Helping Others Find Their Ancestors - Worldwide Indexing Event 2016

Genealogy, or family history, research has been on the rise in recent years. People have an interest to find out where their ancestors came from and what their stories are. Family history research has been made much simpler with the availability of so many records that are now in online databases. You can help volunteer in the work of making these free records available worldwide.

This post is sponsored by FamilySearch. All opinions and thoughts are my own. 

When I was a teenager, I began to be interested in finding out stories about when my grandparents were growing up and their parents too. I would sit with my grandmothers (both grandfathers had passed away) and look at old family photos and listen to their stories. I found out some interesting things that made me decide to dig a little deeper. I've always liked puzzles, mysteries, and using my brain for research; so genealogy was a perfect fit for me.

When I started researching my family history in the early 90's there weren't online options for research. Websites were created in the early 2000's to help people find ways to share online their family history with others that were searching. Fast forward another decade and now there are so many wonderful options to search for online records of your family members that have lived before.



The online records that you can search for have all been indexed by someone. I began indexing records 5 years ago. I went to the FamilySearch website and downloaded their program so I could index records from my computer. To index records, I would pick which type of record I wanted to work on (marriage, census, military, land owners, birth, or death), download the file, and open the document. The program has spaces to fill in and prompts telling you what information to look for, then you read the records and fill in the spaces. It's easy and fun! With my 10 minutes of work I was able to make 40 new names of people available all over the world to those that were searching for information on their ancestors!

FamilySearch has the largest collection of free genealogy records available on the internet. That is made possible by the thousands of volunteers who index the records that are available. Now it is your turn to help!

During July 15th-17th, FamilySearch International will sponsor the third annual "Worldwide Indexing Event". This event brings together 72,000 people online around the world during a 72-hour period. This indexing event will make even more records from around the world searchable to the public.

Volunteers will participate by downloading the FamilySearch software, choosing which record to work on, and completing as many names as they would like. Volunteers have made over one billion records searchable through since FamilySearch introduced online indexing in 2008. Millions of historical records worldwide are added every year.

Join over 72,000 teammates in saving these records so those people searching for information about their ancestors can find them. Visit https://familysearch.org/worldsrecords for more information and to get started! FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization that is providing these records to anyone and everyone around the world for free. You can be part of helping these records be made available by helping index during this event and all through the year.

To look for information about your own ancestors, visit FamilySearch.org to start researching your own family history today!