Saratoga Springs - Eagle Mountain - Lehi - Fairfield - Cedar Fort - Cedar Hills - American Fork - Highland - Alpine
The Crossroads Journal

Expand your family tree at the new FamilySearch Center

By Christy Jepson
The new FamilySearch Center in Lehi is a great place to explore and discover your family history. The center has many resources to help guests research their ancestors and preserve treasured photos and documents.

Not only does the center have over 100 computers for research, they have a 35mm slide scanner, photo scanner, flatbed scanner and a document scanner to help preserve and digitize photos and documents. After scanning your items, these machines can put the information on a USB drive or your free FamilySearch account. The center also has equipment which transfers VHS videos to DVDs and professional recording studios for guests who would like to tell stories and memories.

Inside the FamilySearch Center is the Discovery Area which offers lots of interactive activities in different stations. It is recommended that to make this experience in the Discovery Area more personable, guests should register for a free FamilySearch account (if you don't have one, the volunteers at the center can help you get one set up.)

In the Discovery Area you are given an iPad to 'dock' at various stations. These stations help bring your history to life. The areas are:
*All About Me--This area helps you discover the meaning of your name, interesting facts, events, and what was going on when you were born.
*My Time Machine--This area helps you discover what was going on during the time of your ancestors.
*Where I Come From--This area is where you can see exactly all the places your ancestors came from on a large interactive map.
*My Famous Relatives--This area will show you how you are related to founding fathers, inventors, religious leaders and even celebrities.
*Picture My Heritage--This area is where you take a picture of your face and chose a picture of cultural clothing of your ancestors to see how you would look back then.
*Record My Story--This area is where you can record memories or stories in a professional recording studio. One room is for a larger group to record memories and the other one is a smaller studio where an individual or two can record memories or stories. You can bring a USB drive or upload these recordings to your FamilySearch account.

Along with the interactive discovery area, there are classrooms that are used for training and where they teach free how-to classes. Some of the March class topics are; Writing your Personal and Family History, Why the Wiki, Using Other Apps, Find My Cousins & Descendants Research, Computer Basics, Using Memories in Family Search, and Indexing,

The center has about 110 LDS church service missionaries available to help anyone who wants to start or learn about their family history. The services at the center are free. There are five FamilySearch Centers in the country: Lehi, Salt Lake, St. George, Layton, Washington, and coming soon in 2019, Ogden, Utah.

The FamilySearch Center is located at 3201 Garden Drive and is located just south of the Thanksgiving Point Golf Clubhouse. To contact them call 801-356-5820. They are open are Monday and Fridays 9 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Thursdays 9 am to 9 pm, and Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm. To see the schedule for the classes visit www.FamilySearch.org/fhc/lehi.
The community news source for Eagle Mountain Utah, Saratoga Springs Utah, Lehi Utah, American Fork Utah, Highland Utah, Alpine Utah, and The Cedar Valley, including Cedar Fort Utah and Fairfield Utah. Copyright 2024 The Crossroads Journal LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 


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