Thursday, March 24, 2016

Mocavo and FindMyPast

From James Tanner's excellent blog post of Wednesday March 23, 2016 on http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/ I learned that the merging of Mocavo.com and FindMyPast will soon be completed.

FindMyPast has really grown and expanded. It started in the United Kingdom as a company focused on British genealogy and was part of Bright Solid which merged with D. C. Thompson & Co., Ltd. Now it has added numerous databases and I believethat now it actually has more United States records than British records. FindMyPast was a major partner in the Community Project of the indexing of the 1940 U.S. Census. Because of collaboration between FamilySearch  and FindMyPast, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can have free subscriptions to FindMyPast.

There are employees working in Utah. One of them is my grandnephew Jeremy. Preparing Mocavo for the merge is Jeremy's project. Kudos to Jeremy!

The Find My Past area in the Expo Hall at RootsTech 2016 focused on its large collection of marriage records. We were given formal invitations and small organza bags of Jordan almonds as a promotion.

We are very very blessed to have so many convenient online resources for genealogy research.


Monday, March 21, 2016

Adventures with BYU Relative Finder

I have heard of Relative Finder before. But I decided to visit the web site because on March 19, 2016 I was at the Saturday Seminar at the Riverton FamilySearch Library and attended a class by Van Celaya. Van Celaya is an instructor for BYU Family History Library. His presentation was very positive and upbeat and his enthusiasm for family history is contagious.

So I decided to check out BYU Relative Finder and login in with my Family Search account and see who I am related to.

Here are some of the results:

The closest relatives of the "celebrities" on their list are:
Henry B. Eyring -- 3rd cousin
Mitt Romney -- 3rd cousin
Jeffrey Holland -- 4th cousin

Other apostles that I am related to are:
Elder Cook
Elder Oaks
Elder Stevenson
Elder Ballard
Elder Hales
Elder Bednar
Elder Anderson

I am related to a multitude of U.S. Presidents including Barack Obama!

I am related to about 20 Mayflower passengers, but the one I have thought was my relative, John Billington, was not on the list.

Movies stars that I am related to are:
Lucille Ball
Humphrey Bogart
James Stewart
Oliver Norwell Hardy
Henry Fonda

My husband is related to
Elder Haight
Elder Christofferson
Elder Perry

It is interesting that most of these relationships come through the lines of my 2nd great grandmother Laurinda Atwood. The program said it would find your closest relationship and that you might be related in other ways as well.

Of course, because of errors in FamilySearch some of these relationships may not be true.

The whole experience made me realize that virtually everyone is our relative and we need to be more kind and understanding of all of our Heavenly Father's children. We are all brothers and sisters.