Category: FamilySearch

Finding Help with The Family History Guide

You can think of The Family History Guide as one large Help system, with Projects, Goals, Choices, and Steps to assist you along the way. There are also many “just-in-time” learning resources on the website, such as links to videos and articles, and there are navigation tips, Summaries, Exercises, and more—all designed to help you learn family history faster and...

The Family History Guide Will Team Up with FamilySearch at RootsTech 2019!

We are excited to announce that The Family History Guide and FamilySearch are collaborating for a presentation at RootsTech 2019! Scott and I will join Mike Sandberg at 8 am on Saturday, March 2nd to share ideas, tools (some hot off the press!), and inspiration to help families discover their ancestors, gather their stories and information, and make connections. Mike (Senior Product...

The Family History Guide: Essentials for Everyone

One of the reasons for the remarkable growth of The Family History Guide is that it offers something useful and important to just about everyone. We’ve done a bit of thinking on this topic and come up with a list of 10 family history “audiences” and what might appeal to them in The Family History Guide. Some of us, of...

When Seeking Turns To Building in Family History

Not long ago I had a very interesting experience working with a patron in the Oakland California Family Search Library. He had never been on FamilySearch before and was eager to see what we had for him on Family Tree.  He had been on other big sites for a couple of free days in the past and wanted to further his search for his great...

New Fan Chart Options in FamilySearch

Recently FamilySearch added some new options to its fan chart view. These options have been part of the Consultant Planner for some time, but now they are being made available to all Family Tree users. We’ve updated The Family History Guide with instructions on using these new options, in Project 1: Family Tree, Goal 5: Alternate Views, Choice B. Here’s a...

Using Pinterest for Family History

Pinterest is a social media network that allows you to share and discover new interests by posting or “pinning” images and videos to your own “board,” which is a collection of pins with a theme or subject. Think of it as a type of search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo but with its own twist. Pinterest has an estimated 200...

Farewell to Find-A-Record

It’s with a note of sadness that we bid a fond farewell to Find-A-Record, one the most popular and effective online tools for FamilySearch Family Tree. In Project 1: Family Tree (FS) of The Family History Guide, Goal 9 was dedicated to learning and using Find-A-Record, which helped you find data problems, research opportunities, and possible duplicates across your family...

How Will You Write Your Own Story?

As you consider how to write your own story, you might find just find the help and encouragement you need in the blog post 18 Writing Tips …How To Tell Personal and Family Stories With Confidence. The author explains  that “no one is more qualified” to tell your story than you are and shares the following example:  Seventeen years after my Grandpa Bob passed away,...

The Family History Guide: A Comparative Look

People sometimes ask us, “What’s the difference between The Family History Guide and FamilySearch (or Ancestry, or MyHeritage, etc.)?” The short answer: we are a learning and resource system. But there’s more to the picture … our success depends in part on on the success of other family history and genealogy companies. You could say that we’re into “co-opetition” rather...

The Solutions Gallery Welcomes The Family History Guide

If you’ve been around FamilySearch for a while, you’ll remember the FamilySearch App Gallery, a collection of mostly handy but occasionally outdated apps and tools for family history. Now FamilySearch has replaced the App Gallery with the powerful new Solutions Gallery, with helpful categories and of some the latest technology for family historian. You can find the main link to...