Genealogy Chat

See below

This may have been answered before, in which case I apologise! It occurred to me today that the IGI is all in English and concerns events taking place in Britain and US, with very few exceptions. I understand that the IGI is compiled by members of the LDS Church as part of their religious obligation to 'reunite' their ancestors. So, given that there must be non-English speaking LDS members living all over the world, then why have not, for example, the Parish Registers of Poland been transcribed onto the IGI? Or have they and I am missing a huge chunk of the IGI! Can anyone elaborate? Marjorie

Maybe because the LDS are based in the US and a load of people who migrated to the US were from the UK...so they concentrated their efforts on UK and US records.

hiyah Just a thought might Poland be in the miscellaneous countries?

It does give other parts of the world. Poland is there, within Continental Europe. :-) Joy

On the IGI when you insert Region you then are given opportunity to select a country depending on the Region chosen. If you go to Family Search and enter a surname ONLY and then Search you will see a breakdown of all the IGI areas and the censuses on the right of the opening page, this also gives you an idea of the scope of the LDS site.

Thankyou for your replies. My point was really that the IGI only seems to cover English-speaking countries. Since most of us, and presumably, most LDS Church members will eventually come across a 'Foreign' ancestor, why have the LDS members not transcribed (and translated) any foreign registers? There are indeed plenty of instances on the IGI of So and So, born Prussia, or whatever, but there the information stops - no previous entry. Marjorie

Perhaps, Marjorie, they have not been allowed to by the countries' church authorities. Some in England have not allowed them to have parish registers. Joy

As the LDS is based in Salt Lake City presumably English is the acceptable language. Most people searching for roots will be English speaking people now resident in G B USA Australia Canada etc., who emigrated from Continental Europe in the widest sense of the term. As far as Germany is concerned many of the people there have their family history virtually written for them in the shape of Ortsfamiliebuch and French family history is also relatively easy to follow through their certificates which give far more information than ours. As for the Chinese or Eastern countries working from Poland eastward I think we have to be thankful that their info on the IGI etc., are not in cyrillic script but much information regarding Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus etc., may never be known as full records were not kept and with the various tyrranies they have all encountered I suggest that there were never records of births etc., I wish it were otherwise but even with my great greats I have reached a point where I will never find answers prior to mid 1800s as the family name possible klnown in cyrrilic alphabet was interpreted on arrival in this country at the whim of the immigration authority. And that is one of the biggest problems - translation of names, even if they were written in Chinese, Greek, Russian etc., or even Hebrew, Arabic ............

I guess its a combination of things - Eastern block countries would not have allowed the Mormons to preach or be in their countries - perhaps things have now changed after the USSR break up and we will start to get more from that part of the world. Also, as already mentioned, they can only have the records if the church will allow them to. I know there are no records from Norfolk parishes because they refused to hand the info over.

Yes, of course - I had not thought about the oppression of the various churches. I was talking to a friend today who was born in Finland. Their family history is officially recorded, and has been for the last 500 years! She has promised to show me her 'Family Tree' - which goes by the mother's name incidentally, with fathers being recorded as we record wives!! (Ra ra, lets hear it for the girls!). She says that this information (for Finland) was used a few years ago in a Genetic Project to pin down the inheritance of maternal diseases. She also said (very worryingly to me anyway) that the LDS Church made its Ancestral Files freely available to this same project. I had the unworthy thought that I hoped they didnt use the one attributed to MY family - 44 children born to one poor woman, and confidently trots right back to the year 809! Thanks to everyone who replied - I had visions of there being an untapped source that I knew nothing about. Marjorie