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Friday, June 15, 2012

Follow Friday - FamilySearch wiki

I had a phenomenal genealogy research breakthrough on my Cutler family line, which I originally spoke about here, and I have the FamilySearch wiki to thank for it. This wiki provides a wealth of information on locations, research options and FamilySearch films and resources as well as helpful outside links.

As I mentioned in the original post I wanted to find more information on the religious background of my fourth great-grandfather, James Cutler, in the hopes of locating documentation of his birth. I knew that he came from Norfolk, England, so I conducted a search for that area.


Many links came up, but the one that jumped out at me was the "England, Norfolk, Church of England Bishops’ Transcripts" collection.
The page goes in to great detail about the collection, what is covered and even provides samples of the documents in the records. Note that there is also a link to the records. At the time, this record group was not indexed but I was able to narrow down my search and find not only the birth record of James Cutler, but of all his siblings as well.

I suggest conducting a search in the Wiki for the counties that your family lived in. I have found varying results for the several counties I have searched. Some have quite a few links and a lot of information, others are still in progress. But here is yet another way you can contribute to the genealogy community: you can add information to the Wiki that has helped you, making it a more robust resource. Visit the Contributor Help page to find out how you can add information to the Wiki.

As I have shown here the Wiki is helpful for location and particular document research. Have you used the Wiki? What have you found?

1 comment:

zelsersk said...

This is very helpful. I am just getting into using family search more and will be ordering my first film soon.