The Family Search Research Wiki August 23, 2017

Pinterest

www.thefhguide.com

Today I want to talk about The Family Search Research Wiki. *It is somewhat like Wikipedia that most of us are familiar with already.

The Research Wiki on Family Search is a big topic and very a useful portion of the Search drop-done links on the Family Search website. Wiki programs allow individuals to contribute information in their area of expertise. It can be edited by anyone. At this time there are over 87,000 articles for our benefit.

The Family History Guide <www.thefhguide.com>has a tremendous amount of information on the Research Wiki.

See Project 4 Discovery: Goal 3 Form solid strategies to research your selected lines: Goal 3: Choice A: Step 5.
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/A_Guide_to_Research

Here is the FS link to the home page of the Wiki:
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Main_Page

The Research Wiki is full of Topics and How-to Strategies for finding the information you need to research, but you cannot search individuals on it. Search Places and Topics only.

Every serious researcher and trainer should be familiar with this resource in going forward in their family history pursuit. It is very comprehensive and I am sure we will be returning to it often here on Facebook.

It is invaluable in researching localities worldwide. If you go to Project 9 in the Family History Guide there is an awesome surprise awaiting you when you select any country or state. Double click on the beautiful banner photo and see what you find behind it. I learned of this just yesterday and I love it.

Thank you Kim Miller for pointing this out to me. I am so impressed with the ease in which The Family History Guide delivers just what we need, when and where we need it!

www.thefhguide.com

Location, Location, Location August 9, 2017

I took this photo at Land's End in San Francisco

www.thefhguide.com

When we think about researching our family history and finding records it is all about location, location, location. We need to know about the places where our ancestors lived, the local history at the time, the boundary changes. etc. As we learn these things we come to know our ancestors so much better.

When we traveled to Wales and saw where our ancestors lived we gained so much knowledge about them. The land is a character in their story. It's almost the same with Google Maps where you can virtually walk the streets where they walked.

There is an abundance of locality resources available online. It comes as no surprise that The Family History Guide has a ton of help when it comes to locations, jurisdictions, maps, gazetteers and more. Learn about topography and geography and migration patterns and much more.

On the Home page on the Family History Guide, Select Projects: Project 9: Countries/Ethnic: United States: Goal A2: Learn About Location and Geography as Search Tools: Step 1. Watch this video. I learned a lot in 20 minutes.

My challenge for you is to watch this video today. Crista Cowan has hundreds of good videos on Ancestry. I plan to spend a lot of time in this section of the Family History Guide as there is so much here that is essential to good research and getting to really know your ancestors. Join me at <www.thefhguide.com> Link to Crista's video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI-lJCYxQlE

I took this one with my iPhone traveling across the SF Bay Bridge

 at 50 miles per hour. (As the passenger of course.)

Can you guess our location?  

We live just a few miles away from this, our favorite city!

San Francisco, California!