Becoming Familiar With Family Search

Once you've logged in to family search from your computer you'll see the Family Search homepage. This page provides you with record hints, a todo list for you to create, memories of family members that have recently been uploaded to the database, and a list of ancestors you've recently looked at.

Family Search User Homepage

Let's look at the record hints also known as the recommended tasks (much like the leaves in Ancestry). If you see a blue card next to a name, these are possible sources for you to attach to your tree. These sources could include birth records, census records, and death records. 

OK, so I'm going to go off on a little tangent. Sources are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. They hold the key to proving certain things such as date of birth, date of death, and marriage dates. For example, one of my ancestor's names was Bertinius Bendixson. Some thought he died as a baby and others thought he lived a full life. Everybody kept changing his information or merging him if two people with the same name were created. After going through this a lot we hit a goldmine with sources. There were two children named Bertinius. One died as a baby and the other who was born a year or two later was given the same name and lived a good life. This is why attaching those sources is so important and valuable. 

Getting back on track, looking at these sources can tell you a lot about your ancestors and can lead you to new discoveries and new family. Here's my recommendation, if you're just getting started or it's been a while since you've been on Family Search, look at the recommended tasks. It will help you get a feel of what you can find and things you may want to search for when looking for those ancestors.

You can also do this from any mobile device. Once you've downloaded the FamilyTree app and after you logged in you'll see your tree. You can access the recommended tasks by clicking on the three lines at the top left of the screen then clicking on Ancestors with Tasks on an Android device or clicking on tasks at the bottom of your iDevices (iPad, iPhone...).