Discover Family Tree improvements on the Family Search website

Discover Family Tree improvements on the Family Search website

Today I want to draw your attention to the amazing improvements in the new Family Search/Family Tree program. I am in a family history class in our Ward with Lynn. They have a terrific new fan method of showing our family tree and an amazing portrait method of creating our family tree. I look forward to showing each of you how they work if you have not opened up the program on your own computers. I am really surprised how nice it is to see items posted by other people including portraits of ancestors, stories about them and documents connected to them. I am very pleased to note that Joseph Samuel Backman is listed as the contributor for most of the pictures and some of the stories posted in our Family Tree pages called Memories. Take advantage if you already have a Family Search/Family Tree account. If you do not, ask someone you know how to open your account. I believe you need information from your ward clerk to open an account for the first time.

I had the feeling yesterday as we looked at some of Lynn's (Kimball) ancestors that I had opened up a treasure chest with new information, pictures and stories we had never discovered before. It was like Alice in Wonderland falling down a surprising hole and opening a whole new dimension to the world around us. They are so easy to access. It is as if they have suddenly appeared on the ancestor’s personal page because they have been posted there by other distant relatives we don't even know.

In our Ward, a couple of the youth have been called as Family History consultants, so they are in our class. It is amazing to watch them help all of us older participants getting past questions we have about using the Family Search/Family Tree program or other computer difficulties that arise. Young people are going to be part of real progress in family history in the future.

All I can say, is “Try it. You'll like it.”