Sourcefull Saturday

Taken from the Kentucky Genealogical Society Website 2013

This week I woke up with a vivid "dream" that I needed to go into a family group sheet and fix all the birth dates of the children. I had no idea who's family that might be and I was telling my husband how strongly I felt about this kind of message.  So I got up, it was just 5:30 am, with the intention that this would be my sewing day, but ended up spending the whole day working on the family group sheet of Peter Seldon Transue, my mother's side of the family.

It seems that in my MyHeritage program I was looking at some "Record Matches" for Peter the night before, and I decided to see what I had done on his family. Maybe this was the family, I wasn't sure.  I discovered that I had only one child listed in Peter's family. That seemed strange, so upon opening another window and looking at my tree in  FamilySearch (FS), sure enough, I discovered that someone had added 9 children to Peter's family. The next thing I had to do was prove that these 9 children were really the children of Peter S Transue.

Thanks to "Record Search", found on the left side of a person's profile page in FS Tree, I easily located several census records that showed 7 of these children. With just a click of my mouse I added those records as SOURCES to my tree and corrected the birth dates. (Amazingly all of the children I had found in the FS tree had the wrong birth dates!!) In the 1910 U.S Census, it was reported that 9 children had been born, but only 7 were living. While I could only prove that 7 of the children belonged to this family the FS program allowed me to prepare 7 more names to take to the Temple. For the remaining children I posted a discussion note about having proof of the birth dates, opening up collaboration with the submitter.

 I know that the Spirit of Elijah was speaking to me through my dream. I listened to those promptings, and I also know that Peter S Transue wants his family sealed together forever. I am so glad to be able to do this work and must add here that all of this is possible because of the work you have been doing by indexing and arbitrating. YOU are making these records available to researchers like me. And thankfully, through the efforts of FamilySearch  hundreds of thousands of records are added every week. To all, keep up the good work!

Free Ancestry.com subscription for Schools

Pocono Township School, Tannersville, PA grades 1-12 taken between 1925 - 1930
original photo scanned from private collection by Lois Gilbert 2007

Ancestry.com has a Classroom Learning Grant that provides three month's free access to Ancestry.com's subscription for schools. If you know any teachers please tell them about this offer. Lesson plans are available to help teachers and they contain the follow topics:

• 1940 Census Lesson
• The Census and the Constitution
• The Census and the Depression
• Autobiography
• Biography
• Immigration over Time
• Civil War
• Military Lesson
• Personal Side of War ( American Revolutionary War)
• War of 1812
• WWI
• Battles (WWII)
• Local History is Your Community History
• Historical Crime
• Haunted House
• Suffrage Movement
• Trail of Tears Lesson
• How Life Influences Art
• African American Congressmen Lesson

Kim Harrison of  the Ancestry Library Team said that  "We provide lesson plans to help you integrate historical records into the classroom and teach students how to manage research projects, approach critical thinking and gain communication skills for life".
To apply write to :

http://ancestrylibrary@ancestry.com  

They will give you some more information and a grant application.

FamilySearch.org and MyHeritage.com make New Contract

FamilySearch recently entered into a new contract with MyHeritage.com which will give MyHeritage access to over 2 million records now held by FamilySearch. In return MyHeritage is going to give FamilySearch the technology of their very popular "Record Matching" and "Smart Matching" features.

Brother Dennis Brimhall of FamilySearch indicated that while MyHeritage is a paid subscription this new contract will give  access to records to people who may have never been able to see them. These records will still be available for free to all users of FamilySearch and we will be seeing more improvements with the search features. 

To me this is a win-win deal. I feel that the Church is preparing for the millennial by giving access to their records to the world, and by speeding up FamilySearch programs. We should keep in mind that some state and local genealogy groups do not make their records available for free and so companies like MyHeritage and Ancestry pay for those records. The Church does not always have that privilege.