The Family History Guide: Now an official public charity organization

I recently announced that The Family History Guide is now an official 501 (c) (3) corporation, i.e. a publicly approved U.S. Internal Revenue Service charitable organization. Quoting from Wikipedia: 501(c)(3) organization:

A 501(c)(3) organization is a corporation, trust, unincorporated association, or other type of organization that is exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is the most common type of the 29 types of 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States. Many charitable non-profits in the United States that Americans commonly know of, and often make donations to, are 501(c)(3) organizations, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. These organizations must be approved by the Internal Revenue Service to be tax-exempt under the terms of section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. 

501(c)(3) tax-exemptions apply to entities that are organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes, or for testing for public safety, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children, women, or animals. 501(c)(3) exemption applies also for any non-incorporated community chest, fund, cooperating association or foundation that is organized and operated exclusively for those purposes.[1][2] There are also supporting organizations—often referred to in shorthand form as "Friends of" organizations.[3][4][5][6][7] 

26 U.S.C. § 170, provides a deduction, for federal income tax purposes, for some donors who make charitable contributions to most types of 501(c)(3) organizations, among others. Regulations specify which such deductions must be verifiable to be allowed (e.g., receipts for donations over $250)

I left in all the links and footnotes in case you wanted to know more.

The practical reality is that organizations such as The Family History Guide rely on contributions to exist. A huge project like this one cannot survive on the efforts of a handful of devotees. Some such organizations rely on a few large grants from major contributors, but many subsist on the smaller contributions from individuals. The fundraising organization for the website is The Family History Guide Association which also owns and operates the website.

Contributing to The Family History Guide Association will help to preserve and expand this valuable website.

http://thefhguide.com/assoc-donate.html

Please consider going to the website and becoming familiar with the program. We are reasonably sure that becoming aware of the program will quickly show you how valuable this website already is and what it can become with generous contributions.

The 2017 Worldwide Indexing Event

https://www.familysearch.org/IndexingEvent2017?icid=bl-wi17-6598

The FamilySearch.org Worldwide Indexing Event starts tomorrow, October 20, 2017, and continues for three days over the weekend. 

You may take indexed records for granted. Whenever you search on FamilySearch.org or any other genealogy website, you are taking advantage of indexing done by someone else. Without that effort, you would be reduced to searching records in the "old way" page by page and line by line. By providing an index, you are helping yourself and others find valuable records about your own and their own ancestors. 

Google Photos to FamilySearch Memories Pathway Now Available

You can now move your online photos directly from Google Photos into the Memories section of FamilySearch.org. The connections have also been expanded to allow the same additions from Instagram and Facebook.

All you have to do is to click on the the green plus sign from the Gallery View and the links to the three other websites is now available. If you are using Google Photos free, automatic backup systems to store your photos online, you will immediately see the advantage of being able to move photos from Google Photos directly into the FamilySearch.org Memories program. There is also an option to use the file names as titles.

In my case, I have all my hundreds of thousands of images backed up on Google Photos and this new development with expedite moving the appropriate images onto the Memories program and then linking them by tagging the individuals to my ancestors and relatives in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The advantage is that now, when I capture an image on my iPhone, that image is automatically backed up to Google Photos. Then is it a simple process to move that image onto the FamilySearch.org Memories where I can tag the images and attached them to my ancestors.

The Family History Guide Now A 501 (c) 3) non-profit charity

Note: this announcement also appears on my Genealogy's Star blog website.

The official FamilySearch training partner, The Family History Guide, has achieved IRS 501 (c) (3) status. This means that anyone donating money to support this fabulous, genealogical training and now, charitable resource, can get a corresponding deduction from their Federal income taxes.

By keeping the website free, the developers hope to fulfill their mission to get more people involved in family history by providing training and research guidance on a major scale with a free website. Up to this point, the website has been self-funded with all the support coming from the people who have developed and maintained the website so far.

The Family History Guide has been vetted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and made available to over 5,000 Family History Centers throughout the world and on LDS.org. The Family History Guide already has users in over 150 countries and most recently released training paths for MyHeritage.com, Findmypast.com, and Ancestry.com, as well as maintaining its support for FamilySearch.org. This week they are rolling out a national pilot project to recruit, train and utilize Regional Training Specialists to serve in specific geographic regions throughout the United States (initially). These individuals will extend the reach and facilitate quality training and presentations for the website.

The actual entity that supports the website is The Family History Guide Association. 

http://thefhguide.com/association.html

There are links on the Association's website to an explanation about how to donate.

Review Existing Sources in the Family Tree Before Making Changes

If you are concerned about changes to anyone in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, then you need to "Watch" those individuals. There is also a section in the Settings menu under your name when you are registered that will allow FamilySearch to send you email notifications every week of any changes to any of the people you are watching.

 The notification can be quite extensive depending on the number of people you are watching.

 This particular screenshot is actually the shortest list I have received in months.

Now, the real issue here is the changes that are made that contradict the sources attached to the individual. In the case of David Nathan Thomas shown above, there is some dispute in the existing records as to the date of his birth. However, there is a christening record and a census record that both agree as to the place of his christening and birth. In this instance, the change that was made changed the birthplace without adding any additional sources to substantiate or contradict the existing sources.

I did correct the change.

In my experience, almost all of the changes made to the Family Tree that invoke some kind of dispute, are made without citing any supporting source for the change. For some time, there have been suggestions and discussion about requiring a source before making any changes. Of course, the requirement should not apply to changing back or reverting an improper change. The difficulty, of course, would be to distinguish between a correction and a change to existing data.

 On the GetSatisfaction.com/FamilySearch website, where FamilySearch gathers comments about all of their programs, the section on changes to the Family Tree has over 6000 comments. The topic of requiring citations or an explanation at least has been discussed extensively for many years. From my own experience, this is the number one complaint about the Family Tree. Perhaps, it is about time to start addressing this issue in a meaningful way.

The FamilySearch Family Tree SourceLinker

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is rapidly becoming more reliable with the addition of millions of source citations from records provided by Record Hints. As with almost everything about the Family Tree, there is always some background grumbling and criticism. The main issue is that some users seem to think that anything they see from FamilySearch is somehow accurate and applicable when the Record Hints are clearly hints that need to be reviewed and evaluated for applicability to any particular family or individual.

We recently attended a local Family History Conference in Springville, Utah. Even though I was teaching one class, we took the opportunity to attend two classes presented by Robert Kehrer, Senior Product Manager for FamilySearch's Search Experience. His classes are always excellent and provide a lot of information about the operation of the FamilySearch.org website. Some of the new features highlighted involved the FamilySearch SourceLinker. This is the program that attaches the sources supplied by the Record Hints to the Family Tree.

When you click on the blue Record Hint icon, you get a summary of the suggested source. In this case, I clicked on a Record Hint for my Great Grandfather, Henry Martin Tanner. the hint is from the Utah, Missionary Department Missionary Registers, 1860-1937. After looking at the hint and making a preliminary decision that it applies to my ancestor, I can click on the "Review and Attach" blue button.

This is a screenshot of the SourceLinker page. The idea is to evaluate the information and, if appropriate, link the source to your ancestor. One new feature pointed out by Robert Kehrer is the ability to change the person of focus. This feature helps to add the source to multiple people who may be in the Family Tree but not directly related to the default focus person such as in-laws, cousins or others that may appear on the record. Here is a screenshot showing the link to the drop-down menu listing possible other people who could become the focus person.

Changing the focus person adjusts the relationships to allow the record to be added to additional people in the Family Tree that have not been automatically available in the past. This one added feature will save me a lot of extra time spent in adding the source to others in the Family Tree.

This is a good example of the benefits of holding and attending local, smaller family history events.

Check Your Record Hints Carefully

We have to remember that Record Hints are hints. There is nothing about a Record Hint that supposes that FamilySearch has done anything to verify the content of the hint. A "hint" is a suggestion, nothing more, nothing less. The accuracy of the hints, by the way, is based on the accuracy of the information already in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. For example, if the name in the family tree is incorrect, even if the program provides a "Record Hint" the hint will probably be for the wrong person.

There are a number of other reasons why the record hints for any of the programs that provide them might be wrong. One of the most common is the lack of records. For example, if I am searching in England or Scandinavia I may run into a situation where there are hundreds of people with the same or similar name is my ancestor. The existing records will also contain very little information differentiating people with the same name. In this situation, the computer program creating the record hints will often suggest people who have the same name and similar information but not be the same person.

Advanced searching techniques can make the searches more accurate such as those done by MyHeritage.com, but inevitably there will always be "false positives." A false positive is when the program indicates a match when no match actually exists. The goal of the programmers is to reduce false positives but in reality because of the discrepancies in genealogical records, this task is nearly impossible as we go further back in time. It is relatively easy for a record matching program to find a match for a person living within the last 200 years in an English-speaking country. But as we go back in time, the number of records decreases, the number of people with the same names increases and the difficulty in finding accurate matches eventually becomes nearly impossible.

Record match technology is a tremendous aid to research. FamilySearch.org has done an incredible job in improving the technology on the website for the Family Tree. But, there will always be limitations and as the program evolves there may be difficulties in maintaining accuracy. As the records come online and the indexes are done. We should also remember that the accuracy of the record hints depends on the accuracy of the indexing. Obviously, Record Hints cannot be supplied for unindexed records. Therefore, indexing is crucial for the expansion of record hints technology.

All this means that you should closely examine record hints for accuracy and consistency. In every case, be sure and incorporate the information you learn from the accurate records. Determining whether or not a record hint is accurate may involve a degree of additional research.

In summary, do not blindly rely on record hints in any of the online programs.