Now Is the Time to Start Getting Ready for October Family History Month

By Jack and Sylvia Sonneborn, York, Pennsylvania

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NOW IS THE TIME TO START GETTING READY FOR OCTOBER – FAMILY HISTORY MONTH

Someone on the family history consultant chat line that we belong to asked for some ideas on things to do to advertise family history in her ward. This is a problem in all wards, I think. It is difficult to get members and leaders interested. There is so much they could be doing for their ancestors, but they just can’t seem to get started. Here are some suggestions Sylvia gave to the inquiry:

1.  My husband and I started a ward newsletter. We include much of your advice (often condensed) from two family history consultant chat lines with your names, of course, plus we put in quotes from authorities, instructions on how to use nFS (maybe highlighting duplicates or some other area), Church FH releases from Family Search, Alan Jones' handout on how to use nFS, lists of good places to look for FH on the Internet, information on indexing, a column about our "miracles" that month, excerpts from Ensign talks on FH with a reference of how to read the whole article, news from other blogs we read with directions on how to get there to read it all, etc. We have a reciprocal agreement with "Lida's Tips" to borrow from each other's news too. Our newsletter has gotten to be so popular that other wards in our stake and other places have asked us for copies, and a friend from Utah has been posting it for us online. Some people delete it and others remark about reading it from cover to cover. I think it continues to remind and inspire many.

2.  We also put notices in the bulletin, and my husband did a FH quiz and put it into the bulletin and in our newsletter with a reward for the winner. People were to answer it and return it to us, and the person pulled from all those with correct answers would get a prize. The prize could be a binder with 50 plastic pockets with hopefully a "My Genealogy" intent. We actually gave an accordion coupon holder for temple ordinance cards.

3.  You could also print business cards with your names as FH consultants and an invitation, phone number for the FH center, and hours of operation (use both sides) and have those available beside the bulletins as well as your own displays. We printed up one and then put a sticky label on the back for each individual consultant with phone number.

4.  I also bought a tri-fold poster board with foam in the center and made a pedigree chart from my PAF and glued it with rubber cement along with scanned photos.

5.  We asked to speak in sacrament meeting, and I brought the pedigree chart along, and my husband told them that my 5th great grandfather had died, and they propped him up, put a top hat on him, and took his one and only photograph. Everyone went into the foyer to see Samuel Krise! You can see him on either deadfred.org ; familyoldphotos.com.

6.  August has a 5th Sunday. Ask to be the presenter on "Going to the Temple" and show how easy it is to get a name ready for the temple on nFS, and then plan an October baptism trip for adults to do those family members close to them who have been waiting.

7.  I also teach a FH class throughout the year and will try to be sure one occurs in October.

8.  I also do an enrichment for ladies on family history in the fall, usually in September, to help with a ward goal. Our bishop sets ward goals, and he has 2 that apply to FH - Go to the temple one more time than you did last year and take at least one family name to the temple.

9.  We set a RS and a high priest trip for those goals, and October would be a good goal month.

10.  Last year we went to a young women sleepover and taught the young women how to index with the culmination in October for them to report and get a charm on their bracelets. Some of the young women have continued to index.

11.  Ask the youth president for time to present nFS to the more mature young men and young women during that month if you have a FHC with computers.

12.  Print out a list of all the important URL's that a person needs in order to do FH, including lds.org, familysearch, new FS, indexing, and other sites that would be helpful. Print it on cardstock and hand out when you speak or put it on the foyer table.

13.  Display the photo "We Are Waiting" that is in an earlier issue.

14.  The Crash Course: LDS Family History is excellent for getting some good quotes to post.

15.  If nothing else, ask the RS President if you can do one side of the monthly newsletter, or if you have a ward newsletter (which we don't), devote a column to family history.

16.  Pray for inspiration.

And Karen has added the following:

17.  Are there early cemeteries in your area that need to be cleaned up, or need to have the grave markers transcribed? I know that in Europe, they often take the markers down and rebury people there about 50 years later, but in Canada & the US, it isn't the case as a rule...although weather makes nasty inroads into the legibility of the markers depending on what they were carved out of. Check with your local genealogy society; it might have a project that the directors would love to get some people helping on. (There's never enough time & help for all that could be done in these volunteer organizations.)

18.  What about indexing obits from an early area newspaper? Those can take precious time, but what a help to have a reference to where they might be located on a microfilm.

19.  How about collecting area high school or college year books and making the collection available through your public library? (Some have a good collection already, but not all of them do.)

20.  In our local Genealogy Society, we encourage members to get involved in a service blitz to make more area records available for people to use. We sometimes get two or three hundred hours of service, which is remarkable given the number of people who participate. Perhaps bring in laptops and have people participate in Family Search Indexing in your building. If WiFi isn't available, someone can download different projects and put them on various laptops so that people can still participate; then they can be uploaded to the web site when they're done.

21.  Encourage people to make an effort to celebrate Family History Month by taking an ancestor's name to the Temple. For some, that would take some serious effort, but family names are always more meaningful than a stranger's name.

It really is not too early to make a plan to engage your ward members in doing FH.

CHURCH NEWS ONLINE FEATURES YORK PA STAKE AUTISM PROJECT

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/57539/At-girls-camp-shedding-light-on-autism.html

FAMILY SEARCH AND FAMILY TREE CHANGES

For those of you who are teaching classes on new FamilySearch and Family Tree, you should be aware of changes that are in the works. I have been participating in an "alpha test" which is to be followed by two more beta tests before the release of the August 2009 version of new FamilySearch. There is a description of the new features in a link from the beta home page. The following paragraphs appear in this description.

"Many of the best Family Tree project features are being added to the new FamilySearch Web site. The first feature is the temple list.

"More features, such as the pedigree, will also be added to the new FamilySearch Web site in a future release. "Thank you to all of those who have helped to make these features great.

"The Family Tree project will soon be removed from labs, but please continue to check back on labs for a peek on future features for the new FamilySearch Web site.

"You can continue to use the Family Tree project; click here to see it at http://labs.familysearch.org/ until it is removed. Use your sign-in name and password for the new FamilySearch Web site to sign in."

Nancy Jane Lewis

THINGS TO FIX IN NFS

There is an issue when you make corrections in the Details page. When you make a location correction and then select the standardized location, if the original location (that you corrected) had the same standard location, the program will not change the original location. (I hope that is clear).
Your corrected entry will not show up in the Summary page as a selection. But if you go back to the Details page, your correction should be there. There is a way that you can "force" the program to accept your correction.
When you make a correction in the Details page, do not select a standard location (the locations in the drop down menu; just click Done. Your correction will be there. However, if you go back to the Edit on the location in the Details page, you will see a red flag warning stating that you did not select a standard location. If you can live with the red flags (you will only see them when you edit a location), that is the way you can get your location corrected. I asked about this issue a couple of months
ago and was told it is a "Known Issue." Too bad they can't get rid of the known issues - maybe in time.

There is another annoying issue concerning editing sources. There are many names that my parents contributed, for which I have claimed. In those names, when I enter a source, if I want to go back and edit the information, the program will not allow me to edit my own entries. I have to add another
source with the corrected source information. This, sometimes, creates conflicting source information. Just another Known Issue to fix. Keep working on your files; some day it will work fine.

Len Ingermanson

In Elder Boyd K. Packer's book "The Holy Temple", page 263:

"Not long before President McKay died, he spoke to the General Authorities in the Temple meeting just prior to a general conference. He talked of the temple ordinances and quoted at length from the ceremonies. He explained them to us. (That was not inappropriate, considering that we were in the temple.) After he had spoken for some time, he paused and stood gazing up to the ceiling in deep thought.

I remember that his big hands were in front of him with his fingers interlocked. He stood gazing as people sometimes do when pondering a deep question. Then he spoke: "Brethren, I think I am finally beginning to understand."

Contributed by Becky Jamison

DECLARING LEGACY TO YOUR OLD WORK OR DECEASED FAMILY MEMBER’S WORK

If you contributed records to Ancestral File or the Pedigree Resource File (like your four-generation sheet), you should declare legacy to that old work in New Family Search.When you run across your contribution, click on EDIT, and there is opportunity to declare legacy. When you do that, you will receive a letter that looks like this:

“This is an automated response to your recent request to claim a legacy contribution. New FamilySearch provides an opportunity to claim ownership of information that was previously submitted to Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, and temple submissions made prior to the release of New Family Search.

Your request for contributions with the Contributor ID "slhsonneborn4464772" has been granted.

The New FamilySearch records affected by this notice have already been updated and have your new registration ID as contributor. You should now be able to edit those records.

Thank you for using New FamilySearch. We wish you success and satisfaction in your personal family history efforts.

Sincerely,

FamilySearch Support”

You can see by the letter that it is required that you declare legacy for your old work submitted. I also suggest that if your parent or sister/brother has submitted information but has died, you should claim legacy to that information too so that you can make changes in the work. A child of a parent has precedence in declaring work for his parent, but if no one is interested, you should lay claim to that work also so that you can make corrections.

It is also not a good idea for a couple to keep one file. Married couples should keep separate files so that if one dies, the other still can makes changes to his or her own family using his legitimate password.

WHAT CAMERA SHOULD I USE TO DO FAMILY HISTORY?

Some of the newer "pocket cameras" are pretty versatile. This month's
Consumer Reports has a pretty good set of reviews for digitals; you should
check it out (many public libraries carry a subscription). Their top pick
for under $150 was the Canon
Powershot<http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=183&modelid=16336>.
It has an image stabilizer and a manual focus mode, which comes in handy
when you're photographing from a film/fiche reader.