New FamilySearch Tree Sagas - Week 12

It can't be! I haven't written my "New FamilySearch Tree Sagas" article in a couple of weeks. My last article was July 24th. I know I didn't write when my Dad was out visiting and then the week after while I tried to recover from his visit. Then the Olympics happened. Gheeze it is so easy to get out of a habit. I am repenting and promising to be good and write more often.

It's Saturday and the Olympics are on but I am hiding myself away in my computer room so I can get some work done. I told myself I can only watch the prime time part of the games. Besides that's when Michael Phelps swims again. I'm not really a big sports fan. I only watch them when the Olympics are on, so over-all it's not taking that much time from my genealogy.

One thing that has been on my to-do list regarding NFS was calling the Toronto temple and checking on my grandfather's temple work. I had found his sealing to his parents as "in progress" and wanted to find out who submitted the work. I was thinking we had lost a temple card somewhere along the line.

I finally called this morning and I discovered that someone else has submitted the work in February of this year. They couldn't give me the person's name but they could tell me the last name wasn't a Harris, Glick or Zamora, which would be from my immediate family members. The sister I spoke with is going to give my new found family member a call and have them contact me. I wish I had asked if it was a Kubricky, Tambasco, or Sayer submitting the work because that would be possible cousins that I know of. I guess I will have to wait now to hear back from them.

You know it didn't bother me that we might not be able to do the work. I just want to make sure that the work is done. That's what really matters right now. Of course, if the person submitting the name is a distant cousin and would like to give me the temple card I wouldn't mind having a chance to do the work. By rights my Grandpa died in 1978 and whoever submitted it should of asked my dad if they could do the work. But since all the other ordinances are done, just not the sealing to the parents I don't feel troubled by them not asking. I might of done the same thing myself. It will be interesting to find out who the submitter is.

Before I forget there is an announcement on new FamilySearch

New FamilySearch will be down for maintenance on the following dates:
August 18th 12:00 AM to 1:00 AM MDT
August 25th 12:00 AM to 3:00 AM MDT
September 1st 12:00 AM to 1:00 AM MDT

Since I'm not up that late on a weeknight, I don't have any issues with that, but some of you around the world might need that information. I wonder if any exciting enhancements will be made during the maintenance time frame? Are they preparing for the launch of NFS along the Wasatch front? Beefing up the servers? I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Well back to working on new FamilySearch. One of the things I have been thinking about is what line to start working on now. I just finished my 4 generation pedigree. I didn't know if I should work on their descendants? I was planning on printing out a 4 generation pedigree chart for each of my great-grandparents and working back on each line. Ancestors or descendants, which to work on. I think I'm going to do ancestors, so which line should I work on? Should I work on the large lines that have possible cousins that might be able to help doing the combining on them? That would be the Harris, Osberg, Miller and Spinning lines.

There is also my Weatherwax line, I know I have some distant cousins, members of the church , that are working on those lines. Which in turn would mean they would help combine those lines. I really can't wait until we are all on NFS and I can find out how I am related to these other Weatherwax's.

Then I have my smallest line that no one appears to have touched. That is my Bentley/Green lines. I think I am going to start there. Instead of printing out a pedigree chart for my great-grandfather Bentley and great-grandmother Green I decide to print out a 5 generation pedigree chart and get everyone in one capture. I don't have much going back on this line.

As I was working on the Bentley line, which goes into my Scranton line, I found all this temple work that needs to be done. I have always had an about date and place from the censuses and enough to submit temple ordinances but I never felt I had done enough research on the line. Their names got into NFS through my Ancestral File submission years ago. I have no qualms about sharing this research with others.

I sat here today wondering why am I not submitting their work? NFS tells me they are ready to submit. I feel like I have the whole family screaming in my ear - SUBMIT MY WORK. We need to be sealed as a whole family we want our temple work done. You don't need to have all the "I's" dotted the "T's" crossed. You can continue to work on this line after their temple work is done. That makes me feel much better.

I had some questions in my mind. I knew that since my temple district was not live with NFS that any temple work that I prepare, using it, needs to have the cards printed out at the FHL in Salt Lake. Now what if I wanted to have the temple do the work? Can I submit the name through NFS for the temple? Does that feature even work?

I called Family History Support at 1-866-406-1830 to ask my question. The brother I spoke with was very nice but it didn't appear that anyone had asked that question before. Yes, if I do the work I need to take the Family Ordinance Request (FOR) to Salt Lake to print the cards. It says there is limited availability to all features in NFS for my area. What does that mean? It was recommended that I use Temple Ready and submit them to the temple that way.

I really don't want to do that because it might take years for the work to get done that way. I hear that it's very fast to get the names done using NFS. What to do, what to do. I decided to hold off and just note who needs their work done. It won't be that long before my area gets NFS. Now if they appear to me in a dream or something I might change my course of action until then.

While I was on the phone with the brother from Family History Support we got on the subject of GEDCOMs and IOUS. He told me that one brother called the support line and was upset that it wouldn't let him upload 10,000 names from his GEDCOM to NFS. He wanted to just upload the names because it was taking to long to do all the combining. What was he thinking his upload would add possibly 10,000 more names to combine.

It's about as reasonable to do that as it is to take your genealogy database and making a GEDCOM copy of it and then adding it back into your database. You had 10,000 people to start with and now you have 20,000 people. Now go in and merge them all together. Why would a person cause themselves that much extra work. Well, I can tell you they don't understand the system. We are trying to clean things up and work on the people in the files as a community. It's not to have your own files and be by yourself. That's what your personal genealogy software program is for.

It makes me wish two things would happen before NFS is announced for Utah.

1. Cripple the GEDCOM feature in NFS before all the "smart" people in Utah and Idaho with huge numbers of pioneer ancestry try to upload their GEDCOMs to NFS.
2. That all the commercial genealogy programs that will sync with NFS are functioning before we go live. This should be the only way people can upload names to the system. One at a time and after they have been searched for really good in the system to make sure there are no duplicates out there.

The brother from Family History Support told me they are thinking about turning off temporarily the GEDCOM feature in NFS in the very near future. It would only make sense to me that they do that. It would be cool if they cripple the feature during the upcoming scheduled maintenance. The brother I spoke with gave me an example of one early LDS leader as having 30,000 living descendants right now. Could you imagine if all 30,000 decided to submit their GEDCOM when they went live with NFS. It would be a nightmare.

Well, I've made my list of ancestors that need to have their work done. I am just going to wait and submit them when NFS becomes available in my area. I have so many temple cards to finish working on before I go print up another batch of them. If by any chance I exhaust my current list I will submit the people on the list I made today next. So that's my saga for today.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!