Searching Books on Familysearch.org

Have you checked out www.familysearch.org recently? I can spend 10 posts (and perhaps I will) talking up all the good things about that website! What the LDS Church has done, adding capabilities to include photos, stories, discussions and sources, is awesome; not to mention the ability to search their constantly increasing digital family history archive! If you don't have an account, make one and check out the many things you can do.

One feature that I have recently discovered is the Family History Book search (no account is needed to search). It is a wonderful resource for anyone wanting to learn more about a time period, an area of the world, or looking for a family history. By their own description, "Family History Books is a collection of more than 80,000 digitized genealogy and family history publications from the archives of some of the most important family history libraries in the world. The collection includes family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees."

You can get to this feature by going to books.familysearch.org, clicking on the "Search" button along the top and then the "Books" button in the submenu (see the green highlight on the picture above), or click HERE Once there you can type anything that you are curious about. When I type "Swain" in the search engine, I get 1,212 hits of books that mention Swains. If I want to get more focused and look for information about "Swains of Nantucket" I get 92 records, including the much desired "Swains of Nantucket: Tales and Trails" by Robert H. Swain.

Not all books are available digitally, but luckily "Swains of Nantucket: Tales and Trails" can be read at home, in the comfort of my own couch. AND!!! if I right click with my mouse, I can "Save as" and all of a sudden I have my own digital copy of the book saved on my computer! How great is that!

What results did you get putting your family name in the search engine? Did you find anything of value to you?

Do you have ancestors from Texas?

Family Search labs has an online repository of texas death records from 1890-1976. Even though you can't save the files to your computer you can view a copy of the actual death certificate. If you don't have sources written down for death dates of any of your Texas ancestors this is a good place to go to validate your information and indicate your source.

Besides a death date and place, and burial information, The Texas Death Certificates also tell the birthdate, birthplace, father's name, mother's name & maiden name, cause of death, and sometimes even the spouse's name of each individual. They also tell the marital status of the deceased. Although the death certificates aren't always the most reliable of sources for information (other than death date), they are a great resource (an informant, normally the individual's spouse or child recalls most of the information).