The Ancestry Insider

The ancestry Insider is a publication that I signed up for when I joined ancestry.com.  They have been doing write-ups lately of the new Family Search website.  http://www.familysearch.org is available to the public for research and access is free.  However, the http://www.new.familysearch.org, previuosly available only to lds members, will soon be available to the public.  According to the Rootsmagic webinars, they need to update their servers or something like that to be able to handle the huge amount of traffic they are anticipating.

Familysearch and ancestry.com have been working together so that we can have access to many records.  Without paying anything, we all have access to search for ancestors on either site.  However, one needs to join ancestry.com to be able to download actual documents.  If they have been digitized, some of the information (but not all) can be seen.

 

Rootsmagic, which is the genealogy software that I use, works hand in hand with familysearch as well.  There may be information on familysearch to add into the family tree.  It is good to have some form of software.  Personal Ancestral File is free and can be downloaded from http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/

Most of the genealogy software sells for around 30 dollars – one-time charge that includes updates and familysearch has a list of ones that work with their software. Whichever your choose, it is a good idea to have something on your computer – not just on ancestry.com or other online family tree sites because then it is saved if the site goes down or your computer blows a gasket from all that searching your ancestors activity. See you next time.