How to find your family records using the FamilySearch app?

Find your ancestors and reconstruct your family history from a framework of billions of historical records.

If you're looking to find your ancestors' records but don't know where to start, the FamilySearch app can help. The tool connects people all over the world with the objective of creating, sharing and preserving genealogical records.

The service is free, being created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and can be used by anyone, regardless of religious creed. In addition to the app, FamilySearch is available on the website and at family history centers in Brazil.

In the following post, you'll learn a little more about this app and the steps to discover your family's origin. Come with us!

What is FamilySearch?

The genealogical society was born in 1894 in Utah to help Church members find their ancestors. In 1964, the first FamilySearch history center opened, offering research assistance.

In 1999, with technological transformations on the rise, the FamilySearch website aired and became quite popular. According to the institution, the average of visits per day is 400 thousand accesses.

The FamilySearch app preserve family records and makes them accessible to Internet users for free. The work is done worldwide based on 10.000 query files. There are several copies of files such as microfiche, digital records and microfilms, compiled and stored in the app's database, originating in more than 100 countries.

How does the FamilySearch app work?

FamilySearch has several resources to help you in this endeavor of searching for your family's genealogy and history. Starting with the fact that it is possible to build a family tree, adding members and gathering data to trace more accurate genealogical histories.

Through the app, you can also search records, images, genealogies and catalogs. And this is possible due to the cooperative work between the archival institutions, such as notary offices, which digitize various files, which are made available for research.

In fact, FamilySearch has the largest genealogical collection in the world in its domains, and each file is transcribed by volunteers in order to make them searchable. To give you an idea, FamilySearch indexing since 2006 has resulted in over 1 billion searchable records.

Last but not least, we have the 'souvenirs' feature, through which you can share photos, audios and documents of your family members, and you can even tag them.

There are other features that make searching for your ancestors become even more dynamic. Like the 'last names' experience, where you get to know the regions where your last name is most popular.

In 'all about me', you can tell about your life story, categorizing it into different areas such as: friends, family and spiritual life. In 'compare faces', you can compare your profile with that of your ancestors in order to discover the percentage of similarity.

And if you still have questions about any process, you can find answers in the FAQs, Community, Help Center and Tutorials tabs.

FamilySearch: How to create your family tree?

To start building your family tree, you'll need to collect some information from your family members to gather as much information about them as possible. With this information in hand, it is easy to trace a family origin.

Just enter the app and register, creating a login and password. Within the app, click on 'Family tree', followed by 'tree'. Soon after, it will be time to create a kind of profile for each of your family members and ancestors, adding the collected data such as: name, surname, age, date of birth (and death if any), place, etc.

Now, if you want to find your ancestors, go to the 'search' tab, there you'll use two main tools. First, the 'logs' feature, which you'll be able to search through historical data of your ancestors. You can use filters to refine your search, making it even more accurate.

Another very interesting feature is the 'catalog'. Using this feature's search engine, you can search for a city in any country in the world to get to Church books and records for that city.

These documents may contain the names of your ancestors, as well as other details such as where they lived. In general, you will find baptism records, marriage and death. By the way, these records tend to be in an excellent state of conservation.

All of this information can be decisive when building your family tree using the FamilySearch app. Therefore, read all of them very carefully so as not to lose any data. The more information you have, the more chances of putting together an assertive family tree.

It is worth remembering that in cases of adding a deceased relative, the platform will automatically pull all the data it has about this ancestor in its database. This way, you will have more time to search for new family members.