FYI

I have been searching records for the village of Curry Mallet, England and the surrounding area. I placed a large microfilm order for parish records of the area. They finally arrived and off I went to my local FHL.

I was unprepared for how tiny the handwriting was on the microfilm. I requested a magnifying glass, however, my eyes just could not focus on the print. I left that night with a pounding headache.

I decided to visit again, but at a different time. The daytime clerk was most helpful when I explained my dilemma. The original records must have been on a large printed page and needed to be significantly reduced to fit onto microfilm. She happily directed me to a microfilm viewer that had a magnifying lens built into the machine. Hallelujah! My problem was solved!

I didn’t realize that microfilm viewers come with different magnifications and am wondering if others know this. I hope this little post helps someone else read microfilm more easily!

Linda

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

 My Dollen Family Tree has many branches. My focus of late has been on my British ancestors. Jumping the pond proves challenging and fills me with ideas and many questions.

Information gathered from the Family Search Somerset, England Wiki has possibly advanced my trees to the early 1700s. While the indexes provide names, dates, towns, parishes etc., they do not give me scans/copies of the original documents. Naturally, I want to see the documents.

This is the point where I must use a favorite quote; “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know!” for it aptly applies to my Family Search strategies. When using Family Search, my preferred method of search has been to begin by browsing by location near the bottom of the home page. It worked well until I decided to jump the pond, as I was unable to located records for Somerset, England.

Now my cousin, Sharon, is always sharing scans of British baptismal, marriage and burial records located through Family Search. She would tell me what parish she located them in, but I was unable to find the records. I was doing something wrong!

Tired of bumping into Family Search brick wall, I decided to try a novel approach. Why not try the Family Search Catalog? I chose to search by place names.

• I entered Curry Mallet, Somerset, England. No Luck!
• I entered Somerset, England. No Luck!
• I entered England. I got lucky with an abundance of search opportunities. I needed to define my parameters.
• I entered England, Somerset, Curry Mallet. BINGO! There they were: census, church, poorhouse, taxation, and land and property records! Microfilm was ordered and I am now waiting to receive them.

 It took me awhile to understand the search parameters for Family Search, but making mistakes still proves to be the best learning experience.

• When adding information to my personal trees, I always record U.S. data as city, county, state, country.
•  For my British ancestors, I record town, county, country.

The logic used in my personal trees did not work with Family Search’s catalog. As I said earlier, you just don’t know what you don’t know! But now I know!

Lessoned learned: It is time to explore Family Search more thoroughly.

Happy Hunting!

Linda