Accessing Brigham Young University Collections Online -- Part Three

https://sites.lib.byu.edu/familyhistory/records/

Online lists of genealogical websites are a way to begin discovering previously unknown resources. The Brigham Young University has wealth of such resources, not all of which are obvious and listed on the BYU Family History Library website. The main access point to the entire University's resources is the BYU Family History Portal.

The links on the Portal are described as follows:

Explore BYU's many resources for family history. From a 4-year bachelor's degree to library resources, from innovative computer applications to the ability to publish your family history, BYU offers a variety of services for students, researchers, and the public.

Some of the links are directed at those who would like to attend BYU as students and earn a degree in Family History, but others are very helpful to anyone who has an interest in genealogy. Here are some of the resources. I am sure you will find a few surprises.

https://cfhg.byu.edu/Pages/Home.aspx

The BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy sponsors several free online websites with amazing genealogical resources. Here are the selections with a description of each one. 

Nauvoo Community Project

http://nauvoo.byu.edu/

 Quoting from the website:

Family history students at Brigham Young University's Center for Family History and Genealogy are working in conjunction with LDS Church Historic Sites to identify the residents of Nauvoo, Illinois, from 1839 to 1846. Wherever possible, each resident will be documented from birth to death in the records of the time. This data is available to all who are interested in the history of the community, as well as descendants seeking information about their families.

Immigrant Ancestors Project

http://immigrants.byu.edu/

Quoting from the website:

The Immigrant Ancestors Project, sponsored by the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University, uses emigration registers to locate information about the birthplaces of immigrants in their native countries, which is not found in the port registers and naturalization documents in the destination countries. Volunteers working with scholars and researchers at Brigham Young University are creating a database of millions of immigrants based on these emigration registers.

Bertram Merrell's Index of English Marriages 1750 - 1836

http://englishmarriages.byu.edu/

Quoting from the website:

This website features a unique index to the marriage records of the Chester Diocese from 1750 to 1836. Records of marriage licenses, allegations or bonds have been matched with their corresponding Bishops' transcripts or parish registers. We are pleased to present his index as a fully searchable database created by student employees at the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University.

BYU Script Tutorials

https://script.byu.edu/Pages/home.aspx

I have written about this collection of websites quite a few times over the years, but I still find very little awareness of their existence. They are almost never mentioned in classes or in blog posts online. This points out an important principle of learning and research: there is always more to learn and always more to search. Here is a short explanation of the Script Tutorials from the website:

Welcome to BYU's Script Tutorial. This website offers guidance in the deciphering of documents written in handwriting styles or alphabets no longer in general use. The tutorials and materials gathered here are meant to help a variety of people – students, researchers, historians, genealogists, and indexers – learn more about old scripts and how to make use of that knowledge to analyze and interpret the past. The concentration is on western European scripts, particularly those in use between 1500 and 1800. There is general introductory material about the history of writing and the development of different scripts (or hands) as well as extensive, and interactive, language-specific materials.

Discovering English Ancestors

http://dea.byu.edu/

Here is the stated purpose of this website:

The purpose of this web site is to provide an outline of some efficient ways to trace English persons in the past. It does not attempt to cover the rest of the British Isles. The researcher can scan through it quickly and click on the underlined terms for greater details in less familiar areas. The overall approach is to list web sites where the sources can be searched on-line, and then to list the key books and filmed materials in the Family History Library (hereafter FHL) in Salt Lake City and at Brigham Young University (BYU) in nearby Provo, Utah, needed to do original research. 

This web site is meant to assist professional scholars doing biography, demography, prosopography, the study of a place or the family as an institution as well as the genealogist. If you are interested in personal family history or are a beginning genealogist continue with the next section. If you are a professional scholar or seasoned genealogist in English research you may wish to skip to the last two sections on Web Sites and Major Records for Original Research.

Welsch Mormon History

http://welshmormon.byu.edu/

I happen to have Welsh ancestors. Believe me, if you do, you need all the help you can get. Here is a summary of this helpful website. 

Welsh Mormon History seeks to find and share information about the Welsh converts to Mormonism who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century. Family history students at Brigham Young University are working to document each immigrant through the available records of the time, as well as linking journals, biographies, and photos to each immigrant.

The last Project listed by the Center for Family History and Genealogy is the Family History Companion. Some of the information here might be useful, but the Guide referred to on the website has been discontinued and replaced, so the information is somewhat outdated.

Stay tuned for more on this subject.

For the first part of this series see:

http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2017/06/accessing-brigham-young-university_8.html
http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2017/06/accessing-brigham-young-university.html

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