For Your Viewing Pleasure — Family and Local Histories

One hundred thousand digitized family and local histories will be coming soon to a computer near you. On August 15 FamilySearch, the nonprofit service sponsored by the Church of the Latter Day Saints announced a joint project by The Allen County Public Library of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library and FamilySearch's Family History Library in Salt Lake City. To read more about this ongoing project go to: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/home/News/frameset_news.asp?PAGE=Press/2007-8-15_Local_Histories_Online.asp 

Currently, over 5,000 histories are already online. You may search by Surname, Author, Title or do a keyword search of the full text. In this small sample, I was able to find a biographical sketch of my great-great-grandmother's brother, George Washington Armstrong, in the digitized copy of The Biographical Record of Bureau, Marshall and Putnam Counties, Illinois. I also found a brief reference to my great-great-great-great-grandparents William and Susannah Good in Eastwood/Pote Lineage, Vol. 2. 

 The records are stored as PDF files so you will need an Adobe Reader to view them. The reader can be downloaded from the Web site, and access to these first 5,000 plus records is free and will continue to be free, according to the press release of August 15. You can search the collection at http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging. Note this post first published online, September 19, 2007, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

©17 Sept 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa l. Snyder