Salt Lake City 5/8/2013 9:41:22 PM
News / People

Legacy Stories Launches the FamilySearch Tree Connect Feature to Link Stories to Family Tree

At the recent RootsTech conference, LegacyStories.org announced the launch of a revolutionary pilot program that allows genealogists and family history enthusiasts to link stories of their ancestors to the FamilySearch Family Tree.

For the first time, it is possible to give voice to our ancestors. A new technology allows families to compose stories in multimedia then search for and link the stories to over 12 billion ancestor names in the FamilySearch Family Tree.

FamilySearch is the largest genealogical organization in the world with over 4600 Family History Centers. The LegacyStories.org Family History Library is amassing a database of life experiences that represents the living history of the 20th century. Now, members can go beyond documenting personal living history to loved ones who have passed.

Legacy Stories has the honor of being the first web application certified with FamilySearch's Tree Connect feature . Users can view a 4-part video tutorial walking through each of Legacy Stories' media components and learn how to link them to the Family Tree.

"This takes family history to a whole new level", says Tom Cormier, President of Legacy Stories. "Now descendants can upload a photo of an ancestor or related scanned document, record a narrative in their own voice directly to the site, then easily place a link to the "talking photo" in a source box in the ancestor's Family Tree record. When researchers click on the source link they are brought directly to the photo where they can see the image and hear the voice of the descendant describing the photo, person or event."

Legacy Stories 4-part tutorials are the basis of a class taught by Certified Legacy Advisors and Family History Consultants in some of the 4600 Family History Centers around the world. Debbie Youd, a Certified Legacy Advisor and Family History Consultant in Kansas City, taught the class during the RootsTech Conference at the Kansas City Center. "It was a huge success", she says. "People really loved the legacy classes".

The classes are also being taught at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City by Certified legacy Advisor and Accredited Genealogist, Golden Adams and by Kathy Larsen, a Certified Legacy Advisor in Houston, Texas.

"We will be hosting live webinars to teach the process starting some time in May this year", Cormier states. "Its amazing how excited people get when they see how they can give the gift of legacy to an ancestor."

About Legacy Stories
LegacyStories.org is a cloud-based digital family history library founded by Tom Cormier and Dennis Stack in 2008. The free site offers multimedia story documenting and recording features for all ages.

For more info please contact:
Tom Cormier
tom(at)legacystories(dot)org
423-295-5904