Good day Ishmael. I hope you had a good nights rest. I hope the shrunken heads didn’t bother you to much. Welcome on board and to your first real day upon the BOAT. So lets get to work. Here you go Ishmael. Your very own bucket and brush. Shall we start? Oh, whats up with that look? You would think I hired you to scrub the decks and now that we are at sea you can’t go back. Giving you a huge smile and I head into my cabin. Better get to work Ishmael. Ah, I’m just kidding. I’ll help you at it. Grabbing my own bucket and brush, shall we get going? You see my friend, in order for you to understand how to get your first whale you have to understand a few of the things around the ship here. This brush and bucket are your most basic tool, and you will use it every day. Now lets get to work…

So here is your first genealogy tool. This is the most basic tool that every genealogist will need. You will have to have a place to put your family tree. There are lots and lots of tools/software out there. But you really only need one. That is New Family Search. Also referred to as NFS by those in the know. But why NFS you ask? What makes it so special. Well one word, the cloud. If you don’t know what cloud computing is then your in luck. I’m here to help. Cloud computing is where you use the internet to store your info and programs. Your information is stored on a server out there somewhere in the “cloud”. This has lots and lots of benefits. The first is that your data is backed up and protected by some other organization and as long as you can trust that organization your info will always be safe and recoverable. So NFS is owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Weather you a member of the church or not, you must be aware of there interest in genealogy. Which is why they provide this service for free to you. With all the backups and protection they can muster. Including backups being stored in there granite vaults blasted out of the rocky mountains. The other benefit is that most cloud programs are community driver. So that others can see the work your doing and you can benefit from there work. Most of you out there when you join NFS will find that at least some of your family tree has already been created and your tied to them. This is a great bonus. That way your not duplicating someone else’s efforts in your family.

So lets get at it shall we. I will walk you through setting up an account and viewing your family tree. There are three basic steps.

Step 1. Creating an account

Step 2. Signing in for the first time

Step 3. Viewing your tree

Creating your account.
Lets head out to new.familysearch.org. You will need a few things to set up your account. The first thing you will need is to be a member of the LDS Church. I know I have no intention of this blog being about how a LDS member does genealogy work. This really is the best tool, but right now it is only avalible to members. That is going to change in the future so when your reading this it might have already changed. So you will need your membership record and you will need your confimation date. You can both of those from your ward clerk. I’m sure there are other ways but that is the easiest.

So just fill it out. You will be asked for a username at one point. Be careful what you pick because it is what will be used as your display name and on every record you submit. So pick something that you want others to see.

Now lets go ahead and use that new account.

Go ahead and skip this. Make sure you come back some other time and follow it. I can’t teach you everything.

Here is the Family Search main page. You will see that on the top will be your family tree or your pedigree. Click on any one of the people listed and it will display the known info in the bottom section. You will also see if your married your wife/husband is listed but you in laws if they are living are not there. That is one of the biggest confusions people have with family search. It doesn’t list any people that are living but are in its database. This isn’t a problem. Have your spouse setup an account so you can see there family. Now click around and become familiar with it.