24 July 2013

Ordering Microfilm

FamilySearch and the LDS church have lots of Fijian records on microfilm. On the downside, they are not indexed or digitized yet (i.e. not searchable online). On the plus side, you can check out most of it to be sent to your nearest family history library to look through.

I have a few names and dates to start off my search, so I have ordered 4 rolls of film (2 births, 1 marriage, and a book on Indian migrants in Fiji). I hope I will be able to find the people I'm looking for and maybe enough info to need to order more film.
I hope one day they will get around to digitizing these so I won't have to order stuff and go to a library with a microfilm reader to look through it. It can be difficult to get a babysitter midday to drive to another city to sit and look through film. Oh well, I'm sure the work will be worth it in the end.

18 July 2013

Intro

I have long been interested in genealogy. It is probably because my father is also into it. He is really the better genealogist of the two of us. But, I do love hearing the stories of my ancestors and finding missing people and even connecting with the odd 5th cousin twice removed. I always assumed I'd simply take over the work once he got too old and that would be it. But, I have found myself itching to do stuff now (why wait!). And this is where my husband enters the picture.

My husband loves his heritage, but doesn't know much about his family history. He is an Indian from the Fiji Islands. His family immigrated from India to Fiji a few generations back (one grandfather, and 3 sets of great-grandparents). The last time we visited family in Fiji I made him gather as much family history info as possible from living relatives. He even got me photographs of 2 of his grandparents birth certificates.

So, with my dad researching my family, I have decided to research my husbands. I am hoping that writing down my goals and putting things out there for all to see I may get more done (it is motivation for me). Here I will figure out how to order and view microfilm from Fiji, find ship records of their immigrations, and eventually I hope to find records in India (which is harder than it seems). Who knows we may even find living relatives in India.

snapshot of a portrait of Shyam Lal (grandfather) as a young man