RLP 398: FamilySearch Wiki with Virginia Pratt

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 398: FamilySearch Wiki with Virginia Pratt. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (41s):
This episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone, welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (48s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (51s):
I’m doing really well. I’ve been having so much fun with Bounty Land applications and files. How about you?

Diana (56s):
Oh, that sounds fun. I’ve been working on the court records between my John Royston the Runaway Apprentice and his master Samuel Daniel, and been trying to find all the records, get ’em transcribed, and get them analyzed. So I’m excited to share more about that on an upcoming podcast where we’ll really dive into it. But it’s been a fun little project. I’ll just have to say you just never know what’s out there. I can’t believe it’s been out there all along, and I hadn’t found it yet. But thanks to Full Full Text Search, I’ve got it now. And thanks to AI, I think I understand what it all means.

Nicole (1m 36s):
Well, that’s wonderful. For announcements today, we have Merging and Separating Identities course as part of our Research Like a Pro institute. You can still register and I’ll tell you a little bit more about it. Imagine finally proving which of four possible fathers belongs to your ancestor after years of being stuck. That’s what genealogist participants learned to do in Jan Joyce’s course: Merging and Separating Identities. This isn’t your typical Genealogy Institute course, over a multi-week course, you’ll tackle the field’s toughest challenge, distinguishing between people who share same names, places or both. Jan has great, a great team of expert instructors, Kristin Britanik, myself, Nicole Dyer, Patty Hobbes, Lynn Nelson, and Kim Richardson.

Nicole (2m 20s):
Together they bring decades of expertise in solving complex identity issues. You’ll master identity dossiers that organize every piece of evidence, learn when to merge records and when to separate them, and discover correlation techniques that reveal hidden connections, work through real world case studies, including DNA strategies, mapping tools, and even AI applications. Plus, you’ll practice on a specially curated data set with expert guidance every step of the way. Spots are filling up fast for this unique course. Visit FamilyLocket and click on shop then Institute Courses to learn more and register for this dynamic Merging and Separating Identities course and finally break through those identity roadblocks. The course will be weekly on Thursdays from April 30th to June 11th at 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM Mountain Time.

Nicole (3m 7s):
So that will be really fun and I’m excited to teach in that about using spreadsheets and Airtable to help with identity solving. Well, our next webinar In the Research Like a Pro Webinar Series will be March 21st at 11:00 AM mountain time, and it will be, will be presented by one of our FamilyLocket Genealogists, Heidi Mathis. And the title is, Adopted Grandfather’s Biological Parents Were Also Adopted: Using atDNA and Y-DNA to Answer Family Mysteries. So she’s going to share about a client research project where the grandfather was abandoned by his adopted parents front porch in 1939 at age six.

Nicole (3m 49s):
She’ll dive into which family stories were true. Was he Polish and abandoned by immigrants? Was he related to his putative biological parents, Roberta Overstreet and Robert A Bach? The client and her uncle’s DNA tests provided the clues needed to point the documentary research in the right direction to answer these family mysteries. She’ll cover autosomal and Y-DNA, Indiana, Oklahoma City, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky records. Heidi is a graduate of the Research Like a Pro with DNA and Research Like a Pro study groups, and has a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry, with a minor in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University. Her areas of genealogical research are German, Irish, Dutch and Swiss American, mostly In the Midwest states and in those countries of origin.

Nicole (4m 36s):
She loves using genealogical research as an excuse to read as much history as possible. So we love Heidi and we’re looking forward to her webinar. Our next Research Like a Pro Study Group, will be in August of this year, 2026. If you’d like to be a peer group leader, then apply on our website and don’t forget to join our newsletter that comes out every Monday for new information, posts, upcoming conferences and coupon codes. And we hope to see you all at RootsTech in Salt Lake City on March 5th through 7th.

Diana (5m 4s):
Well, we are excited today to have a guest and we have Virginia Pratt here with us. Welcome, Virginia.

Virginia Pratt (5m 12s):
Hello. Thank you for having me.

Diana (5m 15s):
A little bit about Virginia, Virginia’s love for family history began when she was a child, helping her family find her paternal grandfather’s birthdate and place. During this time, she also copied and read histories of her maternal ancestors. As she grew her love of genealogy never waned. Once her children were raised, she decided to achieve her lifelong dream of going to college. She graduated from BYU with a Bachelor’s degree in family history. As part of her studies, Virginia spent seven weeks in London conducting research at the British Library for BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy, an experience that deepened her expertise in British records and archival research.

Diana (5m 55s):
She has presented at RootsTech and the UGA Summit of Excellence. She worked on the FamilySearch research wiki team for five years. She is currently working toward accreditation through ICAPGen and when not doing family history she loves spending time with her family, especially her three grandchildren, and traveling with her husband. Well, it’s so neat to learn a little bit about you. Nicole and I both did study abroad in London, so that must have been so neat to spend seven weeks there.

Virginia Pratt (6m 26s):
It was a lifelong dream to spend time in London and, and the British Library is just wonderful and has so much information and so many unique papers and it, it was just a wonderful experience.

Diana (6m 43s):
So you have a really good idea of what researchers could find there, that probably are not digitized, just there.

Virginia Pratt (6m 53s):
Yeah, yeah, they’re there. Exactly. They’re not digitized. I got to see a paper that was an inventory of, and it was the original, of a fort somewhere in Virginia during the, the Revolutionary War. So it said like 1777 then it had an inventory of all their, their meat and different foods and clothing and it just, it was just so awesome to see this original paper.

Diana (7m 28s):
Well, And I have heard, but I have not researched there personally, that in England in these archives, a lot of times you will find material information sources on the colonists in those early years because they sent letters back, there were documents created there, that because England is actually more established than the Colonies are still in existence, you know, they haven’t been lost to time. So I would imagine that a lot of the information there has to do with the Colonies.

Virginia Pratt (7m 57s):
Yes, there is quite a bit that deals with the Colonies there. There’s also quite a bit that deals with the British in India, and so there’s a lot of paperwork about that.

Diana (8m 10s):
Oh, that’s so interesting.

Virginia Pratt (8m 13s):
Phenomenal place. I highly recommend that if you’re going to London, go to the British Library, you will not be disappointed at all.

Diana (8m 22s):
Oh, that’s so great. Well, that was just a little side note because what we’re really here to talk to about is the research wiki, which you have all this experience about. So we’re excited to hear all about that.

Virginia Pratt (8m 34s):
Great, thank you. I’m excited to tell you.

Nicole (8m 37s):
Well, before we dive into telling us about the Wiki, tell us, you were on the team for the Wiki for five years. How did you, how did that come about? What was that like? What does that mean if you’re on the Wiki team?

Virginia Pratt (8m 54s):
So I was first hired on as an intern to help with the Wiki. It’s a small team, It’s about six people. Now it’s down to three people. But we write the pages, we do the research and find out what records are, are out there for certain areas, and then we write the pages or we write projects and have volunteers put the pages together for us. So it’s a lot of coordinating, a lot of project management. It’s truly awesome. And then we go over it and we update it as we go.

Virginia Pratt (9m 34s):
So we, it is, we don’t just write the pages and then say, okay, we’re done. We go back and we say, okay, oh, here’s a new record that has come out online, let’s put it on this page so that, that our customers can have access to, to this, to this section of records. And so I did that for a year and then they offered me a contract position. And so I was contracted for two years and then I took a little time off and then I was asked to come back and contract for another two years.

Nicole (10m 16s):
Wow. That is wonderful. That’s so cool. That really helps us understand kind of what you were doing on the FamilySearch Research Wiki team. Well, let’s dive in. Tell us about the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

Virginia Pratt (10m 31s):
You bet. So its purpose to begin with was to help people with, who do research, Genealogists and hobbyists, to be able to find records, find out if there are records, for certain times for certain places, and where to find those records. So it’s a, it’s a one stop shopping. The records are for all over the world. Right before my last contract was done, we did a whole bunch of pages for different parts of the Middle East and was able to put up records that are coming online for the Middle East.

Virginia Pratt (11m 16s):
And so if you go to the main page of the Wiki, there’s several ways to access it and we’re, we try to make it very user friendly. So you can see that there’s a search bar, there’s a map, there’s a list of localities, button that you can push. There’s just several different things that you can press on to, to get started. And then you would just type in the country or the county that you want to research, and it will come down with a dropdown menu that, that will show you different options and you pick the option that is best for you and for what you’re looking for and then it takes you to that page.

Virginia Pratt (12m 2s):
The other reason why it’s user friendly is because over on the left hand side, is a little left hand side of your screen, is a little dropdown menu and it will say return to main wiki page. So if you find yourself on a page that you don’t wanna be there, just press that and it will take you back to the main page.

Nicole (12m 25s):
Oh, that’s great. I hadn’t really ever noticed that button at the top, but it, that’s really nice to have that easily clickable button just to get back to the main page and do another search. I’ve always really thought that FamilySearch Wiki was very user friendly and it’s so helpful to have all the links. I like how at the top of, you know, an article, there will be like, kind of like a table of contents, and I know we’re about to get into that in a minute, but it is really wonderful and it’s so great to have a research wiki that focuses not only on one country or a couple countries, but tries to be global in that it has articles from, like you said, even the Middle East. That is just incredible.

Virginia Pratt (13m 6s):
Yeah, we were all excited to do something for the Middle East and, and different parts. We’ve also redone the, the pages for Sweden and updated all of them. Oh. And we have new pages for France as well.

Nicole (13m 23s):
Oh, great.

Diana (13m 23s):
Well, I just thought it would be fun to go look at one of these interesting new areas and on the map, and I, I know we’ll probably talk about less than a minute, but you know, when you first go to the Wiki, its got the world map and so I would recommend people just go click on an unusual area that you don’t usually research in. Like, I’m looking at Asia and oh my goodness, it is amazing. For instance, the page on India. I just, it has all the different jurisdictions, ways to research. Wow. This must be such a challenge to put together these pages for some of these countries or areas.

Diana (14m 8s):
Must take so much research.

Virginia Pratt (14m 9s):
It does, it does. Luckily we have at FamilySearch, there are a lot of researchers for different areas and so they’re always willing to come help us, give us pointers and show us the best way to get to the records for certain jurisdictions. And so we have a great tool there with those wonderful researchers that help us.

Diana (14m 40s):
Oh, that makes perfect sense because yes, you’ve got people who are experienced in so many different areas and of course you’d wanna draw in their expertise. So when you said it’s a lot of management, it, it probably is just that and reaching out to people and and using their expertise. So I love that. That’s so interesting. Yes, I’d never thought of that before. That’s great. Well, since we’re talking a little bit about localities, let’s jump in to this whole idea of locality pages. So tell us what we need to know about that.

Virginia Pratt (15m 15s):
Okay, so each, each area is divided into localities. And so for instance, we’re gonna start with the country, whether it’s the United States, I do a lot in England, so there’s England, there’s France. We’re gonna start off on the country level and we’re gonna, that page is going to tell you just a little bit about that country, but then it’s gonna show you what the next jurisdiction is and give you a chance to click on the jurisdiction that you’re looking for. So for instance, when we’re doing the United States on, on that United States page, you’re gonna find a map, and underneath that map, you’re gonna find a list, and both of them are clickable.

Virginia Pratt (16m 4s):
So you can click the state you want to go to on the map that is clickable, or you can just go to the list down below and click it from there. Either way works and that will take you to the state. And then we give you a little bit of information about what, what you’re gonna find on the state page. Now, normally most In the United States, most of your records are gonna be kept on the county level. So for that state, we have another map, another clickable map that has the counties, and you can click on that clickable map or you can click on the list that’s underneath that, that map and it will take you to that county.

Diana (16m 47s):
So I pretty much always go to the county level And I think that I am probably missing something by not checking out the federal level or the country level or the state level, because they do have different record collections on those different levels.

Virginia Pratt (17m 4s):
They do, yeah. Yes.

Diana (17m 5s):
So, you know, in working, we talk a lot about creating locality guides. It would probably be really useful to have a link to all three of those in the locality guide. You know, I’ll often do a county locality guide, but I could have the state link as well as the country link. And then maybe even, I like to put little notes in my guide, so maybe even a couple notes like, oh, make sure you look at this or this. I, I just, yeah, think of all sorts of ideas. That’s so nice. And I love how easy it is to navigate by just clicking on a county or like you say, just finding it in the list, the list of counties, because I’m looking at Texas right now and sometimes there’s a lot of counties and you do not know where the one is that you want.

Diana (17m 53s):
So it’s nice to have it listed because it can be easier to find the county on a list than looking through all 254 Texas counties. So I love that it’s both.

Virginia Pratt (18m 6s):
Yes, I’m glad that works. Well, and once you get to, to that county sidebar on your right that talks about the county facts, so one of the things that I love is it has neighboring counties, so it’s a, it has a list of the counties that are, are next to that county that you’re looking at. And so, and those have links with them, so you can click that link and say, oh, wait a minute, I want the county to the, to the west, or whatever. Anyway, it just, it, we really try to make it so that you can go to the different areas very easily.

Diana (18m 45s):
Oh yeah, I use that all the time. I think that is brilliant. And the other thing is that you also have a list of populated places, meaning the smaller cities or towns or unincorporated communities or census places that you can also click on, because sometimes there’s information on those, and I see that a lot of those go to a Wikipedia link or a Wikipedia page. So it’s nice to be able to do that within the county to go to something even smaller than the county.

Virginia Pratt (19m 20s):
Yes, Yes. Because you could get even more information out of those, out of those smaller jurisdictions. And, and most of them do go to a Wikipedia page, but that has wonderful information that, oh, maybe I should contact this place in this city, or maybe I should contact this place. So it really is a win-win situation.

Diana (19m 44s):
Yeah. Or just learning the history of the place or a little bit more about the geography. It saves you some time. And I love on the county pages that you also have a link to the website if there’s a, a county website. You know, I’m sure it’s whatever you can find that you put there.

Virginia Pratt (20m 3s):
Yes, yes. And, and whatever we think will be relevant to a person’s research, we really wanna make the, the information on these pages about the research and how to access those records.

Diana (20m 15s):
Well, and it looks like you have a template for it, because I’ve noticed that the county pages pretty much all follow the same pattern. So that probably helps as well, because you know exactly what you need to be filling in as you’re building a page.

Virginia Pratt (20m 32s):
Yes. Templates are our friends.

Diana (20m 33s):
I would say so,

Virginia Pratt (20m 34s):
Especially when you’re trying to be organized. So yes,

Diana (20m 40s):
That’s great.

Nicole (20m 41s):
I really like the state pages, how there is a clickable map with all the counties and usually like, like you said, mom, I just go straight to the county I’m want wanting to learn about. But this is so great because it’s a clickable map and you can, you have to search for your county on it, which is good for us to do because then we know where it is within the state and we can clearly see the neighboring counties and we can open up the neighboring counties articles at the same time and have three open or however many you want. And it’s just such a good way to really understand the geography of the place we’re looking at instead of just focusing in on what records are available for it.

Virginia Pratt (21m 21s):
Yeah, it really is. It’s a, it’s a, like I said, it’s one stop shopping, you know, it gives you all sorts of different options to help in increase and better your research.

Nicole (21m 37s):
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Nicole (22m 22s):
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Diana (22m 49s):
Well, let’s switch gears a bit here and now go to topic pages, which is another part of the wiki that I don’t often use. So let’s learn all about that. What can you tell us about topics?

Virginia Pratt (23m 1s):
So the topic pages has to deal with the actual records that you’re looking for. For instance, let’s say that you want to find an immigration record from England to the United States. So the best way to do it would be to go to the, to the England page, the country page. And over on the right of that page, it has wiki topics and you can scroll down to record types and it will have an immigration, immigration section.

Virginia Pratt (23m 45s):
And you can go click on that and it will show you what types of records that are out there. And if we start off with the records that are accessible online, because that’s what everybody wants, they don’t wanna read through a whole bunch of of stuff. They wanna where, where am I going, what am I looking for? But down below we’re gonna say, hey, just for a little bit of information, you can get some more information at this place, or you can look over here at this place, you can maybe call this place for some information. So we give you a lot of, and I’m using the word information a lot, I apologize, but we give you a lot of information to, to help you find that immigration record that you’re looking for.

Virginia Pratt (24m 37s):
And if you can’t find it, a lot of times we will have a section that says missing records and maybe why they’re missing. So it just helps you understand those records more. Another thing that we do in the, for instance, the Sweden records we have next to births, marriage and deaths, we have in parentheses those words in Swedish, in in the Swedish language, so you know what you’re looking at so that when you go to that record you could say, oh, that’s right on the wiki page, it said, this means baptism or this means marriage.

Virginia Pratt (25m 20s):
And we just kind of help you with that. If you need more help with languages, going back to that right sidebar, towards the bottom, there is an option that says languages. And in that we have lists or, or even links of places you can go to to find words that are used by Genealogists. And that will help help you find those words in other languages. That also helps with when you’re trying to find those ancestors that came from other countries that speak different languages other than English.

Nicole (26m 1s):
Well, that’s fantastic. I, I really appreciate any helps like that because I only speak a little bit of Spanish and none of my ancestors did, so I always will need to have that help with the languages.

Virginia Pratt (26m 12s):
Yes.

Diana (26m 13s):
Especially some of these difficult languages. I mean, some are harder than others.

Virginia Pratt (26m 18s):
Yes. Something like Swedish, you know, is, is kind of a difficult language. Another thing that is interesting about going into and finding out about the records, during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon took over different areas of, of Prussia that were up against France. And so if you happen upon some records in Germany that are in French, that would be why. And that’s something that a lot of people don’t know about or even realize that that had happened. And so it’s good kind of to know we’ve, you know, to, oh, okay, this is French.

Virginia Pratt (27m 2s):
And so you can go over to the France page and look up French words and another way to help you.

Nicole (27m 8s):
Well, I’m actually blown away by this word list on the Swedish genealogical word list, whatever languages page. I was picturing like 20 words, but no, it is very long.

Virginia Pratt (27m 20s):
Yes, yes. This is, we tried to get as many words in there to help you as possible. Yes.

Nicole (27m 28s):
This is comprehensive. This is so helpful. It almost kind of makes me want to dive into learning a language that’s relevant to my ancestors and really just like learn about another language for fun.

Diana (27m 42s):
We could do Danish. We have our Danish ancestors and we have our German ancestors.

Nicole (27m 47s):
Yeah, Danish seems like the best one because I can think of a few ancestors, especially on grandma’s side, your mom that came recently in like the 1800s, the latter half of the 1800reds even, right? That came from Denmark?

Diana (28m 2s):
Yeah. And on your dad’s side as well. So dad and I are both one eighth Danish because we had that recent immigration in about 1850s. So you have it on both sides. Isn’t that cool?

Nicole (28m 14s):
It is cool. And I’ve always kind of thought Danish would be too hard, but just looking at this wiki page, it definitely makes it seem doable with the really helpful word list. Like with all the genealogical words that you would normally see. It just makes it seem possible, You know?

Diana (28m 32s):
Well, I have a friend who does Swedish research and she doesn’t speak Swedish, but she has learned the words in the records, and she’s always telling me about how amazing the records are, because the records are really good in Scandinavia. They’re much better than what we have in the US. And so you can, I think the biggest challenge is the naming patterns, patronymics, and then separating all the, the Jans from the other Jans, you know, the same names, but the records are great.

Nicole (29m 3s):
Wow, yeah, and I’m looking at this Danish to English genealogical word list because in the the Danish page, it had it split out into two different lists, Danish to English and English to Danish, so that was cool. And yes, it’s very comprehensive and there’s a lot of like helpful information here that I feel like would be really interesting to dive into. It’s interesting how much we can learn as Genealogists. There’s just always another region, another language, another record type to learn about.

Diana (29m 36s):
So fun.

Nicole (29m 37s):
And the FamilySearch Wiki is just such a wonderful resource for learning all of those things. It’s just incredible the amount of work that’s gone into this. And I’m so glad we could have Virginia here today to teach us and to let us Thank you for working on these pages.

Virginia Pratt (29m 52s):
Oh, sure. It was truly my pleasure. And I, I tell people to go to, just go into the Wiki and just like you had said, Diana, just choose, just choose a place and see what’s there. And you can really get lost going, going into these pages. It really is a, a rabbit hole, but it’s so fun and you learn so much of what’s, what’s on the wiki.

Nicole (30m 16s):
That’s so true. And the fun thing about in our Research Like a Pro process, is that locality guides is built right in, so it’s not even a rabbit hole, you get to do it. It’s so great.

Virginia Pratt (30m 27s):
That is true. That is true. Very good. Very good. That is true.

Nicole (30m 32s):
Well, we are now to a fun part of this episode where you’re going to walk us through an example of using the FamilySearch research wiki in a case study in your research.

Virginia Pratt (30m 45s):
Yes. So this is, this case study is, I wanted to find more information about my second great-grandfather, John J. Hoover. And I knew that his, I had a date for his birthday, which was the 20th of May, 1839. And I had a death date, which was the 30th of July, 1901. But I didn’t have any records and So I wasn’t sure where those dates had come from. And so I wanted to make sure that they were correct. And so I knew from other family members that I had done research on that he, that he grew up in Henry County, Indiana, but he died in Otero County, Colorado.

Virginia Pratt (31m 36s):
So I decided, okay, I’m gonna focus on these two counties and see what I can find. And when I went to Otero County, Colorado, it was really one of the things that I love on the county pages as we have a, a little table that tells us approximate dates of when official government records were kept, the, the beginning when they started. So it will say records and it has birth, marriage, death, court land, probate, and census. And then underneath that it will tell you the dates.

Virginia Pratt (32m 20s):
And so for Otero County, for the deaths, the deaths the started in 1887, and he died in 1901. So I knew, okay, there’s a good chance that I could find a death record for him. And so the other thing that I love about the county pages is that they’re alphabetical. So I know that I’m at the top, I’m going to scroll down to the Cs to see cemeteries and under cemeteries was Find a Grave. And I thought, let’s start with Find a Grave and see what, see if we can even find him in the Find a Grave database.

Virginia Pratt (33m 4s):
And I did, I found a, an option in there for, for him, and he was buried at the Valley View Cemetery in Rockford, Otero, Colorado. But that still doesn’t give me an actual death record or burial record, but at least I have a listing and, and know, okay, now, now I can get a hold of this, this ceme, this Valley View Cemetery and see what they have to say and how they keep the records and if they’ve got them online. What I did though is I went further down the county page to vital records for Colorado.

Virginia Pratt (33m 50s):
And under vital records, they have birth, marriage, and death. And under the death records, it said that online records for Otero County in Colorado are not really accessible. And so it has you go to another Wiki page. I hope you’re not discouraged when you’re trying to find something and it says, well look over on this page, because it, the next page can give you more options on how you can get to these records. So it says, see Colorado Vital Records for more resources.

Virginia Pratt (34m 30s):
And when you click on that link, it takes you to another wiki page, which goes to Colorado Substitute Records. Now, substitute records are records that could be family bibles, they could be, maybe you’re looking for an obituary in a newspaper, it just gives you options for different things. The other information that we give you is the contact information for the, the vital records department in Colorado, in Otero, so that you can, oh, I’m going to write them a letter or I’m going to email them and see if there’s a way they can get that information to me.

Virginia Pratt (35m 18s):
So even though I ended up not finding any documents online, I now have options. I know, okay, I am gonna start looking in newspapers, but I’m gonna contact the vital, Vital Statistics and, and find out what they can give information they can give me. So for his birth, I went to Henry County Indiana page, and I looked at that table and it said that birth records were started in 1882, and he was born way before then. So I, I was like, okay, well let’s go down to the vital records part.

Virginia Pratt (36m 4s):
And I went down there and it had under birth, it had a record set of records from 1773 to 1933. And I thought, oh, wow, that would be cool. And I was looking at this record set and it said, births and christening. So I know that there’s going to be church records because a christening is, is a church ordinance. And so, but I’m, I’m okay with that. And So I looked in there and actually there wasn’t a John J. Hoover in there, but it made me realize that what I needed to find out was which religion he was so that maybe at that point I can go to the church section on the county and see if it’s got that church listed and maybe I could find the records that way.

Virginia Pratt (37m 4s):
But I now have options for finding these, this information for John J. Hoover. But as a follow up note on that right sidebar at the bottom, there’s a place for societies for that area, historical societies, genealogical societies, and I found a genealogical society for Henry County Indiana, and they had information that I needed. They even had a picture of, of where his family had lived. His dad was a reverend and was very well known and liked in the, in the, in this little area. So it ended up I was able to find the information I needed.

Nicole (37m 44s):
Yay. I love that. It’s so great that we never exactly know where we’ll find it, but having a, a wayfinder like the research wiki can point us in several different places to look that we might not think about what a great example.

Virginia Pratt (38m 0s):
Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. Yes, yes. So use the Wiki. It is your friend.

Diana (38m 7s):
Well, I would agree. This has been so fun to dive into the Wiki. Nicole and I teach about it all the time. We always say use the FamilySearch wiki, but it’s fun to be able to talk with someone who’s actually worked on it and knows the inside story. So we’re so thankful you could come on and talk with us, Virginia. So thank you so much.

Virginia Pratt (38m 28s):
Well, Thank you for inviting me. This really has been a lot of fun. I I passionate about the Wiki, so, so it was fun to be able to talk about it for a while.

Nicole (38m 39s):
Thank you for opening our eyes to some of the pages we hadn’t seen before and helping all of us and our listeners to see what a valuable resource it can be for helping us learn about a new place to research topic pages, languages, and how it works in an example through a case study.

Diana (38m 57s):
You are very welcome. Well, thanks everyone for listening and we hope you’ll go checkout something fun on the Wiki. We would love to know what new information you discovered. So you’ll have to let us know In the comments and see if we can all help each other. Well thanks everyone for listening, and we will talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Nicole (39m 18s):
Bye

Virginia Pratt (39m 18s):
Bye.

Nicole (39m 16s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.