By: Julie Cabitto

2 halves of familysearch.org: 1. Tree2. Records (from indexing)

(Note: only 3.5% records on familysearch .orgindexed. Record hints are made available from finished indexing projects)

Newer ways of thinking about genealogy and family history:

Think database searching.

Think filters and fields

Think attaching your sources to back up your statements

Think attaching pictures, stories & audio to preserve your ancestors memories

Old way:

Julie’s tree Julie’s mom’s tree Julie’s dad’s tree

Julie’s maternal grandmothers tree

Julie’s paternal grandfather’s tree…..

Your tree

1My branch of the tree.

Ron Tanner who was (& is) a head developer for Familysearch found that 80% of genealogy research

was duplicate efforts. By working together on one tree, we save a

lot of time and effort.

Familysearch.org is 2 years old!

• Feb 2011 a pilot version was released for beta testing, and for feedback.

• March 2013 was the public release.

Some 2014 statistics that Ron Tanner gave in a RootsTech presentation last month:

• They do updates 3 times a day.

• approximately 2.5 million new persons added to the tree every month

• approximately 2.6 million conclusions that are changed/written every month

• 4.5 million sources added to the tree each month

• 1.1 billion persons in the tree with 89 million sources

• In a year we've gone from 12 million to 89 million sources!

Step one:

Set up an LDS account

or a

familysearch account

There are two sets of rules:1)One for living (privacy laws) 2)One for deceased.

Add living parents & grand parents in for placeholders.

(Disclaimer Note: This relative of mine is actually deceased. )

Traditional Pedigree view on Familysearch.org

Portrait view & phone app view

Descendancy view

Soon to be released view:

landscaping view!

Left click on a name. A pop up box for that person will appear. Click on the word “person”. You will see an individual screen for that person.

Middle of page is all the stuff that used to be on family group sheets.

The right column is stuff you can do with the individual : search, history, hints etc.

Watch list

Click on the date

Note I did an edit to the place name, & gave a reason.

Portrait Pedigree chart example

Coming soon: Anonymous contact information message system. When you log in, you’ll see a message waiting for you. Will look something like this: