Visiting the Family Search Center

The Family Search Center in Plano turned up questions that could only be answered by visiting the Headquarters in Salt Lake City. I was planning a trip to Western Colorado, where Salt Lake City was only a four hour drive away. 

Across the street from the Mormon Tabernacle, the Family Search Center is an inspiring four story building filled with genealogical records and publications from around the world, and all free of charge.  I was greeted by friendly faces when I walked through the front door and directed to level one in the basement for international records. The second basement level held a library of international publications.

I was met again in the international section and given a brief tour of the facilities, which included row after row of computer terminals, many equipped with microfilm readers. The microfilm records were located in storage cabinets and were easily accessible. I was told I could print any of the records I needed or copy them to a flash drive. I suddenly realized I had forgotten my flash drive. "No problem," said my guide, "we give them out for free." Two minutes later he was back with a flash drive.

I had a list of the EWZ records I wanted to look at, and over the next two days was able to find the records I needed and copied them to my flash drive. I spent a considerable amount of time researching the records of Adolf Sablezki, the Lithuanian husband of my father's cousin, who has been somewhat of a mystery. At one point I had three different people working on it. It turned out Adolf had a prior marriage and I wanted to find out what happened to his first wife. It took a long time to find his ancestral village, since, as it turned out, it was now in Poland under a different name. Thanks to the Polish researcher for helping me on that. The birth records for Adolf and his first wife still eluded us, however, even after my Polish researcher had offered to call the Polish authorities in Warsaw. Further complicating matters is the fact that Poland and Lithuania were under Russian control. People were changing their names to sound more "Russian." Oh, how complicated and confusing were the times!

On my third and last day I spent the morning in the library perusing books pertaining to the Black Sea Germans. Some of them I was already familiar with, others I was able to scan sections of interest and copy them to a flash drive. Understandably, books are not allowed to be taken out.

I found my trip to Salt Lake City extremely rewarding and look forward to going again. I have already started a new list of questions.