Grow Your Family Tree
Lots of records are stored in formats that were once cutting edge, but are now obsolete. Nick Peers explains how to. . .
Download free microfilm records
Before computers, the most efficient way to archive old documents and newspapers was on microfilm. Many of these records have since been digitised, and they’re full of references to ancestors and other useful background information. Some have been made free to download, as we explain here.
Search the National Archives and Familysearch
There are two main sources of free microfilm online: the National Archives and Familysearch. We advise trying the former first because its microfilm records are all on one page, while Familysearch requires more effort. However, most of the records are related to the military, so they may be too narrow for your needs.
Each record set has a link beside it that takes you to a separate page, where it’s divided into sections called ‘subseries’. Click ‘Details’ to read more about the record and see a preview.
If you think a record may be of interest, click ‘Add to basket’. Repeat for any other records, then click ‘Go to basket’, followed by Checkout (they’re free, despite this checkout process). Enter your email address, then click ‘Submit order’. You will receive an email receipt and a link to download the file as a PDF. You’re limited to 100 orders every 30 days, but that’s more than it sounds, because a multi-page microfilm document counts as a single file.
Familysearch offers a far wider variety of sources. Once you’ve logged into your free account, visit www.familysearch.org/ search/catalog, enter a place name, then select ‘Online’ under Availability before clicking Search. You’ll see a list of categories with hundreds of titles to browse. Most are general guides or histories, but there are also records such as census statistics and indexes.
Click one for a description, and if the microfilm has been transcribed (as census returns have, for example), the site directs you to a tool that lets you search it like any other record set. If not, look for a Film/digital Notes section, where you should see a small camera icon under Format. Click this to browse the microfilm in Familysearch’s online viewer. If you see a small camera icon with a key, the document may not be available to view online.
The viewer is easy to use. You’ll see thumbnails of all available pages – click one to view that page. If it’s hard to read, try clicking the Tools button then Invert to view it in ‘negative’ (see screenshot left). If you find a page that’s of interest, click Download to save it as a JPEG.
Transcribe and edit what’s on the microfilm
You can view the file in your default image or PDF program, but a better option is to transcribe its contents into a document that you can edit. You can do this using the free Transcript 2.6.0 tool – visit www.snipca.com/39309 and click the blue Download link at the top. Also install the 32bit AGPL ( not commercial) version of Ghostscript ( www.snipca. com/39308), which acts a plug-in for Transcript. Note: install the 32bit version even if you have a 64bit computer. It will work fine.
Launch Transcript, then choose File, ‘Open imagefile’, to select your document (if it’s a PDF, Ghostscript will convert each page into a separate JPEG). You’ll see a text-editing pane beneath the first page for typing your transcription ( 1 in screenshot below). Open the Image menu 2 for tools to make text easier to read (including an ‘Inverted colors’ tool 3 ). Finally, after typing your transcription, press Ctrl+s to save your text in RTF format, which you can open in Word or any other word-processing program.