Contents of FamilySearch Web Site

Our website has just a tiny fraction of the information available to researchers in original records and consists of three types of records:

1. Information submitted to us by patrons.
2. Information extracted from civil and church records and
3. governmental sources such as census and the SSDI.

If your family does not appear on our website it is because no one has submitted the information to us, your ancestors did not live in an area where the records have been extracted, or they are living (no living people appear on our site)

1.  Information submitted to us by patrons.

This includes such records as the Ancestral File, and the Pedigree Resource File. The Ancestral File was the first attempt to create a way for families to submit information and link up to other trees as people found common ancestors.  It was discontinued in 2003.

The Pedigree Resource File was begun in 1999 and is now up to 139 CDs and DVDs.  Probably over 180 million names now although there is a good amount of duplication, and that because it preservess a 'snapshot' of all the entries added at a different time.  To update the file, one had to send in a new submission, although some are so substantially similar, many are simply duplicates at times.

2.  Information extracted from civil and church records.

This is more commonly known as the 'IGI' or 'International Genealogical Index.  While some is the result of LDS member submissions for religious reasons, much of it is extracted from a wide variety of church and civil records.  This includes primarily births and christenings, although in a few cases, deaths or other events appear as the dates on this.

3.  Governmental records, such as the census records and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).

This last category is a combination of extracted records and Government-provided databases.  Census records have been extracted and more are being extracted via the FamilySearch Indexing software program, where volunteers spend as little as 30 minutes extracting an entire batch.  The government-provided databases like the SSDI are updated by FamilySearch approximately twice a year with the latest information, and contain vital records information for more recent deaths.  One may find the information for deceased parents, grandparents, and on occasion, siblings in these records.