First Five Steps

Hey Family,

I got some feedback from Sally and Carmen, and I wanted to post what I thought would be the good first 5 steps to starting family history research. Here goes.

1) Sign on to http://new.familysearch.org and sign-up for an account. You need the same information as when you sign up for your Church website account (membership record number, confirmation date). Go to your ward membership clerk or look on your temple recommend if you don't know your record number. The ward clerk is the best source for your confirmation date.

2) Sign-in and go through the tutorial. It is very basic and straightforward. I watched it a couple of times just to make sure I understood the basic concepts.

3) On your homepage once you sign in, click on  the button "Me and My Ancestors." Your name and any information the Church already has connected to you will pop up.

4) If you don't have any information showing, start entering information for your parents and then grandparents. Remember, this database contains information for people who have died. I had to enter information back until I hit on of my grandparents who had passed away, and then my family tree populated itself back to the 1500s in some lines.

5) Now just start browsing. Don't hesitate to click on buttons. You won't break anything. Working with this program only gets easier as you practice with it. If you have questions about combining duplicate individuals, give someone a call (eg, the New Family Search people, me, Dad, etc). The benefit of this program is that overtime we will have a basically unlimited number of editors working on the same family tree which will expedite the work and prevent duplicate ordinances in the future as has occurred often in the past.

And for posterity. Here's Mom and Dad at the Aspen Grove Talent Show. ENJOY!

Just in Case You're Going to the Temple Soon...

**READ THE POST BELOW THIS BEFORE THIS ONE SO IT MAKES SENSE** ;)

Here is a list of the ordinances I have waiting to be done in my New Family Search account. If you call me, I'll give you my name and password so you can print a few out for your family temple outings.

1) The Graham Family (Aunt Anna Davidson's children)
Leona, Stella, William R., Jesse, and Lizzie May

2) Martha Davidson (our great-great-great-grandfather's sister who has never had her work done...the last of her siblings!)

3) Sarah Barnes

4) John Demorest & Catherine Beemon Brink and their children:
Thomas Edison, Albert, Ethel Leona, Merrick Albert, Ormand Elsmere, & Carmel Leland

5) William Hefflin

6) Fergus M Trimble Graham and his wife Huldah

7) John W. and Nancy Whitely (our great-great-uncle and his wife...his sister was Thaddeus Constantine's wife)

That's the work I've put together so far. I haven't even entered and checked the 38 names I found the other day. This is it.

There is a lot of checking a combining information in the New Family Search database, but it was designed for that very purpose. Justin explained to me that once you get on and start connecting information between other people's lines, every time you make an update, everyone your connected to gets updated as well. So, no need to worry about duplicating each others work. There are not a million different family trees floating around the church database. There are fewer and fewer each day as members connect to each others' lines. Basically, Dad and I see the exact same thing when we log into our separate accounts now because when I started I entered info that connected me to him immediately. It's so easy!!

Call me for explanations and names when you're heading off to do temple work. I love y'all!

SUCCESS!!!

Hey Family!! I can't begin to tell you the excitement I've been experiencing over the past few days!! If you read our blog, you'll know that I'm at home with the flu. However, that has turned out to be a blessing for more than just Sally (she has made it known that she is very grateful for the flu because I have an obligatory minimum 5 days off from work to recover...sounds nice if you ignore the body aches, fevers, congestion, vertigo (only 3 days of that...thankfully it's over). Thanks, Amber, for giving me a place to sleep when I was stuck across town!!).

Alright, so here is the blessing part. I finally got the time I needed to set up my Ancestory.com account and to start looking for names. WOW, is all I can really say. I have found TWENTY people in our extended family from the 1800s (early to late) and some born in the late 1700s who I have confirmed do not have ordinances done. 20!!!! I've done that truly in a matter of hours. Within one hour the first night I was working with it I found a couple and their children. It's crazy.

Here is my plug for Ancestory.com. It has everything you can imagine from birth and death records to census records to immigration files. It has more than any other database out there. All the old Microfiche information is also being digitalized and will soon be available online so no need to go to family history centers with all your children in tow. This can all be done from your couch or computer desk.

Oh yeah, and there are pictures. Here are a couple I found:

You don't recognize the names, but they are from our lateral lines. These were the grandparents to Thaddeus Constantine Davidson's cousins through his aunt Anna Davidson. Maybe great-grandparents. :) There aren't pictures for everybody, but there will be a ton more for our family on there once Dad and I get them uploaded from his two boxes of pictures I've had stored away for the past 3 years. Isn't this incredible! You may not get pumped up about it until you use it.

There is a 14-day FREE trial on Ancestory.com that everyone of us should take advantage of. Then it costs $12.50/month. About $150/year. I think we can also share accounts to some extent by making other family members authors on our accounts (this is according to Justin Paul who is currently my go to man for New Family Search info because a member in his ward does the programming for it for his job...oh yeah, and that man uses New Family Search and Ancestory.com for his own family history work. Those are his two programs of choice.) I don't feel like it would be honest to have all of us on one account, but I do think sharing accounts between 2 or 3 users seems appropriate. We could also contact Ancestory.com and ask them about it.

On top of that, I've been through Dad and Mom's genealogist's packets (only the last 2 of probably about 20) and in those two packets I found 38 names of people Preston Owens had given us information about but had not had time to document for our immediate use. 38 people! I also have a great document he found on our great-great-great(?)-grandfather, Thaddeus Constantine Davidson, from the book, Progressive Men of Montana, that outlines his life. It's pretty interesting. I'll try to either scan it or just type it up and post it here. Good stuff. Maybe I'll even find his picture to go along with it. :)

The harvest is great, but hopefully in our family we'll prove that the laborers are not few. Family, I have a growing testimony of this work. We really do have a great labor to perform here. It will take our time, talents, finances (maybe just $12.50 a month, though!), and determination to really get this work moving. I'd love to share more with anyone who wants a bit of help or needs a bit of motivation. There is more work than I could ever do in a lifetime. Let's get on it together!

This is a wonderful idea JoDell. We will post our personal memories of our lives from time totime as a way to connect to past generations. Thank you for this service.

Let's get this blog started!

Hey family! This is our very own Davidson Family History blog! I've added Mom and Dad, siblings, and spouses to the list of authors so that everyone can contribute their family history findings, ask questions, share successes (or frustrations), etc. In order to be an author on the blog, you have to have a gmail account. Those of you without one will have to set one up if you want to be able to post. (It's free!)

Since I'm the one who set up the blog, I'm the administrator. (Being one of the youngest, it feels good to finally have a little power :) Basically, that means I'm the one who oversees the blog. Everyone will be able to add posts, and of course, to comment on any post.

Let you know if you'd like me to sign you up to get automatic updates from the blog. That way, Blogger will send you an e-mail when a new post has been added to this blog.

I'm open to suggestions, too. So, let me know if you have ideas for how we can make this blog run smoothly for our family history searching and sharing.