FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organisation in the world. It is run and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch for records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history, and why wouldn’t you since there are literally billions of records listed here … for FREE!!

For over 100 years, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide. Users can access this data free online at FamilySearch.org, their new FamilySearch Pilot site, or through over 4,500 Family History Centres in 70 countries, including the renowned Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Latter-Day Saints trace their ancestry as part of their religion. Like it or not, there is no way that genealogy would be where it is today without them.

For anyone who has ever ordered films from the LDS, either online or through your local Family History Centre, here is a spectacular look inside where these records are stored. Not only the mountain and vaults itself, but also in the workings of FamilySearch and their new digitisation project.

It is true that Australia seems to be behind the rest of the world (well, the US and UK) as far as getting family history data online. But it is coming, bit-by-bit.

This is a listing of new ‘Australian’ data added on to these online data websites recently.

ANCESTRY.COM.AU
Ancestry.com.au continue to add to their collection, by adding the following:
New South Wales, Australia, Applications and Admissions to Orphan Schools, 1817-1833

ANCESTRY WORLD ARCHIVE PROJECT
The World Archive Project, is a division of Ancestry.com which “lets you help us bring free historical record collections to the public. Contributors become the first to see new collections as they type in information that creates searchable record indexes.”  Keep an eye on this site, or better yet, register as an indexer, as there are LOTS of Australian records being worked on here. And the sooner they’re indexed, the sooner everyone has access.

AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPERS (NLA and TROVE)
The availability of the Australian newspapers continues at an amazing speed (though no doubt, just the one we want isn’t yet online!!), but still to even have these coming is a phenomenal resource for all. These newspapers appear both on the NLA Australian Newspapers website, as well as on TROVE.
Camperdown Chronicle (Vic, 1877-1954)
- From 1880-12-03 to 1882-04-29
- From 1883-12-01 to 1885-05-30
- From 1899-09-02 to 1900-08-30
- From 1903-07-02 to 1904-02-27
- From 1908-03-03 to 1908-10-31
- From 1911-07-01 to 1914-01-31
- From 1914-10-01 to 1915-05-29
- From 1917-06-02 to 1918-04-20
- From 1919-05-01 to 1919-12-30
- From 1931-07-02 to 1931-12-31
- From 1936-01-04 to 1937-06-29
- From 1940-07-02 to 1940-12-31
- From 1942-01-06 to 1942-12-29
- From 1953-01-06 to 1953-12-29

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA, 1889-1931)
- From 1870-01-01 to 1871-12-30
- From 1889-04-01 to 1890-03-31
- From 1891-04-01 to 1892-03-31
- From 1892-04-01 to 1893-03-31
- From 1893-04-01 to 1895-03-30

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic, 1848-1954)
- From 1951-01-01 to 1951-04-30
- From 1954-01-01 to 1954-04-30
- From 1954-05-01 to 1954-12-31

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas, 1860-1954)
- From 1921-01-01 to 1921-12-31
- From 1922-01-02 to 1922-08-31
- From 1922-09-01 to 1925-06-30
- From 1927-10-01 to 1928-03-31
- From 1928-10-01 to 1929-03-29
- From 1929-04-01 to 1929-09-30
- From 1932-07-01 to 1933-12-30
- From 1934-01-01 to 1934-09-29
- From 1936-03-02 to 1936-08-31
- From 1937-03-01 to 1937-08-31
- From 1938-03-01 to 1948-06-30
- From 1949-01-01 to 1949-04-30
- From 1949-05-02 to 1949-12-31
- From 1950-01-02 to 1950-12-30
- From 1951-09-01 to 1952-04-30

The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld, 1866-1939)
- From 1884-01-05 to 1884-12-27
- From 1897-05-01 to 1897-12-25
- From 1906-09-01 to 1907-04-27
- From 1908-09-05 to 1909-04-24
- From 1914-01-03 to 1914-12-26
- From 1916-01-01 to 1916-04-26
- From 1916-05-06 to 1916-12-30
- From 1920-01-03 to 1920-12-25
- From 1924-01-05 to 1924-12-27
- From 1925-01-03 to 1925-12-26
- From 1927-01-01 to 1927-12-29
- From 1937-01-07 to 1937-12-29

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW, 1842-1954)
- From 1879-07-26 to 1880-03-12
- From 1880-10-28 to 1883-02-12
- From 1885-04-20 to 1886-03-31
- From 1886-09-27 to 1898-10-31
- From 1899-05-25 to 1907-07-20
- From 1908-01-13 to 1913-02-07
- From 1913-07-01 to 1913-11-19
- From 1916-01-26 to 1916-07-08
- From 1929-07-29 to 1929-11-12
- From 1930-04-07 to 1931-02-28
- From 1932-01-01 to 1933-02-28
- From 1943-01-01 to 1945-06-30
- From 1946-01-01 to 1946-04-30
- From 1946-09-02 to 1948-03-31
- From 1949-03-01 to 1949-08-31
- From 1951-09-01 to 1951-12-31

The West Australian (Perth, WA, 1879-1954)
- From 1901-03-05 to 1901-11-26
- From 1901-11-27 to 1902-08-13
- From 1903-05-06 to 1903-12-31
- From 1904-09-14 to 1906-07-07
- From 1906-11-01 to 1906-12-28
- From 1936-02-29 to 1936-05-15

FAMILY HISTORY SA
Family History SA, which is a site dedicated to South Australian records has recently added the following to their colelction:
South Australian Births 1836-54

FAMILY TREE OZ
This is a site dedicated to scanning old books, and publishing them online for free.
South Australian Motor Vehicle Registrations 1906-1920
Wise’s Tasmania Post Office Directory 1945-1946

FAMILYSEARCH
The FamilySearch Pilot Site continues to grow, and although not currently focussing on Australian records, the following has recently been added:
Australia, NSW and ACT, Masonic Lodge Card Indexes 1831-1930 (images only)
Australia, NSW and ACT, Masonic Lodge Registers 1831-1930 (images only)

QUEENSLAND STATE ARCHIVES
The Queensland State Archives has a long list of newly added records to their collection, you can see it here.

THE SHIPS LIST
Passengers:
– barque August, from Hamburg, to Port Adelaide 9th May 1855
– barque Johann Caesar, from Hamburg, to Port Adelaide 1st January 1855
– barque Wilhelmine, from Bremen, to Port Adelaide 1st October 1855
– ship Australia, from Hamburg, to Port Adelaide 4th March 1855
– ship Grand Trianon, from Liverpool to Port Adelaide 23rd April 1860
– ship La Rochelle, from Hamburg, to Port Adelaide 3rd September 1855
– ship Peter Goddefroy, from Hamburg, to Port Adelaide 18th November 1855

Happy searching … and keep an eye online for more good Australian data to come!!

While Australia is a little behind the rest of the world in online genealogy content, it is coming bit-by-bit, and as some significant databases have gone online recently I thought I would make mention of it – just in case you missed them.

FAMILYSEARCH
In amongst the 300 million new records that FamilySearch added to their Pilot Site a few weeks ago, were:
Australia Births and Baptisms 1792-1981
Australia Deaths and Burials 1816-1980

ANCESTRY
Ancestry.com.au continue to add to their collection, by adding the following:
Queensland, Australia, Passenger Lists, 1848-1912
Western Australia Post Office Directory 1910
Western Australia Post Office Directory 1926

FAMILY HISTORY SA
While not new, the following from Family History SA have been updated and extended:
South Australian Cemeteries Burials now includes Nailsworth North Road Anglican Cemetery – up to 1900
South Australian District Constables 1853 to 1920
South Australian Marriages 1836 to 1855
South Australian Naturalizations
South Australian Police 1838 to 1920

BDM REGISTRARS
New South Wales Births, Deaths & Marriages
This index contains the births, deaths and marriage recorded in New South Wales between the years: births 1788-1909, deaths 1788-1979, and marriages 1788-1959.

Queensland Births, Deaths & Marriages
Index records are available for births registered up to and including 1914, deaths registered up to and including 1964 and marriages registered up to and including 1934.

Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages
The Historical Index contains entries relating to births in Victoria from 1853 to 1908, marriages in Victoria from 1853 to 1942, deaths in Victoria from 1853 to 1985, and church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria from 1836 to 1853.

Western Australian Births, Death & Marriages
Free online searching of Western Australian birth, death and marriage indexes is available for the following ranges of years: Births 1841 to 1932, Deaths 1841 to 1965, and Marriages 1841 to 1936.

Happy searching … and keep an eye online for more good Australian data to come!!

As of March 26th RootsMagic 4 and RootsMagic Essentials genealogy software now includes a new ”AutoMatch” feature for FamilySearch. They become the first – and currently the only - genealogy software to offer this feature.

As FamilySearch certified software, RootsMagic and RootsMagic Essentials both allow you to share information to and from the new FamilySearch. In order to do any of this for a person, you must first match the person in your own file with the same person in the new FamilySearch system. In the past, a user was required to find a match for each person one-at-a-time, person-by-person.

The latest news from the makers of RootsMagic is …

We have just released a minor update to RootsMagic 4 (version 4.0.8.0).

We’ve been busy adapting a lot of internal code preparing RootsMagic 4 for translation into other languages, but we decided to go ahead and release this update with some bug fixes in the meantime.  We realize it has been longer than usual between updates, but we had major parts of the program torn out during the language reconstruction.   But with that out of the way we will be getting back to a more normal update release schedule.

If you have been using RootsMagic’s New FamilySearch features, then this is a required update, because changes to New FamilySearch effective Monday morning, March 29th (at midnight) will cause older versions of RootsMagic to be unable to connect to New FamilySearch.  This update is required to continue using RM’s New FamilySearch features after that date.  (NOTE: New FamilySearch is still in a phased rollout, and will become available to the general public later this year).

If you have the RootsMagic News screen come up when you start RootsMagic, it may have already notified you of this update.  If not, you can do “Help > Check for Updates” from the RootsMagic menu to download and install this update.

You can also download the update from here.

To see what was added and fixed you can see them here.

The people over at Legacy Family Tree have been busy working on the new releases of Legacy … they released the following announcement a few days ago:

“Legacy version 7.5 is finally almost here. Version 7.4 is even closer….

In January we will release Legacy 7.4 which will add most of the long-awaited FamilySearch integration tools to Legacy. This will be a free update for both Standard and Legacy Deluxe edition users [as well as Legacy Platinum Australian & New Zealand edition users].

We’ve created a special web site devoted to keeping you updated on this release. At www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/fs.asp we will publish the very latest information:

• News / Updates section – this is where we will publish the latest announcements (in addition to this LegacyNews blog)
• Video Tutorials – we’ve published our first video entitled Getting Started in Legacy Family Tree for the brand new LDS genealogist.
• Preparing for Legacy 7.5 – these are links to all the articles we’ve published in LegacyNews about preparing your Legacy family file for working with the new FamilySearch tools”

We’ll keep you informed with more about version 7.5 as the release comes closer.

If you are a user of Legacy Family Tree, we have compiled a listing of Legacy User Groups around Australia.