Find Yourself in the Service of Others
-- Ghandi
Welcome to day seven of the 21 Day Genealogy Challenge.
The past week has been a busy and productive one! Today is a great day to give back to the
genealogy world. There are quite a few
options you can choose from to donate your time to helping others with their
family history. Here are a few of my
personal favourites.
Index on Family Search. FamilySearch
is a free genealogical site where you can donate your time indexing
records. Indexing provides researchers
like us the opportunity to find ancestors in historical documents. The type of
records to index vary from military draft records to obituaries. You choose the level of proficiency you
desire. If reading old script handwriting is difficult for you, you may choose typed documents such as a marriage or death certificate. The site has tutorial videos to
help you along the way. Once you start,
you won’t want to stop! This is a
worthwhile activity that can be fun and addicting!
 |
| Obituary for Judson Chesterfield Wilson. |
BillionGraves. Is it
a gorgeous day? Grab your smart phone or
tablet and head to a local cemetery and snap pictures of graves and upload the
photos to BillionGraves. This site is a
boon to people doing family history work.
Imagine finding online a photograph of your ancestor’s resting
place. Now imagine that the image also
has the gps coordinates that leads you to not only the cemetery but to the
exact burial plot! That is what you will
find with BillionGraves.
 |
| Whitehall Cemetery, Prince William County, Virginia. March 2016. |
If you don’t have a smartphone, tablet or iPad with which to
take pictures, there are other ways you can help. With BillionGraves, you can transcribe pictures
of headstones that volunteers have uploaded.
It is easy and fun to do, and again, can be somewhat addicting. Imagine the people you are helping! Visit the BillionGraves site to learn more.
Giving Back
Giving back to the genealogy world is good karma. Somewhere out there someone is digitizing a
document or grave of your ancestor and when you come across it, you will be grateful
that they did!
Do you know of a
genealogical site that allows for volunteer opportunities? If so, we would love to hear from you! Post your suggestions in the comment section
at the bottom of this blog.
Congratulations!
You have completed day seven of the 21
Day Genealogy Challenge! If you have any
questions or comments, feel free to post them in the Blog Comment section
below. Invite your friends to join this
challenge by sharing this blog with them on Google+,
Twitter and Facebook. The share icons
are just below this blog entry.
Thank you for
joining this challenge and remember…..
History not shared is History forgotten!
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