Locked

Do you use the FamilySearch experimental labs site to obtain county records? If so, do you remember (or even realize) that locked records don’t show in the results.

I had to remind myself of that fact when searching for records for Cornelius Duggins, grandson of my ancestor, Sarah Smith Duggins Crawford. While Cornelius was born, married and buried in Preble County, Ohio, he died in Henry County, Indiana. Thus, I expected to find records for Cornelius in both Preble County, Ohio and Henry County, Indiana.

Using the experimental labs site, a search for Cornelius Duggins in Ohio yielded 22 Preble county records.

However, no records are listed for Indiana.

An investigation of the FamilySearch catalog for Henry County, Indiana reveals the records are locked. (Note: The icon has changed from the camera with the key above to a camera with a small lock in the lower right corner.)

After a trip to my local affiliate library to view these records, I found 51 ‘records’ for Henry County, Indiana.

While at the library, I experimented with attaching a few of these records to Cornelius’ profile. When I view the list of sources at home, I can see the citations.

Clicking on the ‘View the original document’ link goes to the source on the experimental labs site. The transcription is available but the image is missing.

While at the library, I downloaded both the image and the pdf of the transcription. Thus, I have 51 documents to work thru.

• Proofread the transcription to make sure it is accurate
• Create an event in my RootsMagic file for the record and add the record as the source.
• Upload the sources I did not attach to Cornelius’ profile
• Upload the images of the records to Cornelius’ memory page
• Attach the images from the memory page to the respective source

While I have a lot of work to process these images, I am very thankful that the Seneca Free Library agreed to become an affiliate library.