Sweden Genealogy Genline Workbook

Advanced Search Methods

As you search the Swedish church records, you will likely encounter obstructions 
to your progress. For example, if you are looking for a specific year in a volume 
that has many years in it, quite a bit of time will be needed to find the year you 
want. This is because the Genline folks have not gotten around to identifying the 
year of each page. What this means is that you will encounter a volume with birth 
records taking up 200 pages and covering, say, seventy years. There is no way to 
know where exactly to begin looking except to guess. I call it the hunt and peck 
method. Now this would be a great way to find the year you want if you were 
looking at the actual book. Just flip the pages back and forth until you have 
the year you want.

But you are not flipping anything. You are downloading, from Sweden, a digitized 
image of a record which is transmitted over the internet. This can take a couple 
minutes each depending on your computer capabilities, your connection speed through 
your ISP, the use of the internet by others, and the use of Genline data storage at 
Genline in Sweden.

So a better method might be the proportionality techniques which I take five pages 
in this workbook to explain because it is that useful, that necessary, and that neat. 
The techniques are of my own invention based on necessity. I just got too tired with 
hunt and peck. So I devised a math technique which work for me and I'm sure it will 
work for you. Give it a try. You'll find this technique described on pages 91-95 of 
this workbook.

Circle Search
A description follows on page 96 to help you find an ancestor when the given parish 
in HER seems correct but you can not find the record. Another helpful tool you may 
want to create is an index for a volume you plan to use quite often. I did this for 
a birth record for Bj”rk”. Once I had it complete, I found it sped up my access to 
details. The time spent to create it was well worth it. More on page 96.

Ultimately, you're going to need help when you are unable to find a certain person 
in the records. One possibility is to send a letter to people with the same family 
name who currently live in Sweden. The postage will be reasonable. Ask them for help. 
Send what you know and ask a question. Provide your email address so an answer will 
not cost them anything to send. More on page 97.

Make A Telephone Call
You may even want to call a relative, once found, to ask for help. Through the 
modern telephone system, a call to Sweden from the USA is about $2.50 for 60 minutes 
if you use the 1010987 number. More on page 98.

Find out about calling Sweden at:
http://www.1010987.com

Try Court Records
As the ultimate desperation method, you may want to access the H„r„d court records for 
the parish you are working on. Although the documents are all in Swedish, you will be 
able to distinguish the name of your ancestor, if present. You can print the pages and 
ask for help with the translation.

Find microfilm of Häräd Swedish court records at:
http://www.lds.org/