SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR WORKING ON A
GIFT OF FAMILY HISTORY CARD
©2005 by Donald R. Snow
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WELCOME
AND INTRODUCTION
- Welcome
- Instructors are Elder and Sister Donald R. and Diane M. Snow,
217-453-6306, of the Illinois Nauvoo Mission (snowd@math.byu.edu,
dms34@juno.com)
- These notes with all the Internet links are online at http://www.familyhistorycenter.org
under Class Descriptions and Notes and at http://www.uvtagg.org under Class
Outlines.
- This class will give some suggestions for Ward Family History
Consultants and
others working on Gift of Family History cards.
- In brief, the Gift of Family History program is a program started
in the California Sacramento Mission for members to
distrubute cards for others to fill out with family information up
through their grandparents, return the cards for someone (the member
himself, perhaps) to enter the data into PAF and do some genealogy
research on those names and lines, print family group sheets and
pedigree charts for the families, with a report of where the person can
find more FH on his lines, and give the printouts and report with a
backup floppy of the PAF database to the High Priests Group Leader in
the ward to arrange for returning to the person.
- You may find some helpful information on http://healthandfamily.com/familyhistory/resources/GiftOfFamilyHistory/index.html
- See the web site http://www.mormon.org/giftsoffamilyhistory/index.html
for a report of the evaluation of the Gift of Family History (GOFH)
program.
- The major web site for the GOFH program requires authorization to
enter: http://discoveryourroots.com
SUGGESTED STEPS FOR HANDLING A GIFT OF FAMILY
HISTORY CARD
- These are only suggestions of what can be done with a GOFH card
and are based on our experience with this program and may not work in
all cases and areas.
- Limiting
factor on this will probably be the time the researcher has
available
- Goal is not to do a complete family history for the person, but
to fill out and add to
what they
have and give them a report, so they can
see what else they could do to further their own family history
- Type the data into PAF
- Find the counties and check spelling of towns and cities – record
a
reference for anything unusual that you find.
Make a source entry for the card itself in Individual Sources in the
PAF database – remember PAF can “memorize” the citation so
you don’t have to type it more than once
- Check all four grandparents in compiled family trees (Ancestral
File, Pedigree Resource File,
RootsWeb, Ancestry.com’s World Family Tree, etc.) to see if you
can find families and pedigree extensions easily
- Download and/or print at least the start of what you find and
include in the report what else there is in that source
- Run GenSmarts on the PAF database to see what can be found on
free web sites or
on those available in a FHC. Check things like Vital Records,
U.S.
Censuses, Social Security Death Index, Land Records – whatever
comes up and your time allows; print or report what you find.
- Do a keyword search (surname and place) in the Family History
Library Catalog (FHLC) for surnames on
the card and print a few pertinent references.
- Do a place search in the FHLC for places on the card and
print
a few pertinent references.
- Add information found to the PAF database with sources.
- From PAF print pedigree charts and family group sheets for each
family on the card and perhaps a few others you have found.
- Backup the PAF database to floppy
- Within a week deliver the
printouts, reports, and backup floppy to the Ward High Priest Group
Leader to assemble and arrange to get back to the person.
MAJOR WEB SITES
MISCELLANEOUS
- Pictures -- do an Image search on Google, http://www.google.com/, click on
Images, and type in what you are looking for, e.g. a person's name
(Joseph Smith) or a city (Quincy, Illinois), or search Google for
Quincy+Illinois+photos+people
- For instructions on PAF see the built-in lessons in PAF 5.2 under
Tools/Lessons and also detailed instructions in my other online class
notes
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