Transferred To The Training Zone - Where To Start A Trainee?

Josseph Smith Memorial Building

Up on the 3rd floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building is the mission training zone. That's where I have been transferred. Yes, after 3 months on loan I finally get transferred there. I really enjoy training new missionaries on Family History.

Each new missionary receives two weeks of basic training. The trainers are great people to be associated with. The whole mission is this way actually, people committed to serving and helping.

Yesterday was the new groups first full day. My trainee this time is more experienced than the last ones I have trained. He and his wife are back after a years absence. Since the training is to be customized or individualized based on their experience and interests we basically teach the same things but some advance further in the two weeks than others.

I share what we were able to do yesterday as a blueprint you might follow. We covered a lot of ground, but will have to go  back into more depth on: The family search Wiki, a brief intro to Family Tree, and the over 100 Facebook pages on research and how it makes Facebook more than play. We spent a lot of time discussing and exploring whether these would be beneficial to him and his family.

He already had a 5 generation chart we could print out so we took a couple of those names and started looking for them on line. The goal: starting to further document his ancestors histories. Our first search was in FamilySearch.org. We found that person in a 1930 census. We copied that as documentation on several things: this mans birthplace and probable birth year, his parents birth places, and it verified his spouses first name. It showed us their location in 1930. A lot can be gained from a census, but they are likely only supporting facts rather than hard proof. They help a lot. Soon he will be able to press a button on Family Search and the document will be sent to his Family Tree to be attached to those ancestors. Quick and easy - and awesome.

The second person we searched was a great great grandmother. She wasn't in Family Search, but we found her in Ancestry.com. She shows up in a public member tree. No documentation was attached but it did list the same 14 siblings in this family. This ladies mother had a different last name than he had. We spent time looking to determine who had the correct last name for this grandmothers mother. We printed copies of all we see for him to file and work on later. He now should ponder whether or not he should subscribe to Ancestry.com The main reason, as a member he could communicate with this person. He could discover how she is related. They could collaborate.

The Church has a partnership arrangement with Ancestry.com that provides a free version in the family history centers and church headquarters. That won't provide him the ability to communicate or create a family tree in Ancestry.com.

Even though he has been here before, and is an experienced genealogy fan, he learned a lot of new things today, and that is rewarding to me his trainer.

NOTE: ON day 2 we added searching with http://findagrave.com/ and http://billiongraves.com/