The New Look at https://familysearch.org

The New Look at FamilySearch.org

 

This may be the first thing you see. You can click on “See what's new” to view some of the new features. If this does not come up, you can still view it at: https://familysearch.org/whats-new/

A slide-show of rotating screens may be displayed. Clicking a link or a button will take you on to the next stage. If you just want to search, click on Search.  

 This is the new home page. As in the past, clicking FamilySearch in the upper left of any page will return you here.

de-show of rotating screens may be displayed. Clicking a link or a button will take you on to the next

On the top Menu:

Family Tree will take you to the Family Tree.

Photos will take you to the place where you can add Photos and Stories.

Search takes you to these menus choices: RECORDS GENEALOGIES CATALOG BOOKS

RECORDS is the official historical records that you can use as primary sources.

GENEALOGIES is the collection of patron-contributed genealogies.

CATALOG is the Family History Library Catalog of non-digitized records on microfilm.

BOOKS is a collection of over 40,000 digitized book that are useful for family history research.

If you are signed-in with an LDS Account you will see an additional choice: your Temple List

The menu choices at the bottom overlap those at the top.

Fan Chart is another way of viewing (and printing) the Family Tree. You can click to navigate it.

Photos takes you where you can add Photos and Stories

Family Tree is the normal view of the Family Tree

Family Records is the same as the SEARCH link

Indexing takes you to FamilySearch Indexing

Live Help takes you to where you can search for the closest Family History Center or view the FHL.

 

The Get Help link in the upper right-hand corner, brings up choices of how to get help.

What kind of help do you need?

Product Support  Get help with any of the family history tools provided by FamilySearch.

Research Assistance 
A community of researchers is ready to assist you with your questions.

Getting Started
Watch video tutorials, read step-by-step guides, and connect to other beginners.

Learning Center
A variety of free, online courses for beginners to advanced researchers. Take a course

 

At the bottom of most screens: About Blog Feedback Language

About has information about FamilySearch and a link to Products (PAF etc.)

Blog is the FamilySearch Blog with insights into its future and past

Feedback gives access to:

Self-help - This is the familiar Help Center, where you can search for answers, view training, etc.

Local Assistance - Family History Consultants in your Ward or find a nearby FamilySearch Center

Contact FamilySearch - Chat or Email or Phone

My Cases - View your previous cases here

Feedback - Report a problem or Share your ideas

Language allows you to easily switch to any of the 10 supported languages.https://familysearch.org

Helping Friends

Some friends called me to arrange to come over for some genealogy help.
They brought over their genealogy database on their laptop.
I helped Neil to recover a username and password he had forgotten.
I helped Judy to register on familysearch.org.

Then we had a bit more fun as we explored which of Judy's ancestors were in the FS Family Tree.
We found that FT had many more of her ancestors than she had in her personal database.
She asked "Is there was a way to download my additional ancestors?"
Fortunately there was at least two ways to do it. My first attempt was using my trusty AncestralQuest to sync to FS. In two attempts AQ quit twice. Hmm... I switched to "Plan B".
I used the free GetMyAncestors software from Ohanasoftware.com
It completed the download, but now I needed to join these new branches to Judy's Haltiner line on their computer.
I opened the download file in PAF, and exported the data in gedcom format.
Then I imported the gedcom file into a copy of Neil and Judy's database, and merged the duplicate records.

Mission accomplished! They were able to return home with additional genealogy.
They felt the 2.5 hours were well spent. So did I.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Genealogy In Time

This is a favorite online newsletter, partly because of the new ideas it offers.
Five Great Productivity Tools for Genealogy

Check a Name
Convert Images to Text
Decipher Partial Names
Recognize Old File Extensions
Trace Old Photographs

Take a few minutes to read it, and I don't think you will be disappointed.

The Mystery of Randolph Shewan

Over the years I have inherited a lot of old photos. In some cases I know who is in them and in some cases I do not. And then there are those where the people are identified and I still don't know how they connect to the family. Randolph Shewan falls into the latter category. I have a copy of an 1880 photograph of this handsome fellow, but who is he? His age is about right to be a younger brother or cousin of Mary Elizabeth Shewan, the first wife of my grandfather's first cousin James A. Buchanan. And the photo was passed down through the descendants of Mary Elizabeth Shewan, which indicates that there is a connection.

At familysearch.org I find him in multiple US census records as an adult. But who were his parents?

I did some more searching for Randolph Shewan, born 1861 in Utah.

This 1870 census record includes a Shewan family that seems to fit our Shewans.
Note: M.E. Shewan who is born in Pennsylvania in 1856 is probably Mary Elizabeth, who is already known to be born in that time and place, and a J.R. Shewan is shown as born in Utah in 1861, which matches Randolph's known year and place of birth.
Wm Shewan M 45y England
M E Shewan F 41y England
Eliza Shewan F 16y England
M E Shewan F 14y Pennsylvania
J R Shewan M 9y Utah
W H Shewan M 6y Utah
Annie Shewan F 2y Nevada
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MZMW-D7P

And Randolph's death certificate gives his father's name as William W Shewan, which matches the 1870 census:
name: Randolph Shewan
death date: 09 Apr 1934
death place: Seattle, King, Washington
gender: Male
race (displayed on form):
age at death: 71 years 8 months 22 days
estimated birth year: 1863
birth date:  [It calculates to 18 Jul 1862.]
birth place:
marital status: Married
spouse's name: Mary Shewan
father's name: William W. Shewan
father's birth place:
mother's name: Unknown
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N352-QSH

I also found the death of John R. Shewan, which lists his parents as John R. Shewan and Parthenia Smith.
I found the marriage record for Randolph Shewan and Porthena Smith in 1883. California, County Marriages   https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XLHY-8LF

Randolph was a widower when he married Mary Shumacher Shill on 20 Jan 1910 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JDD3-TQ6 
At that time he identified his father as William Shewan and his mother as Mary Taylor.

I think this proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Randolph Shewan (the handsome fellow in the 130 year-old handed-down family photo) is in fact a younger brother of Mary Elizabeth Shewan who married James A. Buchanan. His full name was apparently John Randoph Shewan, which matches the J R Shewan in the 1870 census, which also lists siblings I was unaware of.

Cemetery Research in Alberta and Beyond

Here are some resources I have used for cemetery research. Check nearby plots for other family members. The people in the next plot may be family members or in-laws with a different surname. Many large cemeteries have their own websites that can be especially useful. The more general sites are helpful if you do not know what cemetery someone is buried in.

When photographing grave stones, make sure the inscriptions are legible. They are more important than the design of the monument. Check the ground level of the monuments for obscured writing. Check for small secondary markers. Check the sexton records (cemetery books) for additional information. Remember that not all graves have markers. If you have a GPS, you can use it to record the location. Consider photographing the inscriptions and uploading  them to findagrave.com or billiongraves.com as a way of helping others, and maybe connecting with others who are researching the same families. 

Cemetery Finding Aids

Cemetery Finding Aids may help you find a tombstone inscription that gives the year of birth or the names of other family members.

Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid http://www.islandnet.com/ocfa

BC Cemetery Finding Aid http://www.islandnet.com/bccfa/homepage.html

Find a Grave http://www.findagrave.com is international in scope, and is one of the most frequented web sites by genealogists.

Billion Graves http://billiongraves.com This is a new international site that is gaining a lot of support.

Edmonton Cemeteries http://webproxy.edmonton.ca/external/cemeteries

David Obee's sites: www.daveobee.com and www.cangenealogy.com allows searches of cemeteries in different provinces.  http://www.cangenealogy.com/alberta.html is the Alberta page.

The “Master Name List” at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (and at AGS) lists burials in central Alberta.

Obituaries

These are a mixed bag. They usually only list deaths since 2000. Some only have obits for the current month! But if you find an obit, it may have three generations of information! You will usually find them using a search engine. A few sites I have used are:

Edmonton Journal Obituaries (since January 2002 ) http://classifieds.canada.com/edmonton/index.aspx

Saskatchwan Obituaries http://www.saskobits.com/obits.tpl

Winnipeg Free Press Obituaries http://www.passagesmb.com

Portage Daily Graphic Obituaries http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/obituaries.php

British Columbia Newspaper Obituaries http://www.bcgs.ca/BC-Newspapers-Obituaries.htm

Plan ahead. Good tips for your cemetery visit can be found many places on the internet, such as http://www.colorado-cemeteries.com/cemetery.html 

100 Top Genealogy Websites

Genealogy In Time Magazine has just published their annual 100 Top Websites list. These are the genealogy websites that are most frequently used. They also do an analysis of the trends, in particular certain large companies that are coming to dominate the field. But even among the free sites there are interesting trends.

I took advantage of the opportunity of trying out some of the free sites that I hadn't tried before. It never hurts to add a few new tools to your tool chest. Maybe give some of them a try.

100 Top Websites

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Angels Among Us

I had a frantic phone call this morning. My daughter had a flat tire on her way to church, and was stranded on the highway miles from anywhere. I grabbed a jack and X-wrench, since I didn't know whether her old car had these necessities. I also put on "grubbies" and grabbed a toque and some leather gloves.

When I reached her car, I found a burgundy-colored Dodge crewcab behind her with the hazard lights flashing. A young family had stopped to help her. The father had the car jacked up but my daughter's wheel wrench would not fit the lug nuts nor would theirs. My X-wrench worked perfectly. In 10 or 15 minutes we had the temporary spare tire installed and the shredded tire stowed in my trunk.

These nice people had made a special effort to help a stranded motorist. I hope I think of them the next time I read the parable of the good Samaritan, because they really exemplified this lesson that Jesus taught.

If you read this message and recognize yourselves, thanks again! People like you make this world a much nicer place for all of us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Starting Genealogy

My friend Michael asked me for help with the genealogy of his late wife Mary Elizabeth Sommers, who died of breast cancer at a young age. He had a sheaf of papers with genealogy from MaryBeth's mother's side of the family, the Bannon family, but almost nothing on the Sommers side of the family. The pedigree chart looked like this:

                                                                  | ???

                                       |John Sommers    |

Mary Elizabeth Sommers |                          | Hattie Mae Covey

                                       |

                                       | Norah Catherine Bannon

As I agreed to help him, I knew that the first big hurdle would be privacy laws. We had to get back to the time when records became public. Fortunately, on Ancestry.com I found a border crossing by the family in 1943 that gave the name of her paternal grandfather as Archibald Sommers, well as her father John and an uncle Douglas. (It also contained birth information and the names of a family contact for each of the parents, which would be useful in finding the right family in the census records.)

At this point Michael decided to phone his sister-in-law Joanne. She was able to confirm the names of Archibald Leroy Sommers and of John's brother; and that Hattie Mae Covey was born in Indian Harbour, Nova Scotia, where there was a family cemetery. She said that Hattie Mae's ancestors included United Empire Loyalists.

In FamilySearch I found the ancestors of Norah Catherine Bannon going back several generations. But the Sommers family seemed like a dead end. In the censuses I found Hattie Mae listed as “May”, and listed with her parents. When I looked for her mother Annie Grace Fader, I hit a goldmine in RootsWeb. It gave Hattie Mae's name as Edna Mae, but with the right parents, birth date and parents. Annie Grace Fader's ancestors are listed in RootsWeb for 7 generations.

Further research found death records for some of the family in British Columbia as well as birth records in Nova Scotia, and marriage records that filled in some gaps.

I had lots of information to share with Michael, and he was really happy about our success. This is information he can share with his children and other family members.

Why Genealogy Is Important

I subscribe to various newsletters and blogs on genealogy. One of my favorites is "Genealogy in Time". It is an excellent place to find out about the latest sets of records made available on the internet. But it sometimes goes beyond this. I enjoyed this article. I think you may enjoy it too. Just click the link below the box. 

This article examines why genealogy is important. It discusses the practical and philosophical reasons as to what motivates people to spend time researching their roots.

http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/why_genealogy_is_important_page1.html?awt_l=KMu5_&awt_m=Ihg8vEIYcQk.Vy