Sanders County residents dig into their family roots

Sanders County residences came together Saturday to learn about the locally available resources on how to research their family roots.

The classes took place Saturday, Oct. 22, at the Plains Family History Center, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Attendees were introduced to the many family research websites that are free to use at the local center such as Ancestory.com and FamilySearch.org, and fold3.com for military records.

Family history consultant Kathy Bowen was on hand to give a basic overview of the available websites and their functions. Another consultant, Sandy Baker, gave more hands-on instructions with the six available computers for research.

Class attendee Leone Cunningham from Thompson Falls said she caught the family history bug over 30 years ago when she became interested in finding out about her uncle who, at the age of 19, was shot down in World War I. She said that she has been going to the Family History Centers because of the free access to the websites that would have cost her hundreds if used at home.

Cunningham said it was easy to get started using Family Search. All she needed to start was some basic information about her grandparent, like birth dates or death dates. Cunningham said she has personally researched her family back to 1000 AD.

Family Search is a free website with over 14.3 billion searchable names and images from historical records from ancestral homelands all over the globe. Another popular website is Ancestry with over 30 billion records to search.

Volunteers worldwide are continually adding additional records. In 2019 over 300,000 people volunteered 10.9 million hours to indexing. Indexing involves looking at scanned historical records displayed on their home screens and typing important details to create a digital index of the record that is made to specific websites.

Local indexing is taking place with Native American documents. When indexing, Baker said it was hard to accept the short life span of people from years past.

Family History Center hours are Monday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Wednesday 2-7 p.m. Email to setup your time at the center to: kathrynbowen50@gmail.com or you can call online support: Monday-Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 1 to 8 p.m. at 866-406-1830.