Shortly after I put my weekly syndicated genealogy newspaper column (Finding Your Roots) to bed, I received a telephone call from Paul Nauta, manager of public affairs for the LDS church's FamilySearch Web site, letting me know that the FamilySearch Record Search pages have moved to a pilot page (http://pilot.familysearch.org/).
In addition, some new databases were added to the mix as indicated below"
Collection Name: Indexed Record Count/Unindexed Digital Image Count/Comments
1870 United States Census: 60,170 / 124,298 / New
1880 United States Census: 50,538,378 / 0 / Updated with add'l authorities
1900 United States Census: 79,191,470 / 1,663,024 / Updated with add'l relationships
Germany Baptisms 1700-1900: 4,905,598 / 0 / New
Germany Marriages 1700-1900: 1,347,321 / 0 / New
Mexico Baptisms 1700-1900: 1,926,938 / 0 / New
Mexico Marriages 1700-1900: 296,990 /0 / New
Michigan Births 1867-1902: 1,409,988 / 96,165 / New
Michigan Deaths 1867-1897: 507,342 / 24,628 / New
Michigan Marriages 1868-1925 : 1,533,863 /109,256 / New
West Virginia Births 1853-1930: 381,464 / 0 / New
West Virginia Deaths 1853-1970: 1,133,106 / 0 / Updated with add'l data
West Virginia Marriages 1853-1970: 415,770 / 0 / New
Total 143,648,398 / 2,017,371
I will have more on this in the next Finding Your Roots column. But in the meantime if you would like to help with the ongoing genealogical records indexing project being put online by the LDS church go to http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/home/home.jsf?pname=homeTab.
I have been a record indexer for some time now and have had a ball working on index Louisiana Death records. It is nice to have a way of giving back to the hobby that has given me so much pleasure over these 30 plus years.
