Several years ago, www.new.familysearch.org was tested in various parts of the world as a supplement to FamilySearch, a website offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to assist people in finding their ancestors and, hopefully, to do temple work for them.  In the summer of 2009, www.new.familysearch.org was launched in Utah.  The reasoning behind the decision to supplement the original www.familysearch.org was to provide names for whom saving temple ordinances needed to be done and to merge duplicate information on people.  The reason for launching it in Utah last was so that many of the “bugs” could be worked out before the largest group of Mormons accessed it.

The original FamilySearch web site offered several components.  It made available indexes to Church collections of genealogy (IGI, Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File and Vital Records), indexes to civil records (Social Security Death Index and select censuses), research helps and the catalog of holdings at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  It has been in use for years with updates as needed.

Over the past fifty years or so, members of the Church have been asked to submit the names of their direct-line ancestors and their families for temple work.  As technology progressed, so did the number of requests.  Unfortunately, until www.new.familysearch.org was launched, there had been minimal effort to reduce duplication of information on individuals or the temple work that was performed for them.  When the number of people submitting duplicate names became unmanageable, it was decided to try to do something to avoid wasting everyone’s time and presenting sometimes confusing if not conflicting information.

To access www.new.familysearch.org, you must create an account – either one for the general public or one for members showing temple ordinances.  Once you are in, there is a presentation to introduce you to the purpose of the site and how to use it.  You can see what the Church already has on your family to avoid repeating what someone else has already submitted.  They combined all the sources they have and have not deleted or overwritten anything.  Then they organized individuals into families, based on the information submitters had given them.  This makes it easier for all members of families to see the same thing and to see when temple work has been done or needs to be done.  If there is conflicting or incomplete information on a person, it is up to you to decide if duplicates are the same person or not.  New FamilySearch also determines whether there is enough information to perform missing temple ordinances and lets you “reserve” the ordinance so you can do it.  You can prepare a Family Ordinance Request to take to the temple.  Temple workers prepare the card for you to use while in the temple performing ordinances.  When an ordinance is complete, New FamilysSearch is notified so everyone can see that it is done and not do it again.

When New FamilySearch first became available in Utah, I tried to find several ancestors but with no luck.  As a convert to the Church, and an avid genealogist and temple worker, I had completed the temple work for many generations for most of my ancestors so I knew the work had been done.  I could not understand why none of the names I entered appeared.  Then I learned that the Church had not finished entering all the people it had, so I recently tried it again.  Voila!  Everyone I searched for was there.  I was dismayed, though, to find that my grandfather  appeared at least twice even though the birth and death dates were identical, and that one of them said that all the temple ordinances were ready to be done while the other gave information on the completed temple work.  My suggestion is that you look at all possible matches in New FamilySearch to determine whether temple ordinances have indeed been done before you trot off to the temple.  There are much better things to do with your time and that of the temple workers than duplicate temple work.