Family History is a multi-faceted area which involves genealogy, family history and temple work. Question 1b would probably then be, "What is the difference between family history and genealogy?" The difference is that genealogy only deals with the vital information such as name, birthdate and place, death date and place, spouse's name, parents' names, marriage date, etc. Family history deals with all of the other stuff. What were some important things about their life? Did they serve in any wars? What was their occupation? Did they do anything that marks them in history? Only genealogy is technically necessary to submit names to the temple, but family history helps us to "turn the hearts of the children to their fathers." The temple can seal you physically, but the family history is an important aspect of sealing yourself to them emotionally.
Indexing, on the other hand, is a means to these ends. The church possesses millions to billions of vital records from churches, government offices and more. A massive volunteer force of members and some non-members has been recruited to look at these records on their computers via internet and type them up so that they are searchable. It is essentially family history data entry.
Indexing is a great work, and a great place to start if you're very intimidated and apprehensive about family history. That being said, indexing is moving along quite nicely, and the church is encouraging people who are just comfortably indexing to push themselves further to actually finding names.
This is the Provo YSA 18th Ward Family History Committee, signing out. Tune in again for next post's question: "What's the best way to store info?"
No comments:
Post a Comment