Join the Family Search Indexing project

Most genealogical societies and groups encourage members to record and index family records as an important way to preserve family history records for future generations.

Whether you record marriage records at the court house, cemetery records throughout the county or devote your time to some other form of data, these contributions are invaluable.

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People you may meet in heaven

Getting to know your ancestors now might come in handy when you meet them in the afterlife.

This is part of the philosophy behind the popularity of genealogy with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"We believe that family is eternal, and it continues beyond the grave," said Nickie White, one of several regular volunteers at the Pleasanton Family History Center.

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Free Online Genealogy Database Hits 150 Million Names

A powerful genealogical database launched several years ago on the Internet has now expanded to include 150 million names and is still growing.

Back in 1999, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invited family history enthusiasts to contribute their family trees to the Pedigree Resource File (PRF), a database housed on the Church’s FamilySearch Web site. Since then the file has grown steadily, and the Church announced this week that it has passed the 150-million-name mark, making it one of the largest free databases online.

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Internet Facilitates Extreme Genealogists

Lee Drew had a chat with some cousins the other day.

He was sitting in his home office in Orem, Utah. Four of the cousins were in England. One was in Australia, another in South Africa. A few more joined in from other parts of North America.

Mr. Drew is one of a new breed of genealogists who are doing things that would have been impossible in the not-so-distant era of dusty archives and whirring microfilm readers. He has found so many of his relatives that he needs a computer database to keep track of them all — all 1.7 million of them.

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Family history: The next generation of genealogy sites

From the beginning, the Internet has attracted people seeking to research their family trees — and sites wanting to make money off their pursuits. The Web's search capabilities seemed custom-tailored to sorting through long-forgotten records that are now being dusted off and digitized. Hundreds of sites sprang up.

In practice, though, Web genealogy has led to a lot of frustrated consumers — the process has been expensive (most sites charge fairly steep subscription fees) and time-consuming.

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Ancestry.com adds records of blacks

Ancestry.com has added a new records collection to its portfolio — one that will both help families with genealogy searches and bust misperceptions that few historical records exist for African-Americans.

The company is saying the collection, launched online this week at www.ancestry.com/aahistory, is the largest collection of African-American family history records that is available and searchable online. During February, the company is allowing people to search the collection and get free access to Ancestry.com for three days.

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From England to Hope: Local man linked to Mayflower passenger

Kathy and Don Crippen sit for a portrait in their home on Tuesday. Don Crippen is an 11th-generation descendant of Edward Fuller, who came to the continent on the Mayflower. Kathy Crippen said she has been working steadily on her husband's line for about five years.

Edward Fuller was born in 1575. He left England in 1620, crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower. The Pilgrims were in search of religious freedom, having been persecuted for their strict, Bible-based beliefs.

Fuller died his first winter at Plymouth Colony. But his descendants lived on, starting with his son, Samuel Fuller, and to 2006 and Fuller’s 11th-generation descendant, Donald Crippen of Hope.

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