Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Ten Great LDS Family History Databases You've Got to Try

This was the very first class I attended. (Well, the first class was the keynote speaker Merrill J. Bateman who is now serving as the president of the Provo Temple. His talk was very spiritual. His job was to remind us why we do family history research.)

So, after President Bateman's talk I listened to Devin Ashby who is a Project Coordinator for FamilySearch with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of the things he talked about can be found by looking at the links at the church's web site. Briefly, here are the ten databases.

1. Record Search the publishing site for FamilySearch Indexing.

2. www.familysearch.org

3. The link to the LDS Church History Library. www.lds.org/churchhistory/

4. Patriarchal Blessing Index, also with the Church History Library. Note to my family: Being the self-reliant family that we are, if we decide that we want copies of all our ancestors' patriarchal blessings, which I think would be valuable, then we should order one set and make copies for the rest of us who are interested. I do not think these blessings should be made available on the Internet when we get our web sites going. They are too sacred.

5. BYU databases: www.lib.byu.edu/fslab/

6. Daughters of Utah Pioneers databases http://www.dupinternational.org/
Also Sons of Utah Pioneers http://www.sonsofutahpioneers.org/about_sup.htm

7. Utah Territorial Case Files (This collection (1870-1896) contains over 2500 case files, the majority of which deal with cohabitation, usually polygamy.

8.Ancestry.com has several LDS databases. Utah Pioneers and Prominent Men has been digitized and is online.

9. World Vital Records.com

10.TWYHBY The Website You Haven't Built Yet

This lecturer likes acronyms. He is the one you taught me LOCKSS.

No comments: