March 11, 2005

Searching for past lives

San Jose Family History Center helps patrons trace their roots

By Marilyn Fahey
Special to the Times

Suppose you want to know whether your great-great grandpa was Ohio’s first white settler, like grandma always said he was, or whether his great-great grandpa really was on the Mayflower when it landed at Plymouth Rock.

The center’s most valuable resources include its volunteers, such as (left to right) Mazelle Nohr, Judy Gehman and Jim Roberson. Photo by Marilyn Fahey

Or maybe you just want to know who your ancestors were, and when and where they were born, married and died.

Where can you go to find this information? A good place to start is the San Jose Family History Center (FHC).

Located at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on San Felipe Road, the FHC isn’t just for the use of church members: it’s open to all. Consequently, the center has become a magnet for genealogists in the Evergreen area and beyond.

Volunteer-based center
Judy Gehman first visited the FHC when she lived in Morgan Hill and continued making the trek for many years as she pursued her family research. Now a resident of The Villages, Judy volunteers at the center because, as she says, “I got so much help from the library that I wanted to give something back.”

Gehman is one of about 40 volunteers at the FHC, most of whom, like Gehman, have spent years studying their family history.

Volunteer Mazelle Nohr admits that family history research can be addictive, not in small part because “It gives you a sense of where you came from and a sense of who you are.” Nohr has dug so deeply and learned so much family history that she says, only half-jokingly, “I’ve discovered I’m probably related to everyone who lives in Michigan.”

With all their experience, the volunteers are a prime resource for the center’s patrons. But, as Jim Robertson, another volunteer, likes to point out, “We don’t do the research for you. We help you get started.”

Getting started
Chances are, on your first visit to the FHC a volunteer will help you fill out a pedigree chart and then lead you straight to the card catalog. “This is the key to the whole setup,” Robertson says. Information on all the center’s onsite material is filed here, categorized by family surname, state and author.

So, for instance, to find out whether your ancestor John Hartley was one of the first American settlers in what would become Ohio, you could look under “Hartley” or “Ohio,” or under the name of an author who writes extensively about early Ohio history.

What you’d find in the card catalog would direct you to an assortment of the center’s in-house books, periodicals and microfiche. These items are stored in the main room of the center, along with the card catalog, a microfiche printer and microfiche readers, a copier, a large worktable and computers connected to the Internet. More Internet computers line the walls of the room next door.

One recent Saturday, the main room was empty while only four patrons were logged on to computers. “This is a quiet day,” Gehman said. “All the other Saturdays, we’ve been swamped.”

The patrons in the computer room seemed to be enjoying the quiet. They were busy searching online genealogical databases, including familysearch.org, the LDS family history Web site that lists records in the LDS system that help family historians in their research.

Sometimes the material listed in familysearch.org is available at the FHC. Other materials can be borrowed from the main LDS library (in Salt Lake City) if it is on microfilm. Other types of material cannot be borrowed, which is why many die-hard genealogists will make at least one journey to the Salt Lake City library in their lifetime.

Microfilm records
You pay about $5.50 to order a microfilm, which can contain anything from census records to military service records to Bible records—the list is nearly inexhaustible. Once it arrives at the FHC, a film stays there for a month.

You can order the film a second time, at a lower price; if you order it a third time, the film stays at the FHC. So, for about $10, you can have permanent access to a roll of microfilm. This could prove very helpful if, for example, you wanted to scour the 1820 Athens County, Ohio, census for great-great grandpa Hartley, his offspring, his siblings, his siblings’ offspring and, well, you get the picture.

The center’s film-reader room is dark and usually quiet, except when someone is scrolling through a roll of film at 100 miles per hour. If all 13 film readers were being used at once, the noise would probably be deafening.

Steel cabinets along the back wall store the center’s hundreds of film rolls. The films (like all FHC materials) can’t leave the premises, but for a small charge, you can make a paper printout of a film image.

Free center use, classes
Except for printing and copying charges and film rental fees, use of the center is free. It also holds free genealogy classes every Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (instruction lasts about 1.5 hours; the rest of the time is spent as a workshop).

Classes held in the fall are more general in nature, while those held in the spring are more specific. Upcoming classes, all taught by Lesly Klippel, include scanning photos and documents, managing digital photos, printing family history books, searching court house records, finding female surnames, reading old handwriting and researching British ancestors.

The San Jose Family History Center is located at 4977 San Felipe Road, San Jose, 95125; (408) 274-8592. Hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. and 6 – 9 p.m., Wednesday, 6 – 9 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.