Posted on Jul 24, 2009

TERRE HAUTE — This past fall, Family Search International announced the addition of several projects to its goal of digitizing the records of the world and placing them online. One of the latest projects involves Family Search joining with the Houston Public Library, one of the top 10 genealogy libraries in the country, to digitize its large collection of Gulf Coast records. These texts include county and local histories, registers of individuals, directories of Texas Rangers, church histories and biographical dictionaries. The targeted publications range in date from 1795 to 1923, says a spokesman for FamilySearch. The digitized records are now being placed online for free access at FamilySearch.org and HoustonLibrary.org. As of last week, 25,000 historical titles had been added to the database. Other projects include FamilySearch’s joining with Ancestry Canada to digitize and index the 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1916 Canadian census records, and FamilySearch’s Historical Family Reconstruction unit joining with Norway’s University of Tromsøø to digitize the 1875 Norwegian census. Other partners working with Family Search include the National Archives of Brussels, the Arkansas Genealogical Society, the Genealogical Society of Nova Scotia, the Immigrant Ancestors Project, the Indiana Genealogical Society, the Ohio Genealogical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Some U.S. projects of interest include the 1850, 1860 and 1870 federal censuses, the 1850 Mortality Schedules, the 1850 Slave Schedules, Indiana Marriages 1790-April 1905, Indiana Marriage Returns 1882- April 1905, Ohio Tax Records, Arkansas Marriages, the Florida 1945 state census, the Illinois 1920 federal census, Massachusetts Death Records 1906-1915, New Hampshire’s early to-1900 births and Vermont’s Militia Records. Plus there are many foreign projects that include records from Mexico, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Flanders, Nicaragua, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and Germany. To access all these databases, which are free and growing every day, go to the Web site. The project is proceeding at a very fast pace, so keep checking back for more additions to the site.