Where to research your roots

Tracking down those buried lines of your family tree is hard detective work, but don't despair: There is a large local network of people to help navigate novices through their family histories.

Beyond the numerous Internet websites devoted to the pursuit, the Clark County Nevada Genealogical Society and two Family Research centers offer free support in the maze of family fact-finding.

"It's like playing detective," Helen Smith, president of the society, said. The society has monthly meetings every third Thursday at Edwins Hall in the Reformation Lutheran Church on St. Louis Avenue and Sixth Street. It offers a buddy system for amateur sleuths poring over piles of genealogical research.

"Trying to get through what we call 'brick walls' can be really hard," she says. "You run into dead-ends and we will help find alternate ways of getting around that sort of thing. That makes it exciting as well."

As a young mother, Smith wanted to trace her family history to give her daughter a sense of her past. Decades later, Smith continues to compile family histories. At a recent reunion, she was regaled with stories of the names on the spreading branches -- and even added a few.

"Every time you get a little piece of information, it's exciting -- here is another little bit that you can incorporate into this story that you can hope to write," she says, but adds: "The hardest thing (about tracing family trees) is finding the time."

There is a lot of information out there and some of it is unreliable. Wading through it is frustrating and time consuming, but volunteers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Family Research centers gently and patiently work with budding genealogists.

"You'd be surprised at how much (information) has been compiled," Elizabeth Anderson, a research volunteer, says. The centers offer a slender workbook for 40 cents, with an easy-to-read guide on steps to form a family tree.

The centers are an extension of a genealogical database in Salt Lake City, Utah, which holds more than 600 million names with information that dates back to 1000 A.D. "There are things here for anybody," she says.

The research centers' cavernous rooms hold daunting amounts of information: Towering rows of ancient books crowd the entryway; microfiche machines hulk in a dark corner; and computers blink blue screens along a side wall. About 30 people visit the main research center -- at 509 S. Ninth St. -- daily. (The other center is at 221. S. Lorenzi St.)

Michael Rivers, one of the volunteers at the main research center, says that budding family historians shouldn't expect magic, noting that most people want to simply enter a name into a computer and get back oodles of info. But it takes time and diligence to flush out war records, birth certificates, land ownership and descendents of ancestors.

"Computers have made everything so easy, now they want it easier," he says.

Piecing the family tale together through documents is rewarding, Anderson says, but the most important part of family history is the living history.

"Talk to anyone who might still be alive who remembers," Anderson suggests.

It's their stories, lying idle under layers of nostalgia, that give voice to the past.

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