2025-05 May - How To

May 4, 2025 family history help Tuskegee Airmen Laurence Fishburne genealogy assistance RootsTech FamilySearch indexing Indexing with AI Pedigree views Person page Finding Your Roots AI indexing RootsTech conference Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow psychology

Read time: Summary 0.2 minutes | Expanded section: 6.2 minutes | Entire message 6.4 minutes

Summary

Expanded Message

A Helpful Method for Finding an Ancestor

We start with a desire to serve. We love God and desire to serve others.

It can be nice to have help as we serve. The Ward Temple & Family History Consultants provide free help. You can find us in the Stake Family Search Center during posted hours. Or we can come to you if you arrange it with one of us.

If you prefer Self-Help or Do-It-Yourself (DIY), then consider this video has a simple process that when applied can help us find a person we’re missing.

The Roots Tech Presenters provide an 5 step method that can be useful.

So please don’t feel like we’re asking you to play a piano concerto. We’re only asking that you practice scales, so to speak. Helpers like this video from Roots Tech, an annual Family History conference, that are posted on YouTube make their skills and experience available to you.

And you can ask a Ward Temple & Family History Consultant for help too.

One of them said “Depending on how your brain works…” I liked this statement because each of us approach puzzles and logical thinking differently. Some of us are more motivated by love for that ancestor. Some of us are motivated by the challenge.

Each of us bring our unique set of motivations and current skill levels to this work the Prophet has emphasized repeatedly. You can do this. We can help. Or Roots Tech videos teach specific skills so you can grow your skill level to match your challenge level. Such matching of skill level to challenge level leads to flow,or optimal experience. There is a whole book on Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

In other words, a happier you.

More specifics on how to do family history can be found here at getting started, and here at “Help and Learning”

How Do I Find Help How to Do X, Y or Z?

See family tree essentials page

Pick the lesson you want to apply right now, learn just that and try it.

Family Tree Essentials Learning Roadmap

If you get stuck, contact one of the Ward Temple & Family History Consultants in the Stake Family Search Center.

By the way, if you have a bunch of photos, or just one, the scanner at the Stake Family Search Center scans your photos straight to your FamilySearch.org gallery.

Indexing Is Changing - Your help is still needed

In the past, we directly indexed. Indexing used to be defined as the task of manually entering information from historical records into an informational index.

Going forward, our efforts will be more review of what FamilySearch’s artificial intelligence initially indexed. Volunteers get to catch any mistakes made by AI.

By teaming humans and AI together, we can help people around the world discover more family connections at a faster rate than ever before! This approach combines the best of what machines can do with the best of what humans do.

Now think of indexing as digitizing records and making them searchable online. The fundamental purpose of FamilySearch volunteer work—helping make records accessible for everyone around the world—is the same.

Source: Upcoming Changes to FamilySearch Indexing

To see the urgency of indexing, see how records are being ruined by weather, insects, earthquakes, etc..

Your indexing help is needed and welcomed.

FamilySearch Progress To Date

FamilySearch has partnered with 10,000 records custodians on 6 continents to digitize and provide free access to:

If you or anyone in your network are aware of any historical record collections in a community that need to be digitized, then you can contact familysearch at archives@familysearch.org. Learn more about FamilySearch’s archives here.

Story Time

Reminder. Current Workflow for Family History:

Think Inputs and Outputs.

  1. Historical people’s information first has to be digitized (others do this).
  2. We index people’s digitized information so the image can be associated with text, which can be found in computer searches. AI is still not good enough to do this by itself.
  3. We link families' data together in FamilySearch.org (each member’s initial target is 4-Generations found and linked. Later we work cousin lines too.)
  4. We attach people’s information (source data) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better. Attaching more sources also shows our hypotheses about individuals more likely true than not true as we build a clear picture of who they were.
  5. Then, we can get names to take to the temple and offer them the choice of being linked to their families for eternity.
  6. By delving deeper, finding and attaching sources and their small bits of information about our ancestor’s experiences, we get to know our people (both direct lines and cousin lines), and our hearts turn to them. As more original sources are digitized and indexed, more puzzle pieces become available. It’s an ongoing and accelerating effort. When are we “done” knowing someone? We can all go beyond the dates of their birth and death and get to know our people.
  7. We can bless others by sharing with our immediate family and cousins what we’ve learned about our shared ancestors or kin, helping all of us feel more grounded, knowing where we came from. Potentially helping them to turn their hearts to their fathers too.

As Ward Temple & Family History Consultants we are called to help you with HOW to do these things, the Lord has asked that we all do our part.


As Ward Temple & Family History Consultants we are called to serve & help you with HOW to do these things, the Lord has asked that we all do.

Sincerely, Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants,

During Stake Family Search Center posted hours, our staffing assignments are posted

(our contact info is in the tools app, or see us in church)

P.S. - Older versions of this Ward Message (without names), with some how-to instructions, are at familyhistorystuff.com for your reference. This site is not for profit. The .com was a mistake when .org was intended, and would have doubled the cost to fix the mistake.