Jim Ericson and FamilySearch Indexing (Part 1) – #BYUFHGC

Jim Ericson of FamilySearch gave a presentation titled “Straight Talk about the State of Indexing” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. His purpose was to “answer several key questions related to FamilySearch indexing and the program’s future in a direct, no nonsense way.” [It’s been so long since the conference, I’m starting to forget things that aren’t in my notes. Hopefully I don’t mess it up too badly. This will be the first of two articles about Jim’s presentation. Here goes…]

To lead off, Jim thanked those who have indexed. There have been 3 billion names indexed in 1.4 billion records through the FamilySearch indexing program. There have been nearly 250,000 indexers so far in 2016. [Since Jim’s presentation, that number has grown to 262,868 according to the FamilySearch Indexing website.]

For the recent world-wide indexing event 116,000 people indexed 10 million records. Participants represented 110 different countries. While some, like Tonga and Samoa had only a few, this is amazing.

There were 10,000 youth ages 8 to 17 who participated. FamilySearch likes to get youth involved. Youth indexers come and go, Jim said.

More than 23,000 (19%) participants were not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On Facebook there was huge interest by the general public. First time indexers composed 23% of participants. Jim said that is why they do these events. It extends the number of indexers.

Jim told his indexing story. He searched for hours and hours to find the maiden name of William Worley’s wife, Betsy G. He finally found their marriage record and learned it was Gilson.

Since then, FamilySearch volunteers have indexed that record and Jim has attached it to Family Tree. “Now people don’t have to go through the process I went through to find Betsy G.,” he said.

Jim said indexing helps us all personally. We learn about family history and learn how to read handwriting. We serve others. We belong to an amazing volunteer community. We improve data entry skills. We increase unity with family and friends and we gain a deeper appreciate for the worth of all men. FamilySearch doesn’t recommend that children start indexing records on their own, but it is a way to collaborate and build family unity, Jim said.

What are the biggest challenges of indexing?

Indexing can be really challenging, especially for beginners. It has an unintuitive software interface. People’s expectation is that you should be able to get started without helps or hints. The handwriting is difficult to read has sometimes has poor legibility. The last few batches often take a long time until researchers buckle down and do the last, hard batches. Instructions vary by project, which is a problem if arbitrators don’t read the instructions and change batches that had been done right. There can be a variety of records, even within the same project.

The software FamilySearch is using can be a challenge. It has had a long, miraculous journey, Jim said. There was a small company called iArchives that was providing software for commercial offshore keying companies. FamilySearch took that software, meant for a trained workforce working on a few projects, and deployed it to a large, diverse workforce. Even though FamilySearch is coming out with web-based indexing, the current software will be used for a long, long time. Some projects have to be offline. But it is now an amazing effort to keep this legacy system running. During the world-wide indexing event an engineer was restarting the server every 10 minutes to prevent it from crashing.

A big challenge of indexing involves human factors. For example, the indexing program used to have a screen showing the percentage of an indexer’s work that was not changed by arbitrators. We’ve removed that because it was causing friction, Jim said. (See “What’s New with Indexing—June 2016” on the FamilySearch blog for more information.) If the indexer has really studied and the arbitrator hasn’t and overrides the correct information, it is really frustrating. You have to remember that indexers and arbitrators are volunteers, Jim said. “We can’t fire them for not doing a good job.” They are doing their best and FamilySearch Indexing is achieving mid-to-high 90th percentile accuracy.

Jim provided some tips for success. Work with a fried or get some training. Focus on a single project at a time for quality and efficiency. Follow the directions. Reach out and help others. Be patient. And stretch yourself into harder projects. “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do—not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased.” (Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted by Heber J. Grant.)

Tune in next time to learn what is coming in the future and to answers to attendees’ questions.

Ancestry Insider in Family Tree Magazine Top 101

I recently received this message from Diane Haddad, editor, Family Tree Magazine.

Congratulations! 

Your genealogy website has been named one of our annual 101 best family history websites in the September 2016 issue of Family Tree Magazine. This issue is being mailed to subscribers and is available at ShopFamilyTree.com. It goes on sale August 16 at newsstands. 

Each year, Family Tree Magazine publishes the 101 Best Websites for family history to guide genealogists to the top websites where they can make family history research progress, and to honor the individuals and organizations who create those sites. This year, we took a fresh look at the list, adding more than 30 new, innovative and overlooked sites. For the "old favorites" on the list, we've highlighted new content and features.

The full list of 101 Best Websites for family history, including your site, can also be found using the category links at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/101-best-websites-2016 .

Thank you, Diane, David A. Fryxell, and Family Tree Magazine. I am constantly amazed and overwhelmed by the number of quality, awesome websites out there. More are being added everyday. It’s more than I can keep up with. It is an honor to have Diane and David take notice of my small contribution. Their annual list is a great way to keep up with some of the best.

Websites were recognized in one of 16 categories:

101 Best Websites for 2016 main page
2016 Best Big Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Websites for Exploring Your Ancestors' Lives
2016 Best US Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Sites for Sharing Your Genealogy
2016 Best Websites for Putting Ancestors on the Map
2016 Best Genealogy Library Websites
2016 Best Websites for Finding Ancestors in Old Newspapers
2016 Best African-American Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Cemetery and Directory Sites for Genealogy
2016 Best Tech Tools for Genealogy in 2016
2016 Best Immigrant Ancestors Websites
2016 Best British & Irish Genealogy Websites
2016 Best International Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Genetic Genealogy Websites
2016 Best Genealogy News & Help Websites

RootsWeb Update for 20 August 2016

Here is the latest I know about the RootsWeb website.

As of 20 August 2016

• Freepages FTP service seems to be down still.
• Mailing lists seem to have miscellaneous problems with archives and admin tools.
• I was able to browse mailing list archives. I understand that was recently broken.
• The mailing list archive search doesn’t return any emails since sometime in April.
• I was able to subscribe to a mailing list.
• I hear reports that emails are being sent, but spam filters are not working, so a lot of the email is spam.
• User contributed data stats haven’t been updated since 24 February 2016. I don’t know if RootsWeb is currently accepting new data.
• There are currently 15,297 web pages in the freepages genealogy community index. I haven’t monitored it for change, but there it is.
• The freepages file manager, http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/­fileman/, is still missing.

DonFT wrote on 19 August 2016:

I heard from somebody at RW Help whose reply included the words "decisions are being made as to the future availability of this feature." My impression was that the person was referring to the free pages generally. Suggests to me that they may be abandoning the whole thing. Thoughts?

BKip wrote on 18 August 2016:

Having been unable to access the Freepages File Manager since sometime in July I’ve been mostly in the dark about what is going on. My site is fully available for viewing, but I am unable to make any updates. An email to the help desk gave me an ambiguous reply leaving me just as confused. This page is the first place I’ve found where there is at least a bit of information.

Is there another place where there is more information on the status of Freepages?

Is Freepages expected to continue?

Is there a different URL to log-in to the File Manager? http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/fileman/file_manager.cgi

Any further information would be truly appreciated.

BKip, I’m afraid I have very little information you don’t already have. There is a status page (http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/ or http://rootsweb.custhelp.com/), but Ancestry.com is not using it.

Tim received this message from RootsWeb on 15 August 2016:

Dear Tim,
Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to Mailing List spam.
We are sorry that you are encountering a problem with spam. We will do all that we can to assist you. The Mailing Lists are undergoing maintenance. Spam filters have temporarily been turned off during this process. Other tools including those for subscribing and unsubscribing are also not available at this time. We expect the spam filters to be re-enabled soon. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Bobango2 sent this query to RootsWeb:

Checking in once again on the repairs to the Freepages file manager. RW has over 15000 sites listed in this category. It would be nice to know that they are still working on the issue and have a completion date in mind. It is very frustrating for those of us who have devoted hundreds of hours to these pages not to be able to upload new material or make corrections. Surely, someone in IT can throw light on this matter.

He received this reply on 15 August 2016:

Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to maintenance to the site.
We sincerely apologize for the length of time the maintenance is taking. We had hoped it would be completed by now. Our development team is working on getting this completed as quickly as possible, it is just taking longer than expected. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time.
If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know

I received this message from the RootsWeb product manager on 15 August 2016:

Right now we are dealing with getting the spam filters working on the mailing lists again. I have nothing new to report other than we are trying to fix problems as we find them.

So, there’s what I know. Post comments as the situation evolves and any of you learn more.

P.S. I got to thinking. How long will Ancestry.com keep the mailing lists running? How much are the mailing lists being used now days? Here’s the historical picture for the number of messages sent during the month of July, since 1995. (Note I skipped some years, as indicated by the dots.) Writing on the wall, guys. Writing on the wall.

Riverton RootsTech Startup Weekend

I received this announcement from FamilySearch:

Save the date for start-up weekend on August 25–27, 2016—an awesome 2-day hack-a-thon for developers, entrepreneurs, and designers! Wonder if your app idea has "legs"? Come do a 1-minute informal pitch, and see if you can attract enough interest to build a team. RootsTech is hosting this family history edition of start-up weekend. Projects that relate to family history in some way are encouraged nut need not be family history exclusive. Put ideas into action, and be part of actually building the foundation of a startup—all during this faced-paced 54-hour event. It's also okay to come with no pitch—simply a desire to be a part of this awesome community.

Learn more: http://www.up.co/communities/usa/riverton/startup-weekend/8638

Crista Cowan and Searching on Ancestry.com – #BYUFHGC

Crista Cowan presented “Supercharge Your Ancestry Searches” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Crista is the corporate genealogist for Ancestry.com. She announced that Ancestry now has more than 17 billion records. Crista said that six to eight years ago she was the indexing manager and had the single largest line item in the budget. Back then they indexed 1 to 2 million records a month. Now, they do that much in a day.

I’ve written before about this presentation. (Crista asks me, “Why do you keep coming?”) To read my articles about previous presentations, see

• Searching for Ancestry.com at #NGS2015GEN (Part 1)
• Searching for Ancestry.com at #NGS2015GEN (Part 2)
• Search Ancestry Like a Pro (#RootsTech #RTATEAM)

Here are some additional thoughts that struck me this time around:

Looking first at hints (shaky leaves) to other people’s trees might prejudice you. Look at record hints first.

“In some cases the only thing the archive will provide us is indexes,” Crista said. “Where an image exists, always look at it.” Ancestry indexes enough information to get you to the image. There may be additional information in the image. You can also discover indexing errors. You can see nearby people on the record.

When you are going through a person’s hints, to dismiss a hint you previously had to choose either Yes or No regarding the applicability of that record to that person. But sometimes you don’t know yet. Now you have the choice of selecting Yes, No, or Maybe.

Crista has a love/hate relationship with Suggested Records. Those are the records listed to the right hand side of a historical record. [She said love/hate, but it was clear it was a love/love relationship.] She loves it when there is a bunch of suggested records. She also loves it when there are no suggested records. That happens when she is plowing new ground. 

“Our core search has not changed in years,” she said. What they are doing is adjusting what happens when you search from your tree. Depending on the amount of matching information, and what that information is, they rate and order the results, giving you the best records at the top.

When you launch a search from a person in a tree, smart filtering allows you to eliminate from the search results all the records you have already found and attached to that person. (Look for this setting at the top of the search results.)

Gordon Atkinson and Newspapers.com – #BYUFHGC

Gordon Atkinson gave a presentation titled “Coloring Your Tree With Newspapers.com” at the recent at 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

Gordon is a senior director at fold3.com and newspapers.com. In 2003 he left ancestry to found Footnote. In October 2010 Ancestry.com acquired footnote and renamed it fold3.

Ancestry has 40 million newspaper pages. But newspapers are indexed through OCR (optical character recognition) and OCR results don’t surface very well on Ancestry.com. So Ancestry took some fold3 technology and created newspapers.com. They launched in 2012 and just four years later have 160 million pages from 4,200 newspapers. They are adding 9 to 10 million pages ever month.

While they are owned and operated by Ancestry.com, their offices were in Lindon, Utah [I assume with Fold3] and Ancestry was in Provo, Utah. They’ve just moved into the new Ancestry office building in Lehi, Utah.

Newspapers.com requires a separate subscription from Ancestry.com, although Ancestry.com offers an all-access bundle. Newspapers.com is successful even outside the field of genealogy.

Because publications from 1922 and before are in the public domain, Newspapers.com can publish them without having to pay royalties. After 1922 they have to enter relationships and pay publishers to republish their newspapers. They just did a deal with Tronc to publish the L.A. Times. Last year they signed an agreement with Ganett to do all 82 of their newspapers. To cover the additional costs of the royalties for these modern newspapers, Newspapers.com has added a “Publishers Extra” premium subscription. The basic subscription gives access to 100 million pages of older newspapers. The Publishers Extra subscription adds access to 71 million more. The + sign next to a title indicates a Publisher Extra subscription is required. However, some titles have issues both before and after 1922. There is a line and different colors indicating the issues requiring the Extra subscription.

When asked about NewspaperARCHIVE, Gordon said that Newspapers.com has similar content, but if Newspapers.com doesn’t yet have more content, they soon will. And he said the Newspapers.com site experience is better.

To get new newspapers, they work with institutions and libraries across the country, but mainly with publishers. He said they take recommendations, but they don’t digitize paper newspapers. All their content is from microfilm and there are plenty of newspapers available on microfilm.

The vast majority of their papers are from the US. Sometimes you’ll see gaps in their coverage. There are lots of reasons for this. The microfilms may have been destroyed or lost. The issues may never have been microfilmed. Sometimes Newspapers.com makes mistakes and they are filed in the wrong place, but usually gaps are because the issues are not available.

Gordon showed the Newspapers.com website. I’ve shown it recently, so I won’t repeat most of it here. See “Ancestry’s Newspapers.com at #NGS2016GEN.” The website uses a technology called HTML 5 instead of the older Flash technology, so it now works on mobile devices.

There is a button to Save to Ancestry. It will let you select a particular tree, and then pick a person. The clip shows up in the Other Sources section of the person page. They are working to make the experience better, passing information over to Ancestry.com, showing a thumbnail, and associating it with events.

If you clip anything, then anyone can view, not just the clip, but a free view of the whole page. We think that some people will be interested and subscribe, although we just want people to have a positive experience, Gordon said.

You can view a collection of clippings that others have done. We have one user who likes to find horrible crimes and clips them, Gordon said. We’ve had a user clip chess matches. Someone called and said, “you have the best website for learning about building supplies in Texas in the 1930s.” She said she needed the information for a master’s thesis. You can search the clipping page. If you click on the clippers name, you see their profile. If the user has allowed it, there is a Contact Me button. From their profile, you can see all the clippings they’ve made. It helps you organize.

Gordon said several things about searching. They are working on improving their search technology. Clippings have a high score and float to the top of search results. You can use quote marks in search, but text must match exactly. You can save a search so that you receive an email when new matches are added. You can filter results to those added in the recent past.

When clipping you can’t join together portions of an article that are not adjacent.

On the title page of a paper, you can click Follow and be informed if they add issues.

There is a free course on Ancestry Academy about Newspaper.com.

Class members gave different opinions as to whether Newspapers.com is available at FamilySearch Family History Centers. I know a limited version is available via the BYU campus Wi-Fi (because I’m using it right now), but the premium papers are hidden here. A FamilySearch help center article indicates that NewspaperARCHIVE is available, but not newspapers.com.

Lauren Treasure and Getting Started with DNA – #BYUFHGC

Lauren Treasure, a product manager for AncestryDNA presented “Getting Started with DNA: Steps to Success” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy.

“Why take a DNA test?” she asked. To verify a family line. To supplement your existing research. To learn your ethnicity. (They try to show ethnicity from 1000 years back.) To break through a brick wall. To discover a story. To share a picture. And to connect with a cousin. Lauren told us that AncestryDNA currently takes six to eight weeks to post results of a test.

Lauren said we pass down several things from generation to generation. Besides things like names, stories, and heirlooms, we pass some of our DNA. You get exactly 50% from each parent. While the amount you get from each of your grandparents varies, it averages 25%. You don’t inherit the exact same DNA as your siblings. Your results can look different because the set of DNA you inherit is unique to you. That is why siblings’ ethnicity test results look a little different. She illustrated the point with these diagrams:

One of the results AncestryDNA gives you is an ethnicity estimate. To make the estimate they compare your DNA against 3,000 reference individuals from 26 different global regions.

They are always adding new regions.

She showed photos of some of the people in their reference panel.

She showed a map with dots showing locations of reference panel individuals.

A class member asked if you should be retested if you were tested a long time ago. Not unless AncestryDNA sends you a message. If you had your DNA tested on an old chip, then if they add a feature not supported on current chip they will let you know.

The other things AncestryDNA provides to those who take their DNA test is a list of matches to others who have taken the AncestryDNA test. These are sorted by closeness of the relationship. There is no limit to the number of matches. (I have 656.) One method of determining how closely you are related to another person is to measure how much DNA you share. She showed a chart from the ISOGG website showing on average much much DNA is shared by different relatives. Here’s a portion:

% shared	Total centiMorgans shared half-identical (or better)	Relationship
100% (Method I)	3400.00	Identical twins (monozygotic twins)
50%	3400.00	Parent/child
50% (Method I)	2550.00	Full siblings
25%	1700.00	Grandparent/grandchild, aunt-or-uncle/niece-or-nephew, half-siblings

(To see the complete chart, visit http://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics.)

Another process of determining the relationship is measuring the number of meiosis events. In the chart below, if the number of meiosis events between two test takers and a common ancestor is 1 and 1, then the measurement is M2, which indicates siblings. If there are 5 events + 3 events = 8 events, that is 3rd cousins (M8).

  If you link your DNA to your tree, then AncestryDNA can show common ancestors between you and a DNA match.

AncestryDNA looks back nine generations for shared ancestors. They call them hints for a reason; the shared ancestors might be someone else. Or one of the trees might be in error. A leaf next to the View Match button indicates there is a shared ancestor hint.

You can contact matches through the Ancestry anonymous messaging systems. AncestryDNA’s Anna Swayne sent a message to a DNA match, learned the story of an ancestor’s trip to America, and got a picture she hadn’t seen before.

Lauren talked about DNA Circles and New Ancestor Discoveries. See my article from last year, “Aaron Orr Talks Ancestry DNA at BYU Conference – #BYUFHGC.” She reminded us that not all DNA circles are on direct lines. There are other reasons you might share DNA. It could be because you match someone in the group, even though you are not descended from the person who is the subject of the circle.

While AncestryDNA tests are available in a wide number of countries (see “AncestryDNA In 29 Additional Countries” on my blog), AncestryDNA hasn’t yet translated all the materials into all the languages.

AncestryDNA has 2.2 million in their database now.

Monday Mailbox: Frankenstein Monsters

Dear Ancestry Insider,

Just out of curiosity, since this has nothing to do with me—if [FamilySearch Family Tree] is a huge collective project, which it appears it is, and no one can delete a person unless they are the only ones who added the person and no one else has jumped in on it, how do you deal with what I can only imagine will eventually be thousands or tens of thousands of people—duplicates, misascribed children—who should not be there and can't be removed? My ggggrandmother's immediate family all became LDS (except for her), and the amount of well-meaning misinformation on the trees of her parents and siblings means many duplicated children with varying birthdates and children who never existed.I don't even link to most of my LDS relatives earlier trees because of this "noise." So how will they handle this problem?

Signed,
JudyBG

Dear JudyBG,

True duplicates are easy: merge them.

Misascribed children are easy: delete the parent-child relationship. If the actual parents are already in the Tree, attach the child to them.

Misascribed spouses are easy: delete the spousal relationship.

Truly imaginary persons are easy: ask FamilySearch to delete them.

The obvious Frankenstein monsters—combinations of persons already in the Tree—are easy: merge the Frankenstein with one of the source persons, ignoring inapplicable information. (For more information about what I mean by Frankenstein monster, see my article “Frankenstein Genealogy.”)

That’s it for the easy ones. The remaining Frankenstein monsters are the things nightmares are made of.

Just kidding. While difficult, it will be straightforward. Of course you have followed the genealogical proof standard in the instance of your ancestor. You have proved all the facts. You know what your ancestor looked like. FamilySearch suggests creating your ancestor from scratch with the facts you have proved, their associated sources, and their proof statements/summaries/arguments. Mark the two—your ancestor and the monster—as “not a match,” providing a good explanation. If someone tries to merge the two, your explanation is shoved in their face, which will dissuade most people from merging them. I think it wise to throw something in at the beginning of the life sketch as well, since they are displayed at the top of the merge comparisons.

But what is to be done with the monster? I’ve heard someone say that as a good member of the community, you should clean up the monster, that it is particularly important if the monster is left floating without relationships. That’s fine in theory. But one should never make changes in Family Tree without proof, and you probably have not researched the persons composing the monster.

You should not delete the parts of the monster that are in common with your ancestor. While your ancestor may have been the only child born on that date in that village, one of those two facts may apply to a real person trapped inside the monster.

You should not suggest that FamilySearch delete the monster. You may be deleting one or more real persons imbedded in the monster that exist no where else in the tree. In the worst case scenario (I’m good at imagining those), if all other records are no longer available, one of those real persons may be documented no where else.

You shouldn’t delete any of the facts associated with the monster and you shouldn’t delete the monster. That’s the nightmare.

Signed,
---The Scared-of-Monsters Insider

Gordon Atkinson and Fold3 – #BYUFHGC

At the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy Gordon Atkinson presented “Getting to Know Fold3.”

Fold3.com is owned by Ancestry.com. Gordon started at Ancestry in the early 2000s. He [and others?] left in waves in 2006 and created the company Footnote. It launched in 2007 and went well because of its relationship with the National Archives and Records Administration. In October 2010 Ancestry acquired Footnote. We went back into “the mothership” as we liked to call them. Afterwards Ancestry rebranded them as Fold3. When the flag is folded there are 13 folds. The 3^rd fold honors those who have given their all to their country.

In the last year and a half, they changed their logo from a folded flag to a chevron. They are adding non U.S. content and this logo is more universal. Their colors used to be orange and blue. Perhaps it was because Gordon and their designer liked the Denver Broncos.

They just recently moved their offices from Lindon to the new Ancestry building in Lehi. “We moved in with them. That’s a big step in any relationship,” he joked. Gordon thinks It’s a beautiful place and will allow for better collaboration. And it has chocolate milk on tap!

Fold3’s content is harder to organize than Newspapers.com. Newspapers are easily organized by location and date. Military records are a whole other ballgame. They are difficult to index. The content varies from record to record. A record often doesn’t have birth and death information; searching by that information won’t find your ancestor.

Not every military record is available to be on the site. Privacy prevents it for some. There are a lot of records that are only on paper. For example, the War of 1812 pension files are being digitized from paper in a partnership with FGS (the Federation of Genealogical Societies) and FamilySearch. It is much more difficult and much more expensive than scanning microfilm. They have been working on Civil War Widows Pension applications.

Google has spoiled us, Gordon said. We type what we want and Google brings it up. But with Fold3, there may be a record over fifty pages long and they have indexed only names and the state.

They are currently in a project to update their search. They’re changing some of the index fields to make it better. You really can’t solve the search problems; you can only make it better.

You have access to Fold3 at FamilySearch Family History Centers because of an agreement with FamilySearch. It is free at BYU. The institutional version looks similar, but slightly different, from the home version. At home, you need a subscription. You can also buy a bundle with Ancestry.com and Ancestry Academy.

They do not offer an app, but the website is mobile-friendly…-ish, he said.

If you want help, go to the help page. (Fold3.com/tour) It includes a link to a Fold3 class on Ancestry Academy. (The same group in Lindon launched the Ancestry Academy site.) You will need a free account on Ancestry.com to view the free courses, including the one about Fold3.

On the home page you can search right away, or use browse. It is similar to newspapers.com because it shares some of the same code, and there was an attempt to make them similar. When browsing, first select category (mostly wars) and then publication. From there, it depends on the publication. The Revolutionary War Pensions is subdivided by state. A state is divided by surname initial. You can browse in as far as you wish, clear to the individual. At any time while browsing, you can stop and search. The search will include just the records you are browsing into.

They have indexed all the names in a record, rather than just the principal name. Most of their indexing is done overseas. When you consider the indexers are from places like the Philippines, Bangladesh, or China, they do a pretty good job. Fold3 uses grayscale images because they are a little easier to read. When viewing an image, select Annotations to see a list of the secondary names indexed on that image.

The Information tab shows information about the NARA publication, even including a link to the NARA catalog.

In Fold3, when you find something, bookmark it by clicking the star so you don’t have to try to figure out the searching and browsing that brought you to the record.

You can add annotations: names, locations, dates, comments, or transcriptions. These are added to the search index.

The Save to Ancestry button isn’t labeled. It shows only the leaf icon. They are overhauling the process of logging into Ancestry. [I didn’t think it was bad.] You login, select a tree, and then select a person. This is going to improve in the future, with thumbnail and indexed information. Only those with a Fold3 subscription can follow the link and see the record on Fold3.

You can download an entire page or a select a region. They are trying to figure out how to download a multiple page record into a PDF. Today, it must be done one page at a time. You can share it. If you are a paying subscriber, non-subscribers can still see the records you share.

The image viewer uses HTML 5 instead of Flash.

You can zoom in and out and fit to window. You can adjust brightness or contrast or invert the image. You can rotate the document, which is useful for margin annotations found so commonly in historical documents. You can go full screen.

The lines in the filmstrip designate new files.

There is a watch button for search results. For a watched search, Fold3 will send you an email notification for new search matches.

Fold3 has an honor wall. Fold3 has started it with some memorial pages, but you can add your own. (See an example for Charles L Rodeback.) Starting with basic military documents, you can add warmth via stories and photographs.

Two Techniques for Healing Broken Links

Last Friday I presented two citations composed solely of broken URLs and I challenged you to write full citations for them. (See “Darned Image Citations.”) The two can be used to illustrate two different techniques for recovering from broken URLs.

Internet Archive

When you have a URL for a page that no longer exists, sometimes you can find an archived copy of the page. Use the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive has made copies of many freely accessible pages that are not from the “dark web.” Copy a broken URL, go to https://archive.org/, and paste it into the Wayback Machine. Select the desired year and then select the date on the calendar. Sometimes the page is intelligible and sometimes it is not.

The first citation in last week’s challenge consisted of this naked URL: http://www.mocavo.com/1910-United-States-Census/126211/004973415/607. The Mocavo website was deleted when Findmypast bought Mocavo. Mocavo was a free site, so the Wayback Machine might have archived it. But as part of a database, the Wayback Machine almost certainly did not archive it.

In fact, we find the page was archived twice. Neither one displays the image, but they display enough index data that we can search for and locate an image on another website. It is obvious from the URL that the page was from the 1910 U.S. Census. (As an aside, I’ve noticed that early FamilySearch DGS numbers all had nine digits beginning with 004 so the ID in the URL looks suspiciously like a FamilySearch DGS number.) The first three names on the page are

Name	Relation to Head of Household	Gender	Race	Birth Year	Birthplace	Father's Birthplace	Mother's Birthplace
Blanche Black	Daughter	Female	White	1884	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania
Robert Black	Son	Male	White	1892	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania
Mildred Cornelus	Niece	Female	White	1890	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania

With this information, I can do an exact search of the 1910 census on FamilySearch.org for Robert Black, son, born 1892 in Pennsylvania with Blanche Black in the household. This matches only one person (who, by the way, appears on an image in digital folder number 004973415):

     1. 1910 U.S. census, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, population schedule, Huntingdon Borough, 2nd ward, enumeration district 67, sheet 6-A, family [124], line 2, Robert [Black]; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RVF-13K : 11 November 2015), Pennsylvania > Huntingdon > Huntingdon Ward 2 > ED 67 > image 11 of 34.

Some notes:

• I don’t often cite line number, but this is one of those odd ducks where the family is divided across two pages. This child appears near the top of the page and is not identified by family name. Citing the line number removes ambiguity.
• I didn’t include the NARA publication number and roll number. I’m feeling that no one will use my citation to go look at microfilm. If they want to, there are multiple ways to determine roll number. As microfilm census access evaporates, microfilm information becomes unnecessary and census citations will evolve accordingly.
• I didn’t include the FamilySearch collection name. I figure most people can find the 1910 U.S. census on FamilySearch.org without knowing the exact name. Besides, the URL will take them directly to the image within the collection.
• I cited the URL of the image because it has “ark:” in it. That means FamilySearch intends to keep that URL from breaking.
• I cited the publication date rather than the access date. As a general rule, cite publication date when available and access date when not.

 

URL Poking

When a URL breaks, sometimes looking at the URL gives useful information. One URL convention specifies the main address of a page before a question mark, followed by options separated by the ampersand (&) character.

The second URL in last week’s challenge was a broken URL from Ancestry.com: http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/browse.asp?c=8 & state=Vermont & county=Addison & township=Bristol & ed= & roll=M33_126 & STAbrv=VT & startimg=30 & endimg=42 & rp=42 & hash=1670352374 & width=2877 & height=5089 & levels=5 & colorspace=Grayscale

We see among the options, these values:

• state=Vermont
• county=Addison
• township=Bristol
• ed=
• roll=M33_126
• STAbrv=VT
• startimg=30
• endimg=42
• rp=42

Census microfilm junkies will recognize M33 as a NARA microfilm publication number. Google indicates that [nara microfilm publication m33] is the 1820 U.S. Federal census. The challenge was to cite Pearis Raymond. I can do an exact search of the 1820 census on Ancestry.com for Pearis Raymond living in Bristol, Addison, Vermont. This matches only one person:

     2. 1820 U.S. census, Addison County, Vermont, population schedule, Bristol, page 69-B, 3rd name from bottom, Pearis Raymond; digital image, Ancestry (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=7734 : updated 31 May 2013), Vermont > Addison > Bristol > image 9 of 9.

Notes:

• For the same reasons as the FamilySearch.org citation, I left off the microfilm information and exact database title.
• I went out on a limb and cited the URL of the database rather than the home page. Ancestry has never made any public commitment to make any of their URLs persistent. If it works, it’s an added convenience. If it doesn’t, most people can still get to Ancestry.com.
• I questioned whether to specify an access date or a publication date since most people don’t know how to find publication dates of Ancestry’s databases. (Look up the database in the catalog and hover over the title.) In the end I figured the publication (update) date was still more useful than an access date.

The final challenge was to adapt what was essentially a microfilm citation to reference Lewis Rapp on FamilySearch.org. There was a wrinkle. FamilySearch uses a bad index of that page that they obtained from Fold3. Fold3 had the illegible image, so Lewis Rapp was indexed as “[illegible Rapp].” Good image; bad index. Until just a few weeks ago, Ancestry had the opposite: bad image, good index. Now they have the superior offering.

     3.  1860 U.S. census, Jackson County, Ohio, population schedule, Scioto Township, p. 62, family 426, Lewis Rapp; NARA microfilm publication M634, roll 992; digital image, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSD-9PGS : 8 April 2016), Ohio > Jackson > Scioto Township > image 27 of 38.

Of course, these are not the only acceptable citations. I’ve noted some of my judgement calls; you may have made different ones. Just keep in mind: Citations communicate concisely, with clarity and consistency.

RootsWeb Update as of 6 August 2016

Ancestry.com let me know that they are in the middle of fixing RootsWeb.com. They thought they would be done last week and were supposed to get me an update. They’re not and they didn’t. By the time you read this, the situation may have changed. If so, I invite Ancestry to post a comment to this article.

Here are the most recent reports I’ve received of continued outages. Dave Woody said on Saturday morning:

FreePages FTP Server is still down. CS will not say if this problem will ever be corrected. As a subscriber to Ancestry.com World Service, Fold3, Newspapers.com and as a purchaser to 6 Ancestry DNA tests, I am deeply disappointed in this situation.

On 31 July 2016 Robert E. Sweeney, DA, MS said:

I plan to give them a few more days, then I will ask my contact at RW again when the file manager [freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/­fileman/file_manager.cgi] will be available.

On 30 July 2016 the RootsWeb product manager told me:

We are finishing up sometime next week.

On 27 July 2016 Bobango2 said:

I just heard back, finally, from RW Help Desk: "We are currently anticipating the work to be finished by the end of this week. We apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you and appreciate your continued patience as these issues are resolved."

On 22 July 2016 Martin Beavis said:

Do you know what Ancestry is doing with the RootsWeb mailing lists which are currently inaccessible?  For example, http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=devon

fails to  connect, giving an Internal Server Error message, whereas http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ does connect. But enter Devon in the search field or click on Devon in the D-list and you get the same error message.  And it’s not just the Devon list that I cannot access. Strangely, some old URLs from the archive do still display when entered.

The Devon list admin have been told these issues arise from an ongoing RootsWeb upgrade but do not know if that means hardware or software or both, nor how long that might take.  So could you perhaps ask questions with a view to reporting in your Ancestry Insider blog?

Are there any other outages that anyone knows about?

Steven Michael Law (1960-2016)

Steven Michael Law, age 56, passed away July 28, 2016, with his family by his side. He struggled against complications of a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis for over 5 months. Steve was born to Scott Milan Law and Margarethe Elizabeth Myklebost, on January 22, 1960 in Neubrücke, Germany.

Graduating from Mesa Verde High School of Citrus Heights, California in 1978, he was called to the Munich, Germany mission and served from 1979 to 1981. He married to Connie Merryweather on September 17, 1982 and attended BYU, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in German Literature. They moved to California, where he obtained a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from UCLA. After working for the New York Public Library and returning to west coast to work in the Law Library for the State of California in Los Angeles, he moved to Provo, Utah with his family.

He worked for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Library in Salt Lake City for 25 years and the Provo City Library for 21 years. For over 2 decades he managed 55-60 hour work weeks, as well as a long commute, where he made many friends, on the bus and the train and at his work.

In high school he ran track and played tennis; later he ran the St. George Marathon at 24, qualifying for the Boston Marathon with an impressive time of 3:24:00. He enjoyed ping pong, hiking and camping, old movies, science fiction, and trivia. Throughout his life, he studied Mormon History, Family History, Philosophy and Theology.

He will be remembered for his enormous variety of interests, and as he used to say, “There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.” He loved puns and wordplay just like his Dad, and will be remembered for his wry sense of humor.

He is survived by his wife, Connie, and his 4 children, Mykle (Sarah), Keaton, Jennessa (Joshua) Fulton, and Connor, his sister, Glenda, and his two grandchildren, Lukas and Charlotte. He was loved by a great many people, and had friends all over the world from the Phillippines, Australia and Germany in his work for Family Search, the LDS Church’s website for family history research.

He was a practicing Latter-day Saint, and managed a calm, quiet, and stable approach to his curiosity that belied the sometimes difficult nature of the questions he researched. He was always available to help others with family history questions, and, when asked, provided mature perspective to his children on gospel matters.

He was a great resource to those around him, always knowing where to look for answers, when he didn’t know them himself. He was wise enough to suspend judgement, and he was well-read enough to reflect to others the important ideas they needed.

Memorial page at http://www.serenicare.com/notices/Steven-Law.

Darned Image Citations

We depend upon records to reveal the “truth” about the past. Yet sometimes records have anomalies. Some are amusing or humorous. Some are interesting or weird. Some are peculiar or suspicious. Some are infuriating, or downright laughable. Records say the darnedest things!

Let me briefly talk about two aspects of citations to online images.

I have seen citations that consisted of a URL only. I’m guilty of it myself (at least in my working notes). Is a URL sufficient? Consider the following two examples, taken from actual source references to the U.S. census. Neither one still works! A naked URL is insufficient because links rot.

     1.  http://www.mocavo.com/1910-United-States-Census/126211/004973415/607
     2. http://www.ancestry.com/search/io/browse.asp?c=8&state=Vermont&county=Addison&township=Bristol&ed=&roll=M33_126&STAbrv=VT&startimg=30&endimg=42&rp=42&hash=1670352374&width=2877&height=5089&levels=5&colorspace=Grayscale

The U.S. Federal census is now ubiquitously available on major genealogy websites. If you viewed it online, is it necessary to specify the one you used? Consider the following example.

     3.  1860 U.S. census, Jackson County, Ohio, population schedule, Scioto Township, p. 62; NARA microfilm publication M634, roll 992.

Depending on which website you go to, you might see this

or this

or this

.

If you don’t specify the website, others may not be able to see what you saw!

Darned image citations!

P.S. For extra credit, create complete citations for these three sources. For citation 1, cite Robert Black; for 2, cite Pearis Raymond; for 3, cite Lewis Rapp on FamilySearch.org.

FamilySearch Product Road Map by Brian Edwards – #BYUFHGC

At the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy Brian Edwards of FamilySearch presented “FamilySearch Past, Present, and Future (Product Road Map).”

FamilySearch is experimenting with a personalized home page. To try it out, go to familysearch.org/lihp-arches. To permanently use the new design, go to familysearch.org/lihp/arches/1. The page will evolve over time. We’ll show different tasks to different people. We’ll look at what you do and give you tasks that match your skill level. Another section of the home page is “Recent Ancestors.” Another section is a To-Do List that you can create.

In the new Memories Gallery you can rotate photos. And now there is a list view, launched the week before the conference. It makes it easy to see photos without event dates or event places. In the future, they will allow you to make these changes in place. Today, it jumps to the photo page.

FamilySearch would like to do video. The challenge is reviewing it for appropriateness. FamilySearch pays a company to do that for photos. We don’t know how to cost effectively review videos to prevent people from using our site as their porn cache.

The plan is to limit photos to 5,000 per person, Brian said. But we are seeing good stuff, so we aren’t yet limiting the number.

FamilySearch is always asking, “How do we engage new people in family history?” One of their attempts is Family Discovery Centers. They are trying out new things. One is a station where family members can stand in front of a camera and get a photograph of them standing at various locations around the world. Another station allows you to replace the face on a historical photo with one of your own. Another is a “Are We Related” experience similar to BYU’s Relative Finder. You’ll see some of this migrate onto the web.

The current Family Discovery Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City has a lot of expensive equipment. FamilySearch is looking at ways to package it into a smaller, less expensive set of equipment for expansion into more places.

Coming very soon is a Helper portal. The portal would help step you through the process taught by Mike Sandberg at RootsTech for helping members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints become engaged in family history and temple work.

It is now possible to send messages to the contributor of a GEDCOM in the Genealogies section, if the contributor is known. (If a person submitted a GEDCOM to Pedigree Resource File on the old website, but has never registered on the new website and claimed their old submission, the FamilySearch.org messaging system is not able to contact them.)

GEDCOMs have been added to the Genealogies section of FamilySearch.org from the Guild of One-Name Studies and from African Oral Genealogies.

FamilySearch is hoping to provide hints from more record types, even other websites.

A fairly new feature is that when you are about to change information for a person who is being watched, you are informed of the number of watchers.

Badges are relatively new. They indicate your ancestor belonged to a historical group around which FamilySearch did an email campaign. They appear along the right-side at the top of the person page.

FamilySearch decided delete person was too powerful. You can no longer delete a person unless you added the person and no one else has made changes to it.

We had built Family Tree on a system that was supposed to scale for a long time into the future, Brian said. We built a system for 10-time the traffic we were then experiencing. It ought to have lasted for decades. We since exceeded that by 20 times. We needed to build a new system that handled all that traffic. We’ve made the transition and the system is now out in the cloud. We can add servers as traffic changes. We moved all the data to a new Family Tree database. We’re still ironing out a few things. For the most part it should be pretty fast on Sunday. If you couldn’t merge before, for the most part you can merge now. With the new system we can add things that we wanted to but couldn’t because of capacity, Brian said.

FamilySearch is working on the future of the messaging system. They are looking at

• Integrating with an address book
• Allowing people to opt in to sharing more publicly
• Adding new ways for people to form communities for sharing

FamilySearch Hinting by Robert Kehrer #BYUgen #BYUFHGC

Robert Kehrer presented a session titled “Using FamilySearch Hinting” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. Robert is the senior product manager for research technologies. I’ve written previously about some of the information, which I won’t repeat here. (See “Searching for Sources at FamilySearch (Part 1)” and Part 2.) Here are some new information items:

When you make a change to someone in Family Tree, or add someone to Family Tree, it takes a little while for FamilySearch to check for new hints. Today hints are recalculated in less than 15 minutes, sometimes less than five. It is counterintuitive, but the busier the tree is, the faster the hints are recalculated. They are working on getting the latency between changes and new hints down to less than a minute, perhaps seconds. Until then, when you make changes to the tree, check back in about a quarter hour to check for new hints. When FamilySearch adds a new record collection, it works differently. About every 6 to 8 weeks they take all the records and search for new hints.

There are a couple of things Robert’s team is working on. They are reworking the SourceLinker attachment tool. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes right now to make it better and faster and easier to use. Lastly, they are looking at something that might concern some people. FamilySearch has some high quality genealogies—trees—put together in a high quality way. FamilySearch doesn’t want to represent these sources as the same quality as FamilySearch’s historical records, but at some point they will let you know when they have a hint in one of these high quality datasets.

One change under consideration is the ability to change tree data while attaching a record. The difficulty is allowing users to do this while still exposing the sources already attached to that fact.

Robert showed an example demonstrating how powerful hinting is. The name Speak was misindexed as Sipelak in a family in Missouri in 1900. The hinting system was still able to match up the record to the tree because of everything else that matched between the family in the record and the family in the tree:

(Click to enlarge) 

That’s impressive.

“FamilySearch Mobile Tree App” by Todd Powell #BYUgen #BYUFHGC

Todd Powell presented the topic, “FamilySearch Mobile Tree App” at the 2016 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy held last week in Provo, Utah. Todd is the Product manager for mobile apps at FamilySearch.

Todd assigned us homework. Our first assignment was to go install the app. Check. I’ve done that. It is supported by Android or Apple in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. Our second assignment was take something that we learned today and teach it to someone else. With this article I’m putting a check in that box also.

There are two apps, Family Tree and Memories. FamilySearch makes a new release every two weeks (with rare exceptions). New releases were made the week before the conference. New releases will be made the week after the conference. Make certain you are getting updates. They are releasing new features all the time. The version number can be found on the setup screen. [I don’t think you need to check it. At least on iOS the app prompts me when I need to update. It also shows up on the list of apps needing to be updated.]

For the year ending 31 January 2015, 2 million sources have been attached using the app, 1.2 million persons added, and 9 million photos viewed. There have been 300,000 people who have created new FamilySearch accounts. About 100,000 people use the app each week.

Todd said that using the mobile app engages young people better than using a computer. If you have the chance to work with them, have them go out four or five generations. Take 10 to 15 minutes to find a photo or story they haven’t seen before.

If you prefer a typed story over recorded audio, rather than trying to type on the little keyboard, dictate the story. Use the microphone key on the phone keyboard. If you speak slowly and clearly, the phone does a good job of converting your speech to text.

To give you ideas of questions to ask an older relative, FamilySearch will soon release a feature that has suggested questions. They have just started working on this today, for release a couple of weeks out. Tap the question and it begins an audio recording using the question as a title.

Today you can use the app to search FamilySearch records. In the future they will add the ability to search Ancestry.com.

The app doesn’t current check for or merge duplicates. They will be adding the ability to check for duplicates, but they are hesitant to add the ability to merge duplicates. They are working through ideas on how to impede bad merges before they offer merging.

On the mobile app, you can see JPEG and PNG, but not PDF. They don’t separate photos and documents.

The system will not allow the same, exact photograph file to be uploaded multiple times. But if there are differences, even if it is the same original photo, the program will let you upload a duplicate.

The “Descendants with Tasks” screen will show icon tasks for three generations of descendants of the focus person. This works for record hints and temple opportunities but does not include research suggestions or data problems.

The “Ancestors with Tasks” is the killer feature of the app. Tap and the app lists persons with tasks for your ancestors, up through five generations, plus their children and spouses. It also checks anyone you visit in the mobile app. The first time you run this report, it takes a while because it downloads the list to your device. Subsequent runs will be faster.

This week on iOS you will see a new map feature. From a person view, you tap on a map icon next to a location, such as birthplace. The map will show pins for the locations of the events associated with that person.

The mobile app has become complete enough that you can do 85% of the top 100 tasks that you do on the web. What can’t you do?

· Check dups and merge

· View the change log

· See data problems and research suggestions (they will add these)

· Multiple tabs for research (they are looking at ways to facilitate this)

· Traditional, horizontal pedigree (they won’t change this as they like what they have)

· Miscellaneous things Todd didn’t enumerate

Insider Ketchup for 1 August 2016

The BYU conference has kept me busy and there are more articles coming all this week and next. Not much time to cover regular subjects! Time to ketchup.

The Salt Lake City Family History Library is holding a weeklong, free, United States research seminar. It will be held 22-26 August 2016 and is geared for beginning and intermediate genealogists. It will cover U.S. regions and records, techniques, strategies, methodology, FamilySearch resources, Family History Library collections, FamilySearch catalog, historical records, research wiki, and more. Seating is limited to 120 attendees, but all classes will be broadcast as webinars. Remote attendees will not be able to participate in hands-on activities nor will they receive the printed syllabus. You should register whether you are attending in person or online.

To learn more and to register, visit https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Research_Seminar.

Ancestry.com has filed their SEC quarterly report. I would have liked to have read it and given you the highlights, but didn’t have the time. You can read a copy on the Ancestry corporate website.

FamilySearch has issued their “What’s New” for the month of July 2016.

• The Memories Gallery now sports a list view. I’ll say a little more about it on Thursday.
• The Family Tree person page memories tab has a separate button for attaching a memory from the Gallery.
• Once a memory is attached to a person, the person’s name will appear on the memory page as it appears in the Tree. Long ago I complained that persons in memories and persons in the Tree had separate names. You had to enter the name twice. This seems to be one step to unify the two name spaces.
• In Memories, the closely related persons view is now the default and can be sorted by first or last name.

You can read the entire article on the FamilySearch blog.

Ancestry has announced that they will hold an Ancestry Day on 23-24 September 2016 in Tacoma. On Saturday presentations will be made by experts from Ancestry. The cost is $35 plus extra if you wish to purchase a box lunch. Friday presentations will be made by experts from the Washington State Archives, Washington State Library, Legacy Washington, and the Washington State Historical Society. The cost is $15 and seating is limited to 225 people. For more information and to register, visit the event registration page.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and FamilySearch have signed an agreement to allow FamilySearch’s book collection to be discoverable via the DPLA’s website. The DPLA is like a library catalog of freely viewable online documents, books, photographs, maps, and so forth from many libraries, archives, and museums across America. They call themselves a portal rather than a catalog because they have a rich search experience that includes timeline, map, format, partner, and subject. Other partners include the New York Public Library, the National Archives, and the University of Southern California Libraries. Read the full announcement on the DPLA blog.

Ancestry tells me that a lot of work will be done on fixing RootsWeb this week. I should have a status update for you next week.

Registration is now open for RootsTech 2017 hotels. The Salt Lake Marriott Downtown at City Creek, the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel, the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, and the Radisson Hotel Salt Lake City Downtown are offering reduced rates to RootsTech conference attendees. RootsTech 2017 is 8-11 February 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Learn more on the lodging page of the RootsTech website.

Ancestry recently added new U.S. naturalization papers from 26 states. Search the citizenship and naturalization category on Ancestry.com. Read a seven page naturalization research guide from Ancestry.

I received a message from bigfootpilot@familysearch.org telling me to update the Google Chrome Extension for the FamilySearch Pilot Tool. You should update it if you are experiencing long wait times after submission.

Ancestry has acquiesced to requests from some users who dislike the auto-generated histories that appear at the top of the LifeStory pages. You can now disable the histories for everyone in an entire tree. Tree owners had objected to the auto-generated histories because they were sometimes inaccurate and reflected poorly on the owner. Read the announcement on the Ancestry blog.

FamilySearch announced in mid-June (yes, I am that behind in my news stories) “completion of the Freedmen’s Bureau Project, indexing the names of millions of African Americans collected directly following emancipation.” Nearly 19,000 volunteers indexed nearly 1.8 million names. Read the news release on the Newsroom page of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.