Family History and Indexing

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Saturday, November 14, 2015

Fallen Leaves

Autumn in the Pocono's taken by Bob Woolley

November brings Fallen Leaves and Turkeys!

Along with a memorial Veteran's Day, this month brings us lots of changing weather, whirling leaves and that big food day when we celebrate and give thanks for our Pilgrim ancestors;Thanksgiving Day. 

Why do we have so much food on the table when our families come home that Thursday to help us celebrate. I feel it is because we, following in the Pilgrim's footsteps, are thankful that we have family and that we have had a year of bountiful blessings, no matter how big or small they have been. We  want to gather our family members together to give thanks to the Lord for these blessings.

Some of my warmest memories of Thanksgiving are having all of my sisters (4) bring their families home. We shared  some wonderful fellowship and memories as a family, thankful for each other and our parents. Some of us this year may not have that opportunity to be with our family, but we can still be thankful for Heavenly Father and His Son, for watching over us this past year.

Since my release as the Stake Indexing Director in Oklahoma City Stake, I have fallen down on my time that I spend on Indexing. It appears that many others have taken a break also. That is ok, but I plan to re-dedicate more time to this wonderful service to the Lord.  I would also like to continue this blog to post some wonderful ideas about Family History work and of course some indexing tips. 




Freedman's Bureau Project

Some of you may have wondered what was going on with the Freedman's Bureau Project. This is an indexing project which the African American community has been invited to index, through efforts made by the Church Public Relations Committee and Salt Lake City. Indexers who know how to index these records could volunteer to help train the african american community members so they can get started indexing. For more information on this please contact Jan Larsen, Public Relations Director for our Stake.

This project includes records that were generated after the Civil War and marks the first time that there are documented records of the slaves that were emancipated. When the Civil War was over depression and poverty levels were very high in the south, not just for the freed slaves but for many white people too, whose names may appear in these records as well.

There are different types of records in this project which  include employment contracts, food records, marriage and school records, just to name a few.  Although we have been asked not to index the records ourselves, we should become familiar with them and how to do the indexing for them. On November 8th there was a open house event at the Stake Center to which over 150 people were invited and several of our Indexers were there to help. I understand that in January there will be a big Indexing event for this specific purpose. When details are available I will let you know when and where.


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