Thursday, July 24, 2014

FamilySearch Releases Mormon Migration Record Collection

FamilySearch adds collection linked to the Mormon Migration website of BYUJust in time for Utah Pioneer Day (24 July), FamilySearch has released the “Mormon Migration Database, 1840-1932.” This collection contains basic information obtained from the Brigham Young University (BYU) Mormon Migration website. It contains links to the BYU website for additional information, such as ships’ rosters, ship photos, passenger journals, autobiographies, and letters. The collection contains information about international converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who crossed the oceans to gather in America from 1840 to 1932. Think of the Mormon Migration website as the successor to the FamilySearch Mormon Immigration Index CD, both of which were compiled by Dr. Fred E. Woods of BYU (and other contributors).

You’ll recall that FamilySearch recently provided a gateway to the “Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel, 1847-1868” database of the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (See my article, “FamilySearch and Utah Pioneers.”) You may know this database by its old name, the Melvin L. Bashore “Crossing the Plains Index.” This database lists the names of all known immigrants travelling overland (overland as opposed to what?) to the Utah Territory for the years 1847 to 1868. FamilySearch is only providing a gateway to this resource, rather than an integrated record collection like the Mormon Migration collection.

A search of the Mormon Migration BYU website for “Elizabeth Robinson” found 17 passengers. The BYU site also performs a keyword search of personal accounts. It found seven, but because these are OCR indexes, none of them were actual matches. It found 19 voyages associated with the 17 passengers and 7 accounts. You can also search the BYU site by date or ship name.

The same search on FamilySearch.org gave 39 passengers. Because I didn’t do an exact search, FamilySearch.org included matches for nicknames Eliza, Lizzie, Elisa, and Betsy; abbreviations Eliz. and E.; missing given name; and surname Robertson. Results were sorted with exact matches at the top. Unfortunately, FamilySearch has not consistently included basic information from the BYU site. For example, the result for Elizabeth Robinson—the “pistol filer”—did not include port of origin (Liverpool), port of arrival (New York), or voyage date (8 Sep 1840 - 12 Oct 1840). Without voyage date, FamilySearch was not able to estimate birth year (1835). Without this basic information, it makes it difficult to pick a desired immigrant from among the results. An advantage of searching on the FamilySearch website is that names are fielded, so there are no false matches. A major advantage is that results can be linked to FamilySearch Family Tree.

I’ve hoped for a long time that FamilySearch would provide this collection, so I’m happy to see it. Hopefully, they can rework it to include the information from the BYU site that they have left out.

1 comment:

  1. Hi,

    I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today’s Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-july-25-2014.html

    Have a wonderful weekend!

    ReplyDelete

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