Family History work is so much more than looking up the birth and death dates of your family members. When you add more information to your family member’s person page on FamilySearch, you are helping write their digital biography.
Watch the How-To Video
Take a moment to watch the video below. It has step-by-step instructions of how to add information to a family member’s profile. Then head over to your family tree, and start enriching the memory of your ancestor.
Helpful Notes and Takeaways
Adding details to your ancestor’s profile can help with your family history work in 2 ways. First, it can increase the accuracy of your record searches. And second, it can paint a clearer picture of your ancestor’s life and draw you closer to them.
You can add different types of information to a person page. The options include:
• Brief Life History: Add a written summary of their life.
• Vitals: Add more vital information, like christening or burial information.
• Other Information: Add items such as alternate names, occupation, immigration, military service, stories about their life, and more.
• Family Members: Add spouses, children, parents, uncles, and aunts.
Increase Accuracy of Your Record Searches
Knowing your family member’s vital information such as birth date and birthplace can help you easily search through common records like birth certificates.
But with every piece of additional information you add, you are making your record searches that much more specific and effective. For example, if you can add your family member’s burial and military service, this will sharpen your search to include the corresponding burial and military records.
Enrich Your Ancestor's Profile
With the option to add more information, you can build out the framework of your ancestor’s life and create a connection with them. Your family member goes from being a name on an old document to a real person with real successes, struggles, and stories.
What was going on in the world around them? What was their homelife like? How did their choices affect their life? These are questions you can start answering when you add more information to their profile.
You might be surprised at how the seemingly boring profile of your ancestors with only their birth and death dates can transform into a rich narrative of their meaningful life.
Watch Our Other How-To Videos
At FamilySearch, we care about connecting you with your family, and we provide fun discovery experiences and family history services for free. Why? Because we cherish families and believe that connecting generations can improve our lives now and forever. We are a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To learn more about our beliefs, click here.
