Family Search Indexing

I have been doing indexing work for some time now. It is the old name extraction with many new changes and innovations. It is vital work of the greatest importance. Not all areas are doing this work yet as stakes and wards. However, any one with the internet can do it.

We are digitizing the billions of names that have been microfilmed and are in the vaults in the mountains at Little Cottonwood Canyon. President Hinckley wanted this work done in five years! It can be done! But it will be hard. The films are being scanned and used on the internet as graphics for indexing workers to use. We look at a scanned image and place what we see on a data base.

Soon, a person who is doing genealogy work will be able to go to Family Search and type in a name, and when it gets on the data base, they will then be able to bring up the original, primary image on their own computer and see if that person in that census, marriage, or death record, etc., is their ancestor, or the person they have been looking for.

Can you see what this means? Do you catch the vision? This is not randomly getting names for the temple, it is using the billions of names that are available to identify actual relationships of actual people in actual families.

My own great great grandmother has showed up on the 1850 Brooklyn, New York census. Her name is Katy. She was living in the same home as my grandfather when he was a child in New York. We have never been able until now to get beyond my great grandfather and mother! What a blessing to them, and to us, their descendants.

The 1900 US Census has been indexed. There are lots of other batches available for working right now. I am doing an 1850 Indiana Census from Marian County right now. I have done some from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona, and many others. There are many Spanish batches available. Salt Lake is scanning and preparing German batches now.

You can get involved! If you can do only an hour a week you can help. Call me to get more information. Even older kids can do it, like Katlin and Caleb.

Go to familysearchindexing.org and then hit the main link that says Volunteer. You will then be instructed to download the indexing program and create a user name and password. From the home page that you have created then you can go to help and read some tutorials to get started. There is a toll free number, 1-866-406-1830, that can be used along the way to answer questions as you index and have questions. You can call me. You can call one of our stake leaders.

I live in one of the finest wards and stakes in the whole church. I am speaking statistically, and in regards to the spirituality of the people, also. The willingness to do indexing is a great contributor to that. I do not know what comes first, the chicken or the egg, but if I was a chicken I would be thinking about eggs and building a nest. If you build it, they will come!

So if you want an extra margin of blessings for your family and for you personally, get involved. This is like doing temple work in your own home or barracks if that is the case. It has been said that one of the most significant things President Hinckley did was to build about 75 temples. But it will be said in the future that perhaps it was the starting of this program and the utilizing the billions of names that have been filmed that will be his most significant contribution. Perhaps the President had a field of dreams vision, too. He built them, and then like the little girl in the film, he said (did what was needed) they would come. Names for the temple are real people coming to a eternal game of life.

I hope this is not just a boring thing for you all. I was thinking of starting a batch this morning, and when I prayed about it, the thought came to ask you all to get involved. What's a father for anyway, if he can't pass on heavenly suggestions to his family? You can get your own conformation anyway, so I have no fear of being ignored.

This is not just one more thing to do! Once you get it set up it is easy, flexible, inspiring, and will make other things fall in place. It is one of those things. Other hard things will fall in place when you do willingly the simple ones.

Dad Clark