Why I'm Committed to Using Family Search

I've talked to several people who tell me they've stopped putting their genealogy on Family Search because they don't like other people changing it. Many of these are people who have done genealogy their entire life and spent countless hours reading microfilm, looking through books in courthouse basements, and searching cemeteries to find the information they need. Then they get onto Family Search and find that after all that hard work somebody added incorrect children or spouses or merged their great-great grandfather with someone completely different.

I get it. I'm currently watching 309 people on Family Search and I know to some people that number is low. Lately my Weekly Changes emails from Family Search tend to have over 100 changes that I have to verify, and usually there are at least a few merges or added relationships that I have to check and fix. I know several people in my family deal with this too.

But I won't stop using Family Search. I'm committed to it, and here's why:

• It's reducing duplicate temple work. Before the unified family tree, you had to look people up on the Temple Ready discs, which had to be updated and sent to family history centers periodically and missed a lot of duplicates. With the Possible Duplicates feature and the Find feature it's a much faster and more effective process to look for duplicates and avoid doing someone's temple work unnecessarily.
• It connects distant relatives, making it possible for them to share information as well as inherited items or pictures. One of my favorite things is to look at one of my ancestors and find that someone uploaded a photo or diary. I have even been able to share audio files of my grandfather (who I never met) singing to my mom.
• Having a unified family tree makes it so that I don't have to do all the research from scratch. If another relative has already done all that research and shared in on Family Search, I can look through the information they've added to see if it seems right, enjoy any memories that have been shared, and move on. That frees me to work on other people who haven't been researched yet.
• It's an efficient way to reserve temple work and check to make sure the ordinances were recorded properly. It's also an efficient way to share ordinance cards with my family.
• While the interface isn't perfect (I would like to see ways to tag sources to events other than birth, christening, death, and burial), for the most part I really like the program and enjoy using it. I love that we can view our trees in several different ways (fan chart, vertical, horizontal, descendancy) and add sources with explanations.
• Because the tree is open for editing, I can quickly make changes instead of having to call church officials or submit dispute forms. This saves me a lot of time and it also means that people who would have to process disputes have more time to spend elsewhere.
• Family Search Family Tree has made it possible like never before for descendancy research to be done. Previously this was just too complicated because you had to check for ordinances on Temple Ready, so we focused on tracing our own ancestors, which is why a lot of us descendants of pioneers thought our genealogy was all done. Now the potential for temple work on my family tree is enormous.
• By sharing my research on Family Search I get access to Family Search's record hints, which are getting more accurate all the time. This saves me a lot of time because I can find a lot of information without even having to do a search and look through results.
• Having my family history on Family Search makes it more likely that all the research I have done will be preserved for future generations. How many people do you know who have everything saved in boxes and boxes of notebooks or on old floppy disks? Are their descendants going to happily sort through all that when they inherit it, or will they be apathetic about it?
• If not me, then who? I do good research and I am experienced enough with the program that I can make good contributions and I can work through the process of fixing the complicated messes. If all the good researchers abandon the program it will just descend into chaos. I stay because I feel that I've been called to contribute and especially to help deal with the messes and inaccuracies.
• Many of the features on Family Search have made family history work much more efficient, which means we find temple opportunities much more quickly as well. In fact, the church no longer has to rely on extraction work at all because there are enough people submitting names for the temple to fulfill all the temples' needs. And with over 150 temples throughout the world, that means that God is truly hastening the work of redeeming the dead!
• In Doctrine and Covenants 128:24, it says: "Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation." I suspect that this "book" will be the unified family tree on Family Search. Personally I want to be able to say that I did what I could to contribute to it!

How to Share on Family Search

Genealogy is a fairly solitary activity. Family Search shows pictures of families gathered around a laptop and smiling, but I suspect that for most who use it we are working on our computers alone and most collaboration happens through web communication.

A common complaint about Family Search is having to deal with people changing "our" genealogy. Many of these people have been working on their family history for decades, before the unified family tree on Family Search was created. They're used to working alone and previously didn't have to deal with strangers who were researching the same people.

Since I'm one of the few young genealogists, this hasn't been my experience. The Family Search Family Tree was created soon after I got interested in family history, and for the most part I've been thrilled with the program.

In recent months, however, I've found that I can relate more and more to the possessive attitude some people have adopted about their family history. My early experiences were researching people who I was clearly "sharing" with others because I was simply adding pictures and stories I had inherited and making sure my pioneer relatives were documented with sources. In contrast, my experiences in the past two years have been more independent because I've added at least 100 people to the tree and I've been doing research about people that other users hadn't worked on. I don't know that I feel "possessive" about those people (or their names), but I did put a lot of work in and I had the information entered the way I liked it.

With the recent addition of the Denmark Church Records database to Family Search, I've seen a lot more users making changes on these people who I worked on, and I've been feeling a little resentful of that. So I guess I'm not immune to it. Generally the changes are fairly benign--someone added some record hints or changed a place name, for example--but I cringe if I see a merge or relationship change because it could mean spending a couple of hours undoing a bad merge or restoring deleted relationships.

Anyway, here are my tips for "sharing" the space on Family Search:

• Acknowledge that your family history "style" might not work for other users, and therefore they might make changes so they can understand the information. For example, you might prefer sources organized by type, whereas others might prefer sources arranged in alphabetical order. You might want every single residence, occupation, and variation of names added to "Other Information," whereas other users might not feel a strong need for that./
• Remember that other users on Family Search are real people too. Sure, they mistakenly introduce errors into the family tree, but they're also the Relief Society sister who is always the first to volunteer to bring meals for the sick or the high priest who shows up to help every time someone moves. They're not deliberately trying to make life harder for you--they're good, well-intentioned people making honest mistakes or still developing their research skills.
• In fact, other users on Family Search are your family.
• Focus on the "collaboration" aspect of Family Search rather than feeling like you need to protect your research. Look forward to seeing the information other people might add that builds on your research. In a lot of ways it's actually really great that we can all work on the tree, because that means we don't have to do research if someone else has already put in that work. It's fun when someone else adds a record that you weren't able to find.

And here are some practical tips that seem to help prevent/reduce/deal with the big messes:

• Add all of your sources with good explanations and transcribe the information into Family Search. Sometimes I talk to people who complain that someone messed up their genealogy or did a bad merge, but if you look at the person they added, they entered the basic information and didn't add their sources. If someone else comes along, that makes it a lot harder for them to distinguish "your" Billy Hopkins in Edgefield, South Carolina from another Billy Hopkins from Columbia, South Carolina. Make your places very complete. Monroe, Sevier, Utah, United States--not just Utah.
• Move important records like birth/death/marriage certificates and censuses closer to the top of your source list so that they're easier for you and other users to find.
• "Watch" anyone who you have made significant changes on by clicking the star at the top of their page. You will get a weekly email with a list of changes made to anyone who you are watching. Then you can check these changes to make sure they make sense and fix anything that's wrong. (But again, remember that by using Family Search you're collaborating.)
• Send messages if there is a problem. Click on the name of the person who made the change, and a box will come up that has their email address and an option to send them a message. If you click Send a Message then the message will include a link to the person you are referencing, which can be helpful. Again, keep in mind that these are real people and be polite and friendly. A nasty message could make a new user so discouraged they stop doing genealogy, whereas a kind message with a correction or question could help that person learn (or you could find out you were wrong).
• Look through all the record hints and possible duplicates and choose whether they should be rejected or added. Sometimes inexperienced users just assume that Family Search's automated hints must be correct and add everything, or they assume that same name = same person.
• You can look through the entire list of changes to any person by clicking "Show All Changes" under "Latest Changes." You can undo merges or go to deleted people and restore them.
• If you make a correction, give a thorough explanation. Refer to sources to back up the change you have made. Make use of the discussions, notes, and life history sections to explain your research.
• Keep a personal copy of your research in another family tree. Ancestry.com is a popular one and is free for members of the LDS church. I also like RootsMagic. This way if someone makes incorrect changes on Family Search you'll have a separate copy that will help you restore the information. Make sure to save your sources on your backup tree.

Denmark Church Records added to Family Search

Almost two years ago when I started doing Danish Family History, the only Danish records on Family Search were from an incomplete database of indexed baptism records (no image). With the help of the Research Wiki page about Denmark Genealogy I taught myself how to find records using a combination of looking at indexed census records on Danish Family Search and browsing through church records on Arkivalieronline.

At some point My Heritage acquired and indexed a huge number of Danish church books and census records, which has been really helpful at times. And now it looks like Family Search has gotten access to their databases and these records are available on FamilySearch.org. Over the past several months I've started noticing record hints about census records coming up. Then within the past couple of weeks the database "Denmark Church Records, 1484-1941" was apparently uploaded because my tree has exploded with record hints from this collection.

I've had mixed feelings about this. Part of me wonders why I felt so led to start doing Danish family history the hard way when I could have probably found these people in a much shorter amount of time if I had waited until now. I guess the benefit is that I learned some very valuable research techniques in the process that will continue to help me even with the indexed collections on Family Search. Not all of the records are indexed correctly, which means they won't all show up as record hints (or if they do, I've found that often the places are wrong), but I can still look them up on Arkivalieronline or Danish Family Search since I know how. I've also gained a fair amount of skill in reading gothic script and deciphering the records, which I probably wouldn't have picked up as well if I had been able to find these records through the record hints.

The explosion of record hints also means that I have a huge amount of work to do right now going through all the people I've researched and adding the record hints. The reason I need to work on this is because other well-meaning Family Search users often crawl through their trees adding all the record hints without giving a thought to whether they are correct or not. Then when I get my weekly changes email from Family Search I find out about bad merges and extra spouses and children from the other side of the country added to families, so I get to clean up the mess. I figure if I add the record hints myself I can prevent some of those headaches in the future. But it's a big project right now.

But once I get all of that sorted out, I can already tell that I'm going to be able to do research much faster than I ever have before. With record hints and searches on Family Search it will be incredibly easy to find records about people and in many cases quickly add entire families to the tree. God really is hastening the work of redeeming the dead. Ultimately I see this as an incredible blessing.

Help! Parts of my tree are missing!

A problem I often come across when helping people in my local family history library is missing portions of a family tree. In the most recent situation, a patron knew that her family tree went back several generations because she had seen them on her son's tree, but on her own tree there was a line that stopped at two of her great-grandparents. She was concerned that she would have to redo all of that research and add all the people one by one.

Fortunately, resolving this problem is actually much easier than this. If you know the line goes several generations back, all you need to do is find the people's profiles on Family Search and connect them to your family. Then the rest of the ancestors should show up. Here I'm going to walk through one situation like this that I found while doing research.

In the image below, you can see that the line stops at Cilius Sorensen. Neither of his parents are listed. I know his tree should extend farther back than this because I know his father and paternal grandparents are already on Family Search.

What I need to do is find his father and connect him to Cilius Sorensen, and when I do that the grandparents will already be connected as well.

First, I click Add Father:

When I do that, this form opens up:

I know that Cilius' father's name was Rasmus Christian Sorensen, and he was born in about 1856 in Glesborg, Randers, Denmark, so I enter this information in the appropriate fields and click next.

On the next screen, Family Search shows me some possible matches.

Usually at this point people recognize the names or information and it's an easy matter to add the ancestors to the person's tree. In this case, I know the first possible match is the correct one because I recognize his parents' names and the birth information matches. So I click the blue Add Match button and that will add Rasmus Christian Sorensen and his parents to Cilius Sorensen's tree.

Here is what Cilius Sorenson's tree looks like after clicking Add Match:

As you can see, the only person I had to add was his father, and the grandparents were automatically added since they were already connected to Rasmus Christian Sorensen.

You may have to add a generation or two of living people before you can hook up to the people already on Family Search. For example, I wanted to be able to see my husband's ancestors on my tree, so I had to create new pages for his parents, who are still living, then when I added their parents I was connected to my husband's entire tree.

How to Restore Deleted People in Family Search

Recently I was researching a relative and trying to find more information about her husband. I started with only his name and the town where his family lived, but with that information I was able to find them in two censuses and learned that his parents and siblings had already been added to Family Search, although I had to do some merges to get them all together.

I added my relative's husband to their family as well. I had found and merged some duplicates for him, but none of them had any temple work done. However, as I looked through this person and all his siblings I noticed that he was the only one who hadn't hadn't had any ordinances completed. I thought this was odd because it looked like their records had been created in an extraction project, which means this person should have been included in that project. When I searched for him using Find no other people on Family Search came up.

This was when it occurred to me that he might have existed on Family Search at some point but been deleted for some reason. So I started searching to see if I could find the deleted person.

I started by going through the father's list of changes. If you click "Show all" in the Latest Changes box, you can see all the changes that have been made to a person since they were created in the Family Tree.

After scrolling through the changes I found the following deleted relationship: 

Here is the summary card you see if you click Lars Nielsen's name:

By clicking "Person" you can still view a deleted person's page. Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot the first time I found the deleted person, but here is what it looks like now:

The christening date was exactly the same as for the Lars Nielsen I was researching, so I concluded that the birth date was a typo or error (the birth place was right) and restored the person. To do this, you click Restore Person (circled in red above), and then you give a reason for restoring the person.

After restoring the deleted person, I found that before he was deleted he already had all of his ordinances done. It was pretty clear to me that he was the same person, so I merged the restored person with the Lars Nielsen who I had been working on, and when I did that he was deleted again and replaced. The surviving person, who previously didn't have any ordinances, now has all of his ordinances complete.

Yes, maybe this was a little time-consuming, but think about how long it would have taken to re-do his ordinances. For my husband to do just his endowment would have meant a two-hour drive to the temple, two hours in an endowment session, and then driving back home, all for somebody who had already received the ordinance. I'd rather have all that effort go towards somebody who needs it rather than doing it to fix a clerical error.

As a side note, I was glad I took the time to find the deleted person because he had a burial date, whereas I had been unable to find death information about this person. It only took me a couple of minutes to find the burial record using the date and verify that it was the right record.

This is also really useful to know when someone does an incorrect merge. If you find that somebody has incorrectly merged your relative, you can go through the list of changes, find the deleted person, and click Restore Person as I showed above. This makes it so you don't have to put back in all the information you've added about a person and redo their ordinances.

Danish Family History Tips, Part 2: Research Strategies

Recently I uploaded my family tree to My Heritage, and immediately I had several hundred Record Hints about the people on my tree. Some are clearly wrong, but several seem to be correct and could give me clues to finding people I have been looking for.

One person on my tree is Peder Christian Jensen, born 27 June 1849 in Lille Kousholt, Dronninglund, Dronninglund, Hjorring, Denmark. His ID on Family Search is 21JN-2TG if you're interested. I have already traced him living with his parents in Lille Kousholt until 1860, but at some point after that he apparently left home and I had been unable to find him.

My Heritage gave me several record hints for a Peder Christian Jensen living with his wife Maren Jensen (born/fodt Thomsen), in the 1901, 1906, 1911, 1916, and 1921 census records in Albaek Sogn (Parish). His birth date is the same and some of the census records say he was born in Dronninglund Sogn, so it seems likely that he is the same person. On Danish Family Search I was also able to find the same couple in Albaek in 1880 and 1890. Because the birth date and place are the same I am fairly confident that I've found the right person, but to make sure I would like to find their marriage record and the children's birth records to see if any witnesses on these records are people I recognize from his family.

I decided to start with the oldest child listed on the 1880 census, who is Jensine Tomine Jensen, age 4, which would put her birth date in about 1876. The census says she was born in Albaek. I go to Arkivalieronline.com and open up the Albaek Parish records, then start looking for Jensine's name in 1875 (census records are often a year ahead on birth years). It only takes a couple of minutes to find her birth record in 1875 since I already know approximately when she was born. Here are some screenshots of the record:

This screenshot has her birth date, name, christening date, and parents:

This screenshot shows her parents on the left and on the right are the godparents/witnesses. One of the witnesses is Ungkarl (single man) Niels Kr. Jensen of Kousholt, Dronninglund Sogn, who I know is the brother of the Peder Christian Jensen who I am looking for, which makes me more confident that I have found the right person.

After this I can read through the Albaek parish records to find birth records for the rest of the children found on the census records. The census records will help since they have birth dates for all the children, sometimes exact dates.

It's a good idea to look through the entire parish record in case there are any children who died without being recorded in a census. In this case, there was a child born in 1877 (Karl Johan Jensen) who was not listed on any of the census records I had. Since he is not in the next census, that's a clue that he died before 1880, which I verify by finding his burial record (line 25). If there are gaps of three years or more between children there is potential that there is a missing child.

I'm still not sure of the marriage date and place for Peder Christian Jensen and Maren Tomsen, but most likely they were married before 1875 because the birth record for Jensine Tomine Jensen doesn't say the parents are single (ugift). The first places to look would be the parish records for Volstrup (where Maren was born), Dronninglund (where Peder was born), and Albaek.

Since I'm already looking at the Albaek parish records I start by looking at the marriage records (copulerede) there, starting at 1875 and going backward. It turns out they were married at the beginning of 1875. You can see the entire page here.

Here you can see Peder and Maren's names. It's clear this is the right person because it says Peder is from Lille Kousholt, Dronninglund Sogn and his birth date matches the one I already had.

Here are the witnesses. One of the witnesses is Jens P. Pedersen of L. Kousholt, Brudgommens Fader (bridegroom's father), who I already know is Peder's father.

The 1916 and 1921 censuses have a plejbarn (foster child) living with Peder and Maren named Bernhard Sigvard Jensen, born 13 June 1911. I have found that often plejbarns are grandchildren or other relatives, so if possible it's useful to try to find their birth records. Bernhard's birth date is later than 1906, which means I can't do temple work for him, but I might as well add him into the tree now while I'm thinking about it, plus his christening record may have information about other members of the family. In this case it's easy to find since the census gives the exact date and place (Albaek). Here is his birth record:

From the first image I learn that the mother is Karen Jensen, who is one of Peder and Maren's children. Karen is unmarried and no father is listed.

I can get information about two more of Peder and Maren's children from this record because they were listed as godparents. I learn that their daughter Annine was living in Agersted, Voer Sogn at the time, and their daughter Martine was living in Sønder Grønheden, Volstrup Sogn.

So this will give you an idea of my general strategy when doing Denmark Family History. Since many census records are indexed I will use those to find people using what I already know about them. If I find someone who seems like a likely match to the person I'm looking for, I will use parish records (like christenings and marriages) of other people in the household to see if it's the same person. Residences and witnesses listed on the records can give a better idea if they are the person I am looking for. Then once I'm confident I've found the right person I will start looking for other census records and finding birth records for any spouses or children who were living with them in the census records. This general strategy will work for doing family history in a lot of other places too.

Danish Family History Tips, Part 1: Basics

Earlier this year I started doing family history work on some of my Danish family lines, with a great deal of success. I have decided I want to write some posts with tips about doing Danish family history.

I'll start with some basic things that are important to know.

Surnames

In Denmark you will find that almost everyone used a system of patronymics, which means that a person's surname is based on their father's name, with -sen or -datter added to the name. So if a person's name is Hans, his sons' surname will be Hansen and his daughters' surname will be Hansdatter.

Around the mid-1800s, there was a transition to using -sen for their surname, regardless of gender. Many women who were christened with -datter continued to use the suffix, while others changed to -sen, but in general the patronymic system continued.

In the late 1800s, for most families the surnames began to be fixed. For example, the children of my ancestor, Jens Peter Pedersen, all had the surname Jensen. But his grandchildren had the surname Jensen regardless of the father's name. In addition, many people began changing their surnames to names that did not have the -sen suffix, often with the surname reflecting their residence or another characteristic about them. For example, Jens Peter Pedersen's son, Jens Christian Jensen, inherited the family farm, which was named Lille Kousholt, and around 1910 all of his children's surnames were changed to Kousholt. Often this name change will be noted in the person's baptism record.

My observation has been that women generally kept their patronymic surname up until the early 1900s, and then an increasing number of women started taking their husband's surname.

Same Name is Not Enough

In the 1800s and earlier, there was not a lot of variety in names. So if you find a record with the right name and date you can't just assume it's the same person. Even within the same Sogn (parish) you will often find multiple people with the same name born in the same year. So when you are looking at records you should look for other clues in addition to the name:

• Relationships: Research entire families at the same time rather than focusing on individuals. If you know the names and dates of the parents and siblings it is easier to tell if you have found the right person in a census record because you can compare the entire family to what you already know. In parish records check the names and homes of the witnesses or godparents because often these will be family members. If you are reading a marriage record and you recognize one of the witnesses' names as the father, or in a christening record you recognize names of grandparents or aunts or uncles, then you can be more confident that the record is for the person you are researching.
• Location: Whenever possible you should know location all the way down to the village or farm where somebody lives. Continuing with the example of Jens Christian Jensen, reading through parish records I can find many parents with that same name, but I can quickly tell that they are not the same person because their residence is not Lille Kousholt. People did move around some, but generally they didn't move much farther than adjacent parishes, which would be less than 15 miles. So if you are researching someone who lived in northern Denmark (Hjorring), it's extremely unlikely that a record from Copenhagen (100 miles away, and across a body of water) is about the same person.

Geography

In Denmark places are generally broken down like this (from biggest to smallest): Country (Denmark), Amt (County), Herred (Hundred), Sogn (Parish), By (City/Town), and sometimes the farm name/house number/street. When I am entering places on Family Search I try to include each of these as much as possible.

To get a better sense of the geography I recommend playing with the Denmark clickable map on FamilySearch.org's Denmark Genealogy Research Wiki. Clicking on the Amt (county) will take you to that wiki page, which will generally have another clickable map showing the parishes with borders around the herreds. Many parishes' wiki pages also have a list of placenames within the parish. I actually highly recommend reading everything on the research wiki about Denmark Genealogy because there is a lot of useful information there.

Records

The most useful records you will find in Denmark are parish records and census records. Parish records can tell you names, birth/death/marriage dates and places, parents, and other relatives. Census records are very valuable for finding whole families and giving you a general year and place of birth.

Census records are partially indexed and can be found on MyHeritage.com (click Nordic census on the right side) or danishfamilysearch.com. Danish Family Search is useful because you can either do a general search by adding the basic information, or you can search within specific parishes by first name, surname, or placename. On Danish Family Search, many censuses are indexed but for some reason don't get included in searches, so you have to find them by going to that parish's census list. The censuses available on MyHeritage all seem to be indexed and searchable, but sometimes it can be hard to find a person in a search if their name was indexed incorrectly.

Many (not all) Danish parish records were indexed by the LDS church and the indexes are available on familysearch.org. This can be very useful, but it's important to look up the image because it's actually not that uncommon for there to be two couples in the same parish with the same names, so you will need to look up the name of their farm or village.

Many Danish parish records are also indexed with images on myheritage.com.

Images of Danish parish records are also available on danishfamilysearch.org and Arkivalieronline.com. I feel that the interface of Arkivalieronline seems to be more usable for browsing through images, but both are good and seem to have pretty much all the available parish records. I use these two websites constantly when I am doing Danish family history.

Recently I uploaded my family tree from RootsMagic onto MyHeritage.com to see if I could get any record hints. Looking through the record hints they have given, I am very excited because there are many record hints that give me information about people I was stuck on. This feature will be an enormous help for my research. MyHeritage has many census and parish records indexed and mapped to the images.

Handwriting

Danish records in the 1800s and earlier were written in Gothic handwriting, which is similar to the cursive handwriting we are used to, but has many differences. When I first tried reading Danish parish records I almost gave up because the handwriting was so difficult to decipher.

The Family Search Research Wiki has a page with links about reading Gothic handwriting, which was very helpful to me. I would also suggest starting with people whose birth date and place you know, then find their birth records and try to read them. Since you already have a general idea of what the records say, that will help you start to get a sense of what the letters look like. Also keep in mind that there wasn't a lot of variety in names, so look for familiar names (Jens, Hans, Christian/Kristian, Soren, Anders, Margrethe, Karen, Maren, Mette, Kristine, Ane, Marie, etc.) to get a sense of what the letters look like.

It takes a while to get used to the handwriting, but the best way is to keep practicing.

Language

Obviously if you don't know Danish then the language will be a challenge. On the Denmark Genealogy page of the Research Wiki, there are word lists that have common words that you would see on records, which is really useful. Google Translate is also a very helpful tool. You don't have to be fluent in Danish to do Danish family history. Learning the words that are most commonly used on the records and using the word lists and Google Translate will get you pretty far.