Family History Centers - A Treasure Chest of Free Information

For over a 100 years, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), along with the Genealogical Society of Utah, have made it their purpose to gather, collect and preserve vital records, family histories, documents, pedigrees, lineage charts and any other sources to build a complete picture of a family’s ancestors.

This pursuit to safeguard one’s heritage is not just within the United States but rather world-wide. So every type of ethnic and religious group is included in this preservation.

The heart of this perpetuation project is at the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. To assist individuals in their family research they have created over 4,500 Family History Centers (branches of the main Library, also called ‘FHC‘or "stake centers") across the world in 88 countries. The majority of them are located within the United States. The Centers are staffed by volunteers of the Church of LDS and open to everyone, free of charge.

On the Family Search website: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/FHC/ they have provided a method to locate the nearest Family History Center to your residence. For example, in Florida there are over 80 Centers throughout the state, in Kansas over 45 Centers and Washington State nearly 100 Centers. So nearly everyone has access to a Family History Center in their community.

Each Center is a great depository of various resources and each Center does vary in their holdings. However, each can also obtain a copy of certain materials on loan from the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City. There is a small fee you would pay to request the material on loan. Their greatest collection is in the microfilm and microfiche records. Everything from U. S. census records, manifest lists on arriving passenger ships, church records and city directories to individual family histories that have been published can be found in their collection. This material can be viewed using the microfilm and microfiche viewers located at each Center.

Over the years computers have been added to assist researchers at the Centers, along with Internet access. There are a variety of resource files on CDs that can be used at the Centers.

Each Center will have a selection of published genealogical magazines, books, pamphlets or histories along with maps and gazetteers to aid the genealogist. The volunteer staff is happy to direct you and explain use of the various resources. They can offer blank family group sheets, pedigree charts, census entry pages and work sheets to guide you in collecting and recording ancestors’ names, dates and locations. There are research outlines for individual states to facilitate in locating additional genealogical sources.

To truly organize and then share your family history, they have the ‘Personal Ancestral File’ (PAF). This is in the form of computer software where you place your ancestors’ information for your own preservation and which can be shared with other researchers. By reviewing the other collected PAF at the Family History Center you can possibly discover supplementary information on your ancestor.

Several of the treasures to be found at a local Family History Center include:
Ancestral File Database - Over 36 million individual names shown in their family lineage (supplied by other family genealogists).

Pedigree Resource File - Over 80 million names and their lineage in a family tree (supplied by other family genealogists).
International Genealogical Index database - Information on deceased individuals from various church and civil records across the world. This database has over 286 million names.

Family History Library Catalog - Using the Center’s computers you can search the vast catalog of holdings. If you are interested in what the Center or main Library have on an ancestor’s hometown, you can search by ‘place‘, ‘keyword’ or ’subject’ - the town’s name.

An example, place the town of “Frederick, MD” and you will see sources about American Revolution War pensions of those from Maryland, land ownership maps for 1858, church parish records, tombstone listings for cemeteries, the descendants of the Beatty family of Frederick County, Will Index for 1744 - 1946 of Frederick County, Western Maryland Pioneers, Frederick City Directors, just to name a few. Instead of having to travel to Maryland’s historical society’s libraries and its public libraries, much of the resources are on microfilm and available through the Family History Center.

Census Records - Available at the Centers is the US 1880 census records, the 1881 British Isles census and the 1881 Canadian census records. They are also working on indexing (for easier searching) many of the states’ individual censuses which were taken during off years from the U. S. Federal censuses.

Special Research - The Centers continue to expand their information. This includes adding the Freedman’s Bank of over 500,000 African-Americans since 1865. The Knowles Collection with information on Jews who immigrated from Great Britain and Ireland. Those researching ancestors from Mexico, the Scandinavia countries and British Isles, there is ‘Vital Records Index’. For more recent ancestors (those who died since the 1950s) check the ‘Social Security Death Index’ at the Centers. There are the Civil War military pension files available, always an excellent source for those with ancestors who served during 1861 to 1865. Recent additions include: Death Index in Georgia for 1919 - 1927 and Utah’s death certificates for 1905 - 1954.

Once you become familiar with your local Family History Center, inquire about any genealogical seminars or classes they may offer. What a perfect location to learn more techniques in genealogical research.

Your ancestors are waiting to be discovered and what better place to start than your local Family History Center. It is a repository with a long proved record and truly can be a treasure chest of information in your quest.

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