-----Weekly Newsletter-----                                           18 March, 2015 - Vol 16, Issue 11
In This Issue
Announcements
Youth and Family History
Questions/Answers
Favorite Websites
Family History Consultants
Bulletin Thought
Remember...
Upcoming Classes
Join Our Mailing List!
Quick Links
 
Please help make this newsletter a success by submitting your Family History questions, tips, favorite websites, surname queries, quotes and stories to share with others.  Submit.

 

Announcements
The Logan FamilySearch Library will be closed Thursday, April 2 and Friday, April 3 for installation of new computers and server.  We will also be closed Saturday, April 4 for General Conference.  Normal operations will resume Monday, April 6 at 9:30 am.

Upcoming Stake Discovery Days

Cache West Stake Family History Fair
825 North 200 West 
March 21 with a special Youth Pagent 
Night March 20

Smithfield South Stake Discovery Day
451 South 250 East
Smithfield, Utah
Saturday April 25 from 1:00 pm  - 4:30 pm



 Whats New in Family Search?

First Look at the FamilySearch Family Tree New Interface 

What to my wondering eyes should appear but the new interface for the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. They must be up to 10% or something with the release. Perhaps they just decided to speed up the process of adding new people to the new interface.

I really like it a lot more than the previous one. It is a lot more inviting. I also like having the icons previously only on the Descendancy View available on what is now called the Landscape View. We are definitely moving away from Traditional in a good way.  See screen captures here.

Help Desk
Question: 
15MB Audio file size too small 
I have seen many people referring to an audio file with interviews from older relatives. I have one too, it is about 1 1/2 hour. The mp3 file is 140MB size. If the familySearch limits the size to a 15MB, that cause a problem. I would hate to have to split my file into 15 pieces. 

Answer: 
I took a sample audio file and exported it with various settings. 320 Kbps is actually really high, even for high fidelity music recordings. Audio files for the purpose of genealogy are frequently voice which has a very narrow and low frequency range. 

The quality down to about 16K bps is acceptably good. Below 12K gets pretty choppy. If you exported that entire 45 minute as 16K bps mp3 it (under 7meg file size) would easily fit in the current limit. The next question is who would listen to 45 minutes, maybe add some notes about relevant bookmarks in the audio.
Joe Martel FamilySearch

Favorite Websites

Why Should I Prove It?

In "The Step Before We Search For Cousins," I mentioned that before we tell people to look for cousins  they need to be told "Prove It." Now, I don't mean to be critical of anyone's campaign to involve more folks into family history and genealogy. I also think there is truth to the desire for some 'old guard' genealogist to keep shoddy work to a minimum.  
I attempted to point out that without sources, your family tree is fiction and should simply have the name of your favorite fictional character as a relative. I want to stress the "Why" of the emphasis on proof a little more. 
Click to find how to establish the accuracy of the tree.

That Online Tree is NOT a Source!

A source is a record of the event, documented at the time of the event with information given by a witness to the event.

Generally the source is a document: a birth certificate, a marriage record, a death registration, a baptism roll, census record, tax roll, military record. These are all records of events that were documented at the time of the event and the information was provided by someone who was witness to the event, sometimes the person themselves. City directories, voters rolls, school records, cemetery or funeral home records are also considered to be sources. They, too, were documented at the time of the event by someone who was witness to the event. Headstones are in a gray area since they are usually placed after the fact. Although for the sake of citation, I will even give you them as a source.

I'll tell you what is NOT a source: Someone else's research. Someone else's tree. Someone else's educated guess or deductive reasoning. Neither is information received in an e-mail, from a message board, mailing list or Facebook group.  Read the complete account here.


 How and Why to Use Genealogy Gophers

Genealogy Gophers is a new (FREE!) site developed by Dallan Quass, the mastermind behind WeRelate.org.

The site searches 40,000 genealogy books that have been digitized by FamilySearch. Most are books that were published prior to 1923. They range from county histories to city directories to family histories. There's a little bit of everything.  Learn how to use it-click here.


Coverage Maps
FamilySearch has done some amazing maps showing coverage of some of the U.S. county marriage record collections. Check out a map of California showing coverage of FamilySearch marriage records. There is also a link to this map in the FamilySearcg wiki. From there there appears to be a home page of the maps.  Only a few states are done.  This site is well worth looking at.

Miss RootsTech 2015?
Did you wish you could go to Rootstech 2015 and see the great presentations?  Thank goodness )and Rootstech) for allowing us to see some of them online at: http://www.rootstech.org/video4050134760001.
and there is a link to the handouts in the syllabus: 
 https://rootstech.org/About/syllabus?lang=eng


 

Family History Consultants
Family History Service

Here is a great quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley in the March 1995 Ensign. The article is titled A Century of Family History Service.

There is nothing else to compare with this treasury of family history on the face of the whole earth. I feel the Lord has designed that it should be so. This is his church which carries his name, and one of its purposes is to make available to the millions beyond the veil of death the full blessings that lead to eternal life.

There are millions across the world who are working on family history records. Why? Why are they doing it? I believe it is because they have been touched by the spirit of this work, a thing which we call the spirit of Elijah. It is a turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers. Most of them do not understand any real purpose in this, other than perhaps a strong and motivating curiosity.

There has to be a purpose in this tremendous expenditure of time and money. That purpose, of which we bear solemn witness, is to identify the generations of the dead so that ordinances may be performed in their behalf for their eternal and everlasting blessing and progress.

The real fruit of this identification finds expression only in the House of the Lord, the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And as the work of family history research goes on and grows, there is a concomitant flowering of temples. More temples have been constructed and dedicated in the last dozen years than were constructed and dedicated in all the prior history of the Church. This is the great season of temple building and temple activity. The beautiful temple in Orlando, Florida, was recently dedicated. A wonderful new building on the high bench overlooking Bountiful, Utah, will be dedicated in January. A dozen more are in some stage of development.

I am confident that the Lord will permit us and direct us to go on building these sacred structures as we become worthy of them. Our important test of that worthiness will lie in doing the research that becomes the foundation for the major work to be carried on in them.

The work of the Lord is a work of salvation. For whom? Through the grace of our Eternal Father and without any effort on the part of the beneficiaries, the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God has made it possible for all to rise from the dead. And beyond this, by virtue of that divine sacrifice and through his limitless grace and goodness, opportunities for eternal life may be opened to all through personal or vicarious service.

That which goes on in the House of the Lord, and which must be preceded by research, comes nearer to the spirit of the sacrifice of the Lord than any other activity of which I know. Why? Because it is done by those who give freely of time and substance, without any expectation of thanks or reward, to do for others that which they cannot do for themselves.


Suggestion for Weekly Bulletin Thought

"I am the last leaf on the tree, and the wind is blowing." 
 

 Gordon B. Hinckley 

 

 

 

Remember...

The power of determination (true story) 

The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned, pot-bellied coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to school early each day to start the fire and warm the room before his teacher and his classmates arrived.

One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames. They dragged the unconscious little boy out of the flaming building more dead than alive. He had major burns over the lower half of his body and was taken to a nearby county hospital.

From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy faintly heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother that her son would surely die - which was for the best, really - for the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body.

But the brave boy didn't want to die. He made up his mind that he would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did survive. When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the doctor and his mother speaking quietly. The mother was told that since the fire had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body, it would almost be better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a lifetime cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.

Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not be a cripple. He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.

Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day his mother would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control, nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as ever.

When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. He pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him.

He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot. With great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake by stake, he began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that he would walk. He started to do this every day until he wore a smooth path all around the yard beside the fence. There was nothing he wanted more than to develop life in those legs.

Ultimately through his daily massages, his iron persistence and his resolute determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then to walk haltingly, then to walk by himself - and then - to run.

He began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the sheer joy of running. Later in college he made the track team.

Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run - this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world's fastest mile.

 

Upcoming Classes

Logan FamilySearch Library Class Schedule

Winter Term

Register online at loganfsl.org or call (435) 755-5594 

 

DateTitleTeacher# wksTime
Thu, Mar 19Computer BasicsStacie Gomm1 wk5 pm
Thu, Mar 19Family Tree (taught in Spanish)Joe / Martha Thurston1 wk7 pm
Fri, Mar 20Family History Consultant WorkshopDedee Dalebout1 wk1-4 pm
Sat, Mar 21BSA Genealogy WorkshopIrene Burton1 wk10 am
Sat, Mar 21Why You Need a Program in Addition to Family TreeGale Bartholomew1 wk1 pm
Mon, Mar 23Family History ResearchBob Curry1 wk10 am
Mon, Mar 23Are You Climbing the Wrong Tree?John Burton2 wk1 pm
Mon, Mar 23Indexing ArbitrationVon Taylor1 wk3 pm
Tue, Mar 24Introduction to Online Danish RecordsIrene Burton1 wk1 pm
Wed, Mar 25Descendancy ResearchDedee Dalebout1 wk5 pm
Wed, Mar 25Learn How to Merge Records in Family TreeWade Nicholas1 wk7 pm
Thu, Mar 26Family History Research MethodsMartin Peterson1 wk5 pm
Thu, Mar 26Family History Consultant WorkshopWade Nicholas1 wk6-9 pm
Mon, Mar 30Indexing ObituariesVon Taylor1 wk10 am
Mon, Mar 30My HeritageYvonne Curry1 wk3 pm

 

Sincerely,

 

Billy K. Jones
Director of Training
Logan Utah FamilySearch Library

Phone: (435) 755-5594

 


Logan Utah FamilySearch Library | 50 North Main (lower level) | PO Box 3397 | Logan | UT | 84321