FamilySearch Indexing

This past week I have woken up every morning with a sore throat. A fellow teacher in my school had the same thing that eventually turned into a full blown cold. Being sick during a school week is not on the top of my plans, so I decided to use today to STAY HEALTHY! I'm relaxing, drinking plenty of fluids, doing a little bit of housework (it's hard to relax when there are dishes and dirty laundry staring at you), and indexing!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a program on the internet called FamilySearch. It allows people FREE access to hundreds of genealogical records and an online, world-wide collaborative family tree. The program works because thousands of volunteers throughout the world index records right from the comfort of their own home.

This morning I found myself indexing for the first time in awhile. What I love about the program is indexing individual records and piecing together individual stories from the information found on those records. Each record can tell story. For example, as I found myself indexing early 20th century death records this morning. I found that much of the African American population didn't know their birth dates or father's names. I wondered if this lack of information may have been a result of these people being enslaved prior to the Civil War ending in 1865. It was as if history was coming to life in my mind's eye. I began to paint a picture of each individual in mine as I read their birth places; whether married, widowed, single, or divorced; and causes of death. I felt blessed to know that someday one of the records I indexed may be found by of these individual's descendents, and on that day that descendent may combine that record with that of information from other records to paint a more complete picture of that individual, and ultimately, one more family may then be forever connected through the generations and eternities.