S574 Wondering Webbing Wiggling

Thanks so much to my responders! I got some really good advice I have already taken to heart, including a place to post my final project that sounds perfect!

Today I think I may have done some wondering, webbing, and wiggling. Since we have a family history center at church, I contacted my friends, Minnie and Darrell (wife and husband) who work in it a couple of days a week. Since my last attempt at genealogy was back when there wasn't a lot online, my first question was, of course, if I could do it totally online. My second was if I could do it from home (for free or subscription). My third was what web site was sponsored by the Church because I knew that's where I could find reliable information, find out what ordinances had already been performed in the temple, and obtain the information I needed to take to the temple if I want to do work for ancestors (I know all this sounds pretty weird and foreign to anyone reading who is not Mormon).

I found out most of the searching can be done online. Maybe not all. If I can't find it online, I may have to do some old fashioned searching, even if it entails looking for grave stones or writing to courthouses for copies of records. The Church genealogy web site is http://www.familysearch.org/. I have to create an account with my Church ID number to be able to submit information and view ordinance work. Minnie went in under her account so we could view information and do some searches. I knew that a lot of my family information would already be in there because my mother does a lot of genealogy. I had questions as we went along like if I can click on a person's name and get more information about that person (the answer being yes). I also learned that I could click on a name and view a timeline of that family or get a map of the area where the person lived. It was really cool!

We decided to try to find some information about people on my husband Bill's side of the family. We used Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/). This is a subscription site that is quite expensive. The Church subscribes, and anyone can come into our Family History Center and do genealogy research. You don't have to be a member of the Church to use an LDS Family History Center. Anyway, Bill had very little to go on. He wasn't even sure of his dad's middle name. A lot of his family's records on his dad's side had been burned in a fire. We found his dad's social security death record. For his dad's parents, Bill had the names of John and Lucinda. As we were viewing 1920 census records, we were trying to scan for a John with a spouse named Lucinda. All of a sudden the name Lulu stood out from the page to me (I guess Lulu wanted to be found), and I had Minnie back up and go into the record, stating that maybe Lulu was short for Lucinda. Sure enough, all the names of the uncles and aunts Bill remembered were listed as the children. This was so exciting! We ended up finding records for John's and Lulu's parents while we were there. Now Bill can go on from there to find more.

Do you know what's kind of a pain, though? How do you know which information is correct? For instance, there was no Lucinda. Did she just give a nickname for the census, or did Bill have the wrong name to begin with? Also, Bill found his Aunt Flossie to be Florrie in a couple of places. Was Florrie a typo, or is Flossie a nickname? I guess you just have to do the best you can, especially if ancestors are dead who would have known.

I had a question about the years for census records. I found out that many 1890 census records were destroyed by fire. The year 1930, then, is really the earliest dependable census year. And census records before 1850 only show the head of the household. After that, they show the spouse and children.

I wanted to know about any other web sites I might need to use. Minnie recommended the free RootsWeb (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/) and the free genealogy message board called GenForum (http://genforum.genealogy.com/). She said yellowbook.com (http://www.yellowbook.com/) is a good place to try to locate living relatives, and any search engine often works to search for a whole family line (e.g. Brown family archives).

Lastly, I found out something exciting to investigate for my final product. FamilySearch has a downloadable program that enables you to print family charts in color. That sounds like something creative for a project or family history album.

Good luck with your projects!
Sandy