Nancy and Sister Wilding Destroy Excuses For Not Serving Others

Meet Sister Wilding, I just did.

She is the lady in the yellow dress. That is her hand walker just right of the man she is helping. Sister Wilding is a missionary, serving at the Salt Lake City Family History Library, helping patrons. The man she is helping is stuck. Sister Wilding knows how to help him. (Missionaries are Elders or Sisters)

Sister Wilding knows her stuff, she should, she has been a missionary here since 1979. Sure it is a little difficult for some and she is an example. She struggles to walk, her speech isn't as fast as it once was. She rides to the library on the Trax rail system. She uses a scooter to make it the final distance.

As I met her I wondered what excuses do we sometimes make that keep us from serving others? People from all walks of life and all denominations come to this library in hopes of finding an ancestor. I am here with Elder Price who is looking for his mothers birth certificate. It is likely here on microfilm.

Too busy might be an excuse to avoid serving. Too difficult to move around isn't one for Sister Wilding. Too busy with the grand kids is one I have heard. I heard that as a Bishop.

As I am here writing this post I hear Sister Wilding chuckling. A man just left the counter with a printout in hand. He seems to have left with what he came for and she is obviously pleased.

Oh, the excuse of too old. I think that just went out the door. Sister Wilding is 97 years old. Take that.

The entire time I have taken to write this I think of my sister Nancy, who handicapped with MS tirelessly struggles along to do genealogy research (thousands of names found) feeling, knowing in her heart that she is providing something of value for mankind.

Nancy and  Sister Wilding, destroying all excuses. Thanks for your example. 

Success With Microfilm At The Family History Libraries

These past two weeks I have been training a father and his son as full time missionaries.

It's been rich, for me, and I think for them.

Their heritage goes back to England and not much is on computer where we are working, mid 1700's.

Not as easy a solution, but often a good one, is viewing microfilm records at the LDS Family History Library. Here in Salt Lake City, the advantage is that much of the microfilmed records are stored right on site. Those rolls that must be called from the Granite Vault can be retrieved the same day with an early enough in the day request.

We started yesterday afternoon. It didn't matter that this wasn't an area of my expertise as there were plenty of missionary volunteers there to help. We were advised to get 3 different rolls of microfiche. We knew a couple of counties their ancestors lived in and started going through Parish records that had been microfilmed.

JACKPOT!

Yesterday we found a relative, her marriage, the birth of her 3 children, then the death of her husband, and finally her re-marriage 7 months later.

I left them alone this morning to complete the first roll while I did research for them on the computer nearby. As of noon today they had found about 12 new names and events to add to their family tree.

At the same time I researched online, using names in their FamilyTree of ancestors who appeared to have no spouses.

Using Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, and findAGrave.com I have about 10 new entries for them.

One interesting discovery I am going to share with them this afternoon is one of their ancestors owned a boarding house in England. I found her in an English census as a widow owning a boarding house. Her 33 year old daughter, also a widow, lived with her with a child. In another census I found the widowed daughter with 4 children.  Three died according to one census which interesting had a column for number of children and another column for children living.

I am discovering that working on other peoples lines, helping them get excited about genealogy is fun, even though they aren't your relatives.\
Even if you don't live near Salt Lake City you are very likely to live near a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Library. They are open to the public. Not all are open every day so you should look up when they are open. Those libraries can help you learn how to order film that can be viewed there. There is a cost that covers just some of the expenses to copy and deliver the film. The cost to the church is about $15.00 at this time, your cost will be less than that.

Cragun, Bingham, Porter, & Salinas Research Blogs

Think of all the genealogy information hiding in plain site, deep within the covers of books and publications in libraries like this.

Think of how much time is spent searching them.

Think of how much data has been stored on microfilm, with libraries such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints Salt Lake City Family History Library shelves, and in the granite vault.

Genealogy is even more hip now, people are catching the spirit. Some youngsters are choosing Genealogy over video games.

The search is on, and you might be a part of it.

I don't want you to waste your time duplicating someone else's research. My main family lines are in the title of this post. If you are from the same ancestors, you are welcome to join with me in focusing on common family lines.

If you are a Cragun Bingham Porter or Salinas lets get together and attack both our dead ends and our fables.

I'm not interested in credit or being possessive, I'm interested in results.
So join me. My sister Nancy has been awesome. Nancy if you have things to post, I welcome you to be a contributor. Other cousins known and unknown also. If you aren't related, get with the concept on your family lines. If you think you can't do this you are wrong, anyone can do this if they can do email. It's about that easy to blog. We are wrapping up the last of a four session series of training. We hope to do more of these and expect that will happen.
I have setup four research blogs. Cragun is here Porter is here Bingham is here and Salinas is here.

Today I was with a new Family History missionary today at the Salt Lake City Family History Library. Her ancestors came to Australia from England. We were able to find real good copies on microfilm of births in the county of England with children having the same last name of that ancestor. The first thing I instilled within her in her training was to use research logs to record the results. As I get more focused to being back on my research I will post the research I do on the research blog  of that family.  Back to the concept of why duplicate each others research. There is so much not yet indexed, on microfilm, in books, in journals, and in family records. I sincerely believe in, and want to be a promoter of families working together so they don't waste time duplicating each others work.

I guess that makes me a Mormon Evangelist.

Training The Rookie Genealogist Wrap Up

It has been an exhausting two weeks for our rookie. I am proud of all she was able to inhale. She finished with a burst of speed.

She has a great assignment. She is going to serve at the Family History Library in the new Hosting Zone. She will be in the heart of where people come from miles around for their research and part of the support team. The week we arrived here on our  mission a large group from Japan were here for their annual genealogy research. The Salt Lake City Family History Library has no equals anyhere. I encourage you to plan a visit some day.
Our new missionary isn't an expert now. Two weeks can give a good foundation but there is always a new challenge in genealogy. However, our rookie has a lot of new tools. She did go four generations further on one line that was a dead end.

Just so you know where she was when we started: she had ranked herself as a 0 to 1 level on a scale of 0 to 5 on almost every category including computer savvy. Her daughter had loaded her entire 5 generations plus more on PAF. PAF is a free family tree type program. We teach that program in our training. She and her daughter had visited areas and cemeteries of her ancestors. She came with a spirit of excitement about family history.

Here are the highlights of what I plan on repeating next month with another trainee missionary:

1.  As I mention above, use a Family Tree software. If you are a beginner start with PAF, it's free.
2.  Don't do any research without a research log at your side, taking notes on everything you do.
3.  Get organized now: Use the system I published here: click Some may resist as I did, but oh what a difference it makes. Oh how much time I wasted duplicating research before doing this and using research logs.
4.  Make a personal commitment to attend a minimum of 1 genealogy conference or workshop a year. We go to everyone we can. In the six months we have been on our mission we have attend 8. Each has been invaluable.
5.  Start your research on every person with these 3 sites: Family Search Ancestry.com & FindaGrave.com Ancestry is not cheap, but it is my favorite site.
6.  Become a regular at a local LDS family history center. Paid sites licenses such as Ancestry.com are usable under the church licenses.
7.  Start connecting with others with same research interests. Ancestry.com is a great place for that. FamilyTree and the add on software SharingTime (Currently $15.00 per year) are even better. Some can access new.family.search now and use SharingTime. New.familysearch will become FamilyTree.
8.  Download Jing at http://jingproject.com Jing is free and is perfect for making a photo out of anything you see on your screen. Photo's are an important part of family history.
9. Block out a regular time to do online research. Several years ago for me this was Sunday. I would usually spend about 4 hours doing genealogy.
10. Visit this site, study it, click its links for other sites. Aside from publishing occasionally articles about my ancestors and a few examples of my sick humor I post important articles and links for those who are interested in good genealogy research ideas.
11. Get on or get ready for FamilyTree. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints members can get on it now. By the end of the year anyone can. I'll announce that when it happens. FamilyTree is written about several times here and I encourage you to read these articles. 
12. Use Webinars as a learning tool. You can pick your topic and times. Genea Webinars is currently the best site I have found that aggregates and announces Webinars. Its link is in the right sidebar of this blog.

These are a summary. More detail is given to this topic in these links about training the rookie.
 Training The Rookie in Genealogy
 Training The Rookie in Genealogy - Day 2
 Training The Rookie Genealogist - Day 3
 Training The Rookie - Day 4
 Training The Rookie Genealogist - Days 5 & 6
 Training The Rookie Genealogist - Wrap up
 

Training The Rookie - Day 4

Yesterdays Story gains legs. My rookie genealogist came to training today having made an interesting decision.

She felt she was being inspired to to write the story of the grandmothers life I wrote about yesterday. She had never been told this story: about the children being split up because the mother was alone, they lived 240 miles from each other, she was a servant according to a census, and even that she was married to another man the next year.

This decision is great news, stories are important.

http://findAgrave.com/ was a big part of our day today. This is a valuable free site. It turns out that two thirds of her first 5 generations of ancestors have some form of memorial in find a grave. We found photos of grandparents, of headstones we photocopied (with Jing), and even a copy of a birth certificate. Now that's a good place to publish documents like this. When FamilyTree goes live, one could link to this memorial.

Both of these tools, Find A Grave and Jing are a must.

Another great feature of Find A Grave we used a lot was the ability to search the cemetary for other people with the same last names. This may be one of the more important features of this website. Think about it, she had family names with dozens of people buried there that she knew nothing about. Cousins, Aunts, or Uncles? Perhaps?

With this search we found one of her grandmothers that had an additional last name posted and on the grave marker. Our original search missed her because of the different last name. We found her and our trainee added this name to new family search.

Other ancestors looking for this grandparent will be glad for the work we did today. And, I am thinking my rookie trainee is not really a rookie. She learns fast, thinks clearly, and is thorough.

Tomorrow we will probably go to the Family History Library and start gathering facts for her newly inspired book. Oh, and we will also have her print out a fan chart.