Tuesday, May 19, 2009

FamilySearch.org has Somethings NEW!

Recently, the "pilot" FamilySearch.org added a database of Florida Death Certificates for the period 1877 to 1939. It is more than just an index, much of the information has been transcribed by volunteers into this database.

It is FamilySearch Records Search - Pilot Site, (or go to http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start .)
You can leave the "first or middle names" blank, enter a "surname" like Sanchez.
For "Life Event" select Death/Burial,
For "Year" enter 1920,
For "Place" enter Saint Augustine, Saint Johns, Florida, United States, (if you leave off Saint Augustine, you will get all of Saint Johns County, or if you leave off Saint Augustine, Saint Johns, you will get all of Florida.)

With this example I got 6 results. When I pass my cursor over the blue underlined name, I get a summary on the screen. And if I click that blue underlined name, I get a page of information from the database.

Near the top of the page of information, you will see in blue and underlined "copy to clipboard", if you click that you can then add the information to your word processor or an email by pasting or keyboarding with control key + v.

To the left of "copy to clipboard" is "about this collection", click it and you get a history of the collection, but also at the to the words "search this collection." Now clicking it will limit the searching of Familysearch to just this database.

There are other refinements to searching possibilities that you can try as well.

But some names are spelt wrong: the volunteers transcribed what they saw, they were not familiar with the people or places.

And it is free.