with them? Were you named after one of your great grandparents, or aunts or uncles? What were they like? I have wondered these things often and because I come from a family rich in verbal history of the past, this desire was always kept alive.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an incredible family history program that is, quite easily, the largest database in the world. It is called familysearch.org and it has consumed my every waking minute for the past three days. I never remember to do this in bite-sized pieces. Due to its addictive nature, I lose desire for food and sleep as I dig through the new familysearch.org website for my ancestors. I am so excited about the new website!! There are still some things that are being tweaked or added or removed to make it the most interactive, efficient family history website that ever existed. It is a beautiful interface and has some simplified search options that make it easy to add people to your family tree.
The picture above shows a new feature called the Fan Chart and is a wonderful tool to view various family members individual trees. Once I got started, it was extremely hard to stop. I found 50+ relatives, most of whom have had their temple work already done for them, but a few still had some ordinances that needed to be performed. I was able to fill in the gaps with dates and details that I had gathered, and soon, my ancestors were being connected to each other in a family tree, similar to the one below.
This is a great space that allows to search for, find, connect, and add photographs and notes about your family and ancestors. It simplifies this process and thanks to hundreds of volunteers who have painstakingly indexed records from all over the world, you are able to find your ancestors with the click of a button.
During this family history search, I was able to connect with my cousin and we spent an entire day exchanging stories that had been handed down to us from our parents, ensuring that details matched. It was amazing to learn so much about our ancestors and we were even able to figure out how some of our aunts and uncles received their names. We loved working on this together and I am sure we will continue to do so in the coming months.
This is an inspired work and you will be guided and directed as you sincerely seek out your ancestors. If you are interested in finding out more about this, please click on the links in this post and you will taken to the website, where you will find several videos on how to get started. You can also click on Get Help on the website and choose the ways in which you would like to be helped. For the first time in history, family history has never been made more simple.
Try it. You just might like it. No, love it.
