Did you know that NOT every record on FamilySearch that has your ancestor on it
is found through the search form? Today I'm going to teach you how to get off
of the search form and get on to the Browse Only Images on FamilySearch. And I'm going to show you
how to do that confidently. Hey, Fanatics! I'm so excited to have you here. My name is Devon
Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics. And we love helping you enjoy the journey of family history.
Now, while this search form is great. You can type in a name and click SEARCH. And then FamilySearch
can return some results to you, such as these that you see right here. But that's not all
of the available records that are online. Instead,
what you need to do is scroll up and check out this button CATALOG. You can get it here when
you're in any of the search pages or click SEARCH CATALOG to get to the FamilySearch Card Catalog.
There are two types of records that are in the catalog. The first is the collections
that actually had somebody create an index, and it has part of the record collection.
So, on the FamilySearch catalog, you can type in a location. Let's say we want to do Wake County,
North Carolina. And notice how I could just put in a part of the location- Wake- for Wake
County. And then it gives me an entry. Click on that. And you click SEARCH. And away you go.
Now, on the Card Catalog page, there are a lot of categories, as you would expect. So,
what you want to do is look for various entries that can take you to different record collections.
Now, if you click on a collection such as the one I'm showing you on screen and then see these red
notes. Well, it's actually going to take you to a Search Form-Based collection. What's kind of
nice about this collection is that you can just search, in this example,
Divorce Records for North Carolina. Rather than everything that FamilySearch has through
[that major] that main portal of searching records. It is kind of nice, but that's not
the purpose of this video. I'm going to click on another record collection. This is a immigration
record collection the Alien Registration. And I know that this record collection has not
been made searchable because we don't have that red verbiage. So, when you scroll down, you're
going to see the entry Wake[field] County, North Carolina Alien Registration. If you slide over,
you're gonna see a camera icon. That right there that means you can search from home,
and that means it is a Browse Only Image. So, let's go ahead and click on that image.
So now, you're in the film strip view of this image. And some of these first images really
don't have a lot of value. This one has all the information we just had on the catalog
page. And now, we're actually into the image. What you want to do is orient yourself to how
these books are organized. So, we're going to zoom in using the little plus button.
And you just hold your left mouse button. And you're able to move the record around. Sorry
to make you dizzy, if those of you are dizzy. So, as we look at this. We see that these last names
all begin with the letter A. They are not necessarily in alphabetical order.
So, where are the B's? Well, they, if remember when we zoomed out, there weren't any
any other names on this page. So, my guess is they're on the next page and. And we are
correct. We're going to go forward until we get to the Ks. So, here's the Ks. And I have the
Elizabeth that I was looking for and page 36 and Joseph and page 37. Now, let's go ahead and jump
forward and see what we do when we are... Now, looking for the records. Actually,
before we jump forward, let's figure out where the index ends. So, go back to the film strip
and notice that these pages are looking very similar to the one that we were just looking at,
and this one begins to look a little bit different. So, if we click on that and zoom in.
We start to see those Alien Registration records that we were hoping to find. And then there's a
page number- page one. Well, we want to go to page 30, or yes, page 36. But that doesn't mean
image 36. So, that's when we're going to use this image advanced button. I mean, we could go
here until we get to 36, or we can jump. And I'm for the fun of it I'm going to do 36. When I put
in 36, I'm at page 39. And I want page 36. So, I need to slide over and then go back a page. And
sure enough, I'm going to be on image 35 but page 36.. Now, look how valuable these records are.
I have her name. I have the place where she... The date she was born. What her nationality is.
I have her occupation currently. As well as her current address. I have people who know who she
is and will testify to who she is. I have her last residence outside of North Carolina. That
doesn't mean her birthplace. It could be, but it means where was she before she came here. It says
she landed in New York. So, where am I going to look for records? I'm going to look for her
in New York, not Baltimore or Philadelphia or somewhere else. She's currently unmarried.
She does have a passport that came from Bremen, Germany, and oh look! I love pictures! Don't you?
Now, you could stop there, but that would be not very good. What I want you to do
is zoom back out of the record. And follow a technique that all genealogists should be
doing. Always select pages before and pages after because you never know who's going to show up
on that next page. We already had a clue that we should probably look at page 37.
We do have Joseph with the same last name, his occupation. And this residence is the
same as Elizabeth. They're from the same location. He was in the Navy.
That's awesome! We can see when and where he was in the German Navy. And that will take us to other
records, hopefully. That's exciting. And we have that he is married, although that's not quite what
the ... question says. And here are some of those other children. So, we don't know the relationship
between the two people. We do know they lived in the same place. And this is the power of getting
into these Browse Only Images. Because they have clues that you need to trace down your family.
When you go to Browse Only Images a lot of times, you know that you need to look at certain records.
If you have an immigrant, you need to look for immigration records and naturalization
records. If you have someone who lived in the United States between 1880 and 1940,
you know you need to look for Census records. Although there's over on the search forms.
But there's some records you absolutely know that you need to look at. And then there's
times where you need to look just in case, and unfortunately, when you look at those records,
they don't have an index like the one I just showed you. You just have to literally turn page
by virtual page by virtual page. So, let me show you a collection that was kind of fun to look at,
and it evolves... jail. So, I am on the catalog page. I typed in Licking County, Ohio.
And I then go ahead and click that. And then I am going to scroll down to this collection that says
Correctional Institution. If you ever have a relative that seems to disappear, see if they're
in jail. So, we're going to go ahead and look up the jail register. And notice it doesn't have the
red information, but it does have the camera icon. So, I could go ahead and look at it from home.
Now, it has a number of those introductory pages. This one is a little notice this jail is arranged
chronologically by commitment. So, that's important. So, we're not going to find
our ancestors. It's arranged alphabetically. We're going to see when they actually became
incarcerated. So, we're gonna zoom back out and see when the record begins. Now, here's an
entry that I almost overlooked. It was two little notices 1875. This person was sentenced to 20 days
in jail, and here is another couple of entries. And then they started using printed forms. Now,
on this record, I can't see an actual date a year. I see May 30th to February 11th. And it wasn't
until several pages later that they said 1875. So, what's happening is May 30th is happening in 1874,
and then these dates this February is 1875. So, you have to really get into your records
to understand the dates. Because record keepers weren't always lovely with what they're doing.
But I really like this record keeper, where not only did they say they're from Ohio, but he said
he's of Cincinnati with these quotation marks. And that's important, and it'll come in later.
So, as we're looking at this record, we see Alexander Cross. He was from Ohio. What was
he charged with- burglary. When was he committed? May 30th. And he was let out in February 11th. It
says who had the authority to make this arrest and this imprisonment. And then I really like this.
I'm going to zoom way in as far as I can. So, you can see it. Can you see number of days in jail?
A number of days in dungeon! I really want to know where the Licking County dungeon was. That's
hilarious ... Okay, maybe not. A cool thing in this record collection is physical description.
For some of you who've been around your channel for a while, you know, I am passionate about you
writing your family history. And one of the greatest details is physical descriptions and
adding them to your story well. Now, we know that this gentleman Alexander was 32. He was 5'10",
had dark hair and light eyes. I really would like to have actual color. Not just light. And then we
see the fees. A commitment fee, a boarding and washing fee- $156 in 1875! Now, what do you do
when you find someone in a Browse Only collection, and you want to save that record to your tree?
Well, FamilySearch makes that easy enough. What you have to do is click ATTACH TO FAMILY TREE.
And then you can start changing things up. This is a jail register, and I'm going to... Because
this is going to show up on the Source Page. I'm going to change this title up again, so
it helps me know. So, jail register 1875. I'm going to put in the location and then type in
James arrested ... And then put what it is. Now, I can take out some key facts about this James
Griffin and put it here. Once I have completed taking the information out of this record and
put it into the notes so that I can quickly see it later, I click SELECT to choose a person.
Now, if I have recently been in the family tree, then that name is going to be right there. And
they're... They're automatically going to check it for me. Click NEXT. And now, I need to say
why I'm going to attach it to this person. So, there's my Reason Statement. It can be as thorough
or specific as you want to. And click ATTACH. And it will go be attached to the FamilySearch
family tree. So, that is a brief overview of how to browse images in FamilySearch.
I have demonstrated this multiple times on this channel using tax records, land records,
and other records. Be sure to check the links in the descriptions to go watch
those videos. If you're ready for more tips and tricks on how to research on FamilySearch,
check out this playlist right up here. And if you're ready for anything new, from DNA
to writing to who knows what, check out this video right here. There are two types of... There are...