Classes help chart personal history
Learn how to sleuth for genealogy records going back decades at a workshop Saturday in Otis Orchards.
The 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. session, “Find Your Family,” is free and open to the public at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 21022 E. Wellesley Ave.
Nearly 50 volunteers will teach how to search online for public documents and ways to preserve family memories. Some class titles include Effective Database Search Tactics, Five Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep, and Connecting Generations through the Power of Story.
After the 9 a.m. introduction, attendees can choose from among 18 class topics, or they can drop in at any time during the day for individual help and visit part of the sessions. People can register online at Giftoffindyourfamily.com, but signing up isn’t required, said Joyce Hanson, an event organizer.
“We know the power of connecting, that we want to know about our ancestry, where we came from, how to pass this on to our children,” Hanson said. “This is one of the first times, I think, of just opening this to the community and saying, ‘This is how you get started.’ ”
“If people want to bring in documents, or any information on birth and marriage dates, they can. They don’t have to. People can even bring their own laptops.”
LDS family history consultants will be available to help people with ancestry research on a one-on-one basis, using about 20 computers set up onsite, Hanson said. Some of the consultants plan to dress in period costumes based on their family heritage. Historical artifacts also will be on display, she said.
The LDS church has long offered to assist people with genealogy research at no charge – whether members or not – at family history research centers worldwide, including six in the Spokane-North Idaho area. The church also offers a free public ancestry website, Familysearch.org.
The Familysearch website has more than 2 billion digital images, including census and marriage records. Hanson and her husband, Steve, have researched the history of their families, saving online archives on Familysearch for relatives to share, such as daily journal entries written for years by Steve’s mother.
“The church has records preserved on microfiche or microfilm – literally billions of names in a huge repository,” said Steve Hanson, while adding that a large number of those archived records are now available as digital images online.
“We have 3,000 or more family history centers across the world, but with Familysearch, what they’re doing is moving the family history center into people’s homes,” he said. “It’s so much more of a thrill when you do it yourself.”
He said people naturally are drawn to knowing past generations.
“We believe families are meant to be eternal,” he said.
One workshop class covers an introduction to Familysearch, and attendees also will learn about gaining access to other websites for genealogy research, including Ancestry.com, Findmypast.com, and MyHeritage.com.
Workshop participants will receive a “My Family History” folder with a family tree chart and other handouts as a starter kit.
A complete list of classes can be found at www.giftoffindyourfamily.com. Information on the six regional family history centers also can be found under “other resources” at the same website.