Resources for Teaching a Family History Class?

We often get questions on this topic. Currently, the Church has no official family history course that I am aware of, since the DVD course was discontinued 2 or 3 years ago. If you have access to the old DVD, you can use it, but the focus of the program has changed to become more centered on Find, Take, Teach, which may be why the old course was discontinued.

FIND - Find a relative needing temple ordinances, check for duplicates and try to verify which ordinances are needed, and obtain permission if it is required.

TAKE - Print a temple card and take it to the temple to do needed ordinances.

TEACH - Teach someone else to do the same.


Temple and Family History Consultant
What is currently available seems focused on training for those with family history callings, rather than the general membership.Take the time to familiarize yourself with this training on family history callings: https://www.lds.org/callings/temple-and-family-history


The Family History Guide 
Other than that, the first teaching resource I tend to think of is The Family History Guide by The Family History Guide, LLC   http://www.TheFHGuide.com This is a huge resource! You can use it to create many different family history classes.


FS Family Tree User Group
One place where you can find prepared curricula for courses is this website.
http://fsfamilytreeusergroup.com/home.html
A look at their Training by Audience page alone is very impressive.
http://fsfamilytreeusergroup.com/training_by_audience.php


It is very possible that none of these is exactly what you need for teaching your class, but I encourage you to take the time to look at them again, if you have not looked at them recently.


You may have your own favorite resources. I would like to hear of them.

Why Create an Account for Someone with no Internet Access?

We often ask elderly Church members with no computer or internet access to register for an account. 

Why?  That is not necessary. Any member can sign in as a helper for any member (whether or not the person they are helping has registered).

Using the Help Others Feature as a Helper (53466) says in part, "For a Church member without an LDS Account: first name, last name, birth date, and the last 5 digits of the membership record number."

Temple and Family History Consultants are encouraged to use the Consultant Planner in Get Help, rather than use Help Others, but the same principle applies. 

All members of the Church, regardless whether they have registered for an LDS account, do have one unofficially. Without registering, the patron cannot access the account, but their helper can!

So as a TFHC, you can use Add in the Consultant Planner to add that patron as one of the people you are helping. Then you can sign in as their helper to add information, edit information, reserve ordinances, print temple cards, or share names with the temple. 

Advantages of the Consultant Planner, include the fan chart that gives a quick overview of the other person's ancestors (including the gaps), and the ability to work with the same patron over a period of time without needing to sign in multiple times as their helper. 

Please let other know about this, as it seems to be an unknown feature.

I frequently see cases where a Consultant is running into a series of roadblocks trying to create an account for their patron or trying to recover the username and password for an account created for the same person by a previous consultant. If your patron has internet access at home or somewhere else they frequent, it is preferable that they register, of course. This back door approach is for those who do not have a computer or internet access, typically the very elderly or severely handicapped. 

Data Migration

Data Migration

FamilySearch Support frequently receives questions about moving family history data from one platform (website, app, database, operating system) to another. Where different operating systems are concerned, note that Ancestral Quest and RootsMagic are available for both Windows and MacOS. Web based products have the advantage of working with any operating system. Gedcom is also a universal system.

The most common questions tend to be moving data into or out of Family Tree.

There are multiple options for moving data in:

1. Re-enter the data. This will take between 2 and 7 minutes per name, depending on the user’s keyboard skills and the amount of information on each person, and any duplicates found. 2 minutes assumes a high level of familiarity and entering just a name, birth and death. 4 minutes per name is probably a fair average, if the patron is also adding christening, marriage and burial information. At 4 minutes per name, this works out to 6 or 7 hours for 100 names. 

2. Import a gedcom file into Pedigree Resource File, and match with Family Tree, one record at a time. Gedcoms seem to work best work best in "for PAF" format. (Click the images to enlarge them.) 

In my personal experiment (your mileage may vary), the time involved was:

Creating gedcom of 115 names: 4 minutes; 

Uploading gedcom: 4 minutes; 

Categorizing gedcom: 5 minutes; 

Compare: about 3 minutes per record, so a little faster than re-entry. 

Maybe 5 hours for 100 names. NOTE: This option cannot add living people. 

3. Using any one of the three software packages that can synchronize with Family Tree. (Legacy Family Tree, Ancestral Quest, RootsMagic). If the data is already in the software’s own database format, there is no need to import a gedcom.   (This option can also export data from FT.)

  

I selected 381 records, and it took 5 minutes for the software to categorize the records:

114 positive matches (almost certain, but check if you wish); 

25 Possible matches (requiring maybe 2 minutes each allowing for possible duplicates); 

96 Not Matched – Deceased (they can be added as a group); 

72 Not Matched – Living (they can be added as a group if there is a reason to do so); 

74 Already Linked (already linked to records in FT). 

In my experience 100 records might take 1-2 hours of time, depending whether you choose to accept all of the positive matches without reviewing them. 

Using RootsMagic 7 to Link Ancestry.com and FamilySearch Family Tree

A recent option for RootsMagic users is to synchronize their database at ancestry.com and FamilySearch Family Tree. No gedcom is involved. This will be of special interest to Public users. RootsMagic.com can provide detailed instructions on using their product. Any requests for information should be referred to RootsMagic.com