Social Security Death Index ...

GenealogyBank now offers a free search of the Social Security Death Index from 1937 to the present. There are over 82 million death records online and new content is added weekly. GenealogyBank advertises this database as the most comprehensive SSDI site online! Check it out HERE.

The SSDI can tell you when and where your ancestor died, and their Social Security number (SSN). You can use the SSN and death information to request a copy of their SS-5, the application record for a Social Security card.

Other places with the SSDI free include FamilySearch, FamilyTreeLegends, World Vital Records, NewEnglandAncestors.org and RootsWeb. Each site adds new death information from the SSA on a different schedule.

You can search several sites' SSDI databases simultaneously through Stephen P. Morse's One-Step search.

Fall Classes Begin September 3, 2008 ...

Family History classes resume at 7:00 pm on September 3, 2008, in the Family History Teaching Center located at the Butler Hill Chapel, 2700 East 7000 South. To sign-up, send an email to the Center Directors at dofamilyhistory@comcast.net.

Here is the September schedule:

• Wednesday, September 3 - How to Organize Your Paper Files
• Wednesday, September 10 - Open Night (see note below)
  
• Wednesday, September 17 - Getting Started in Personal Ancestral File 5.2 (PAF 5.2)
• Wednesday, September 24 - Open Night

NOTE: Family History Consultants are available on Open Nights to help attendees with personal research or answer questions about any Family History subject. You do NOT have to attend the classes to attend the Open Nights.

Classes are held on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday and Open Nights are on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday from September through May. Classes and Open Nights begin at 7:00 pm. The Center closes at 9:00 pm.

Welcome!

This is the inaugural post to my new Blog, Only Family History. As the name implies, only Family History topics will be discussed. In particular, the Blog is intended for two primary audiences:

• My Family
• Family History Consultants

Hopefully there will be something, sometime that will help or even inspire someone to be more actively involved with Family History work. I like this statement by Wilford Woodruff:

"I wish many times that the veil were lifted off the face of the Latter-day Saints. I wish we could see and know the things of God as they do who are laboring for the salvation of the human family who are in the spirit world; for if this were so, this whole people, with very few, if any, exceptions, would lose all interest in the riches of the world, and instead thereof their whole desires and labors would be directed to redeem their dead."

As posts appear in the next few days and weeks, let me know your thoughts. Thanks!