Creative ways to use indexes for Familysearch record browsing

Familysearch.org has put many wills and related records (administration, orphan court, etc.) online, and while some are indexed, many have a link which suggests "Browse through... Images." In the ellipses will be a huge number, usually in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. This seems at first intimidating. and the researcher might be inclined to stop right there. Who could stand to browse through each of the thousands of records in order to find the one that is relevant?

But it is usually a prettier picture than that. First, clicking on that link usually takes you to a county list. Then you can click on the county of interest, which certainly narrows down the number of records. Within the list of records may be a wills index. It is almost always alphabetical.  You can find the name of your ancestor, note the will book and page, and then move on to find the link for that particular will book. The page described in the index is not the same page number used by Familysearch.org in its indexing, so you need to make a few guesses, wait until those pages load, and page back and forth a bit until you find the manuscript page in question. The page in the will index listed as 100 might be 80 as indexed by Familysearch, but you will quickly catch on to looking at the numbers in the corners of the scanned manuscript for the original page numbers. It is a very tedious process, but it is very rewarding, as you will see the entire scanned will and all additional paperwork with notes by witnesses as recorded.

And don't forget to scroll down on the counties page. If you assume all the options are on the page in front of you, you may be very wrong.

Now, sometimes, there are even better indexes, and I will tell you about one of them. Pennsylvania Genweb Archives for Bucks County and for a few other counties has lists of will abstracts and indexes of the abstracts. The numbers given to the abstracts in the indexes correspond to the actual will books and pages. So if it says that my ancestor is in will book 4, page 203, for example, I don't need to consult the scanned index on Familysearch.org. I can go straight to the will book, and find that manuscript page. Again, it won't be the same page as indexed by Familysearch, so I still have to guess and turn the pages online. It still takes a bit of time, but is a much more streamlined process, and the information of who has wills and where is much more accessible, I have found it very worthwhile, and enjoyed reading through several wills which I found relevant to my research.

Yes, there are other indexes, too. For New York wills, try those at Sampubco. The wills are nicely listed by county and will book and page. You can order the will from Sampubco, and for many of the wills you can see a scanned image on Familysearch.com.

Ancestry.com new records

New records added to ancestry.com include many for New Zealand, a Florida Marriage collection, and Pennsylvania, Oyer and Terminer Court Papers. The latter is easy to search by name of the ancestor, and the scanned images are very readable due to excellent handwriting. I found an ancestor who had been subpoenaed to testify in a report of a break-in, and would love to search these records further. It is wonderful to see such records online. They will most certainly help verify family tree information and will add to the stories we have of our ancestors.

Browse scanned records at Familysearch.org

https://familysearch.org/Newly added to the collection of images that can be browsed at Familysearch.org are many probate records from Pennsylvania. To find them, just go to the Familysearch website and then, instead of searching for a name, scroll down below the name boxes to the locations that have images to browse. The header is "Browse by location." Click on any location that interests you, and you will be into the data set. Most of these images are not indexed, but there are some indexes for some of the locations.

For the most part, the indexes are not connected to the data sets you will want to look at, so you can take notes of what to look for when you find the index. There may be a box or file number. Again, you have to browse for that number. Many of the images are in chronological order, which is helpful. Sometimes they load slowly.

There should be some good finds here, although it takes a bit of work to get to results that are relevant to a particular family tree.

There are images for many other locations, too. New York has many records included. I found the Cornwall records to be excellent. You can see birth, marriage, and burial records for specific locations. I found a marriage record that I have not seen before anywhere. It helps connect a family relationship.

It is wonderful to see scanned records from so many far-flung locations. Instead of traveling or ordering microfilms, you can just browse at your computer.

The information takes a bit of time to wade through, but it can be rewarding, and perhaps in the future these records will all be indexed and searchable.

Fraktur online: family history details

German Fraktur are beautiful old images with family history information (actually Fraktur is a type of script, but it is also this type of art/family history).