Signing up and Starting the Search
When you sign up for a free membership, FamilySearch asks you to fill out a form with the basics: full name, gender and birth details; a username for the site and a publicly viewable contact name; and a password, along with an email address or phone number (used only to recover login details). There is also the option to let FamilySearch know that you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; whether or not you are doesn’t change the fact that you can create an account. After the form is submitted, you’re just a confirmation email and an activation process away from complete registration.
From there, FamilySearch is filled with tips and suggestions to start you off on your hunt for family records. Of course, you can also just dive right into searching through their archive. When you key in an ancestor’s name, the site makes it easy to narrow search results by location as well as date; and further by added facts like birth and marriage dates, or the name of a spouse or parent. It’s worth noting that because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints focuses on genealogy for the purpose of performing temple rites for their kindred dead, FamilySearch is more efficient when searching for facts about deceased family members in much older sources. When searching for living relatives, it’s difficult to get one or a few results, if at all–even if it’s more likely for them to have easily accessible information elsewhere.
3rd Place9.1 out of 10Building Your Family Tree with FamilySearch
The easiest way to manage and organize your findings on FamilySearch is by using its family tree builder. Family tree-building is a prominent part of FamilySearch; many of its offerings mirror those of similar models, including a hint feature that automatically feeds you search hits and alerts you when it finds possible family connections. If you have a GEDCOM file from another program or site, you can upload that and use your previously researched data as a jumping-off point.
Family-Focused and Church-Centric
It’s obvious that FamilySearch is specifically for personal family history research and discovery. Unlike other sites, there’s no provision to create multiple trees–only one, with you as the center. In addition, they currently offer no direct capability to create or export GEDCOM files; only to import. Aspiring genealogists wishing to work on other families’ data can still use FamilySearch to search its archive, of course; but at best, the website can only function as a secondary resource for them. For the ordinary individual, though, this shouldn’t be a deal-breaking issue.
Adding Branches and Twigs
Adding new names to your family tree is relatively easy: you can find a deceased relative’s name mentioned somewhere in the site’s archive of records, or you can add a person by FamilySearch identification number (which they assign to every name added to every family tree), if you see a useful entry on someone else’s tree. You can also create an entry yourself: just type in all the important details that you know. Usually the easy ones to fill out are the full name, gender, birth details and life events (such as christenings and marriages). If you’re short on information, don’t worry, as these are also the details most easily found through FamilySearch. Additions you can further add to flesh out an entry in your family tree are sorted into three areas: other names, other events and other facts. Other names can be married names, pen names, and the like; other events can include military service or education milestones. Specific designations like tribe or clan names go under other facts.
Where You Can, When You Can
Once you’ve started adding names, you can compare and match the information you have to new records your succeeding searches and hints turn up. You also have the option to attach these records to each family tree entry for easy reference. You can also dismiss false hits; for records needing further research and verification, there’s what FamilySearch calls your Source Box: an area on the site accessible from your home page, where you can store records for later perusal and use. As long as you are fine with the information being available to the public, you can also upload and attach your own videos, images, stories and scanned documents to add context and weight to your family tree.
Like most of its peers, FamilySearch offers a mobile app. Its Family Tree app works almost as well as the website, with the same helpful features–and the same problems. Search results can sometimes take a while to load and there is a learning curve, but overall it’s a great way to have access to FamilySearch on the go. A separate Memories app allows you to record audio and take pictures to add personal context to your family history research. The two available both for Android and iOS, working on both phones and tablets.
Connecting and Collaborating
Because FamilySearch is free to use and is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, community and customer support bleed into each other quite a bit. While the site provides a free service, every member (of the faith or otherwise) that contributes information is doing so publicly, with a few exceptions, so in using the site you are already contributing to the growth and maintenance of its archive.
Volunteering
Due to the non-profit nature of the organization, most of the customer-facing staff in its over 4,000 physical locations worldwide are volunteers and church members–and contributing members of the FamilySearch community, too. Volunteers can also choose to index historical records or serve as family history missionaries, or even donate money; this is how FamilySearch can keep on offering its service at no cost.
Asking For and Offering Help
Every member of the site can be contacted through FamilySearch’s native messaging system; if you come across a family tree that you need more information about, a conversation with the member who made it is just a few clicks away. An online member directory is also available; you can check that to see if there’s someone on the site you share common ancestors with, so you can collaborate. This goes both ways; you may be contacted, too.
While FamilySearch accounts on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube) do focus on providing leads and ideas for its members to use when they search the site archive and build their own family trees, they also function as a way for members to commune and seek each other out. You will find that there is a healthy number of FamilySearch members that are active online, with varying levels of genealogy research experience.
What's the Verdict on FamilySearch?
FamilySearch Review 2020 – Conclusion
It’s hard to find fault in a service that’s both comprehensive and free. What FamilySearch lacks in technological and organizational efficiency is made up for in spades by the multitude of resources and tools available to you–some of which would be paid features elsewhere. Searching through the archive is sometimes problematic, with the site’s focus on deceased ancestors only, as well as the site’s tendency to slow down and get sluggish when returning a huge number of search results; but avenues for support are plentiful and unparalleled. While not strictly a feature of the website itself, the option to visit and receive assistance from brick and mortar Family History Centers all around the globe is particularly impressive.
FamilySearch is not intended to be a primary or sole resource for genealogists; but for people who simply want to learn more about their ancestry, there is no better place to start.
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