RE: Steemit Bingo Game #2 - Make Connections and have fun (plus SBD and other prizes on offer!)
My dad has been working on genealogy for many years now. I picked up the bug from him. As I'm LDS now, there is a strong emphasis on family history and (not being in current contact with my father - long story) I started over this year. Thankfully with everyone else who is learning these days as well, it was relatively easy to get a lot done in a short space of time. Ancestry (membership through church) has done a lot of good in this area.
Sure, there are still some rather large red herrings in places, but the general quality of research has improved immensely over the years. Even if you had yours researched a couple of years ago, there's more information available online all the time. Several groups, including my church, are working on indexing some of the old records so that more and more is available online.
Only a few years ago, it was reckoned that only 10% of the available genealogy information is online yet! So, it's going to take a long, long time to catch up!
That's cool! And only 10%...amazing. I would have thought that number would be higher.
I also forgot to say thank you for including me on your card :) Oh! and I put you on mine!
I saw your card - that's what got me started. But yes, thanks for including me as well, otherwise I wouldn't have known about it!
Between sessions of our general conference yesterday (huge spiritual FEAST that happens twice a year in our church), they were talking about how the Mormons have been very busy recording the ORAL histories in several African nations. People have been taught to remember their own family histories going back until the 14th century in some cases - people who remember losing people to slavery. One individual had over 2 thousand people listed in that oral history!!! So far, they've recorded 15 million people from 12 different African countries. HUGE project! Of course, it will be even longer before these new records are digitized and put online.
US genealogical records (probably Canada too) are much more heavily digitized than records in other countries. But the other countries are gradually caught up. The problem is, they have to find suitable people for indexing the records onto Family Search and Ancestry - and that often requires native speakers.
Wow, the idea of retaining that much information as oral history is amazing!! Thank you for the geneology lesson ;)