Help Creating Your Free Family Tree

 

#FamilyHistoryMonth

If you’re at all intimidated about creating a free FamilySearch family tree, there’s free help available. Login to FamilySearch.org and select the “Get Help” button in the upper right-hand corner of your screen (see above)

OR

you can go to the Family History Center Location Finder and type in your city or postal code (almost anywhere in the world) and find a Family History Center near you.

Local Family History Centers are run by volunteers and they’ll be able to help you create free FamilySearch accounts, create your family tree, research and attach records to your tree, and some Family History Centers will even be able to print a fan chart of your tree.

Family History Centers have access to all of the FamilySearch online records (billions) including some books and manuscripts that can only be accessed at these centers or at approved libraries (sometimes I drive 5 minutes to my local Family History Center to access a book I can’t access from my home computer).

Local Family History Centers also have on-site access to free MyHeritage accounts, free Ancestry accounts, free AmericanAncestors, and free FindMyPast accounts to broaden your research attempts.

Most Family History Centers will have microfilm readers, microfiche readers, and some will have scanners. (Mine has a high-speed photo scanner that digitizes stacks of photos in seconds.) You can order microfilms/fiche from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and have them sent to your local Family History Center for a small fee (around $5/film) and you’ll usually  have a month to view the film before it needs to be sent back.

So, if you need help creating a free FamilySearch account, you don’t have to do it alone. Everything offered by FamilySearch is done with volunteers who are there to assist you for free. If you enjoy the Family History Centers you can go as often as you’d like and you can even volunteer to help out. The point is, there’s really no excuse for not having a FamilySearch account and all the opportunities it will open up for a family history researcher.