Searching the International Genealogical Index [IGI] on the "Old" LDS Website

Searching the International Genealogical Index [IGI] on the "Old" LDS Website

The Church of the Latter Day Saints has indexed many of the two million reels of microfilm that they hold in Salt Lake City Utah, and these indexes have been made available as the International Genealogical Index [IGI] on the LDS [familysearch.org] website.

The IGI can help to identify the parents of a child and confirm or identify its date of birth. Some of the dates have been entered from civil registers and can, therefore, be checked. However, the time period covered by the civil registers is limited to the following dates - birth registers 1864 to the first quarter of 1881; marriage registers 1845–70 and death registers 1864–70. There are other dates which have been entered from certain church registers. These church registers can be identified by their batch numbers. At this link you will be able to find which church records [and the dates covered] are included for Cos. Antrim and Londonderry. The dates from the church registers are usually fairly accurate and, of course, can be checked against the original records. However, there are other dates that have been entered by individual LDS church members. Some of these dates are accurate but, unfortunately, there are some that cannot be checked against any original source and should, therefore, be treated with caution. As well as identifying the parents of an individual child, the IGI can be used to search for "all" of the children of particular parents. By "all" is meant the children whose births have been included in the index. Again, these will be limited by the same restrictions outlined above.

To access the IGI, click on Advanced Search indicated by the red arrow on the screenshot.

This will open another page where you should click on International Genealogical Index in the left-hand menu of that page and the search boxes shown below will appear.

In the example below I am searching for the children of a Thomas and Elizabeth McMullan who lived in the townland of Lisbunny, near Claudy in Co. Londonderry. This family is the subject of one of the case studies on my CD - Researching Derry and Londonderry Ancestors. First, you need to select a Region - British Isles; a Country - Ireland; and a County- Londonderry. Then enter the names of the parents as shown below. Notice that you are only required to type in the forename of the mother.

Then click on Search and the result of the search is shown below - the names and dates of births of each of the children plus a general location. Note that the spelling of each child's surname varies. Clearly the search within the IGI is using standardised names. If you were to search for McMillan you would get the same result.

Clicking on each of the names in the above list produces the window shown below which, admittedly, adds little to the information above.

When I began researching this family I was not entirely sure of the number of children born to this couple. In the end I discovered that they had a total of ten children - three born before compulsory registration of births began and one born after 1880, the date when the civil birth records microfilmed by the Mormons ends. Clearly, there are no relevant church records in the index covering the pre-compulsory registration of the births of these particular children. With one exception, these children were baptised in Cumber Upper Parish Church, whose baptismal registers have not been included in the IGI. If they had been baptised in Cumber Lower Parish Church, whose baptismal registers have been included, then the number of children identified by the IGI would have been more. All of this serves to illustrate the point that, whilst helpful, the IGI is by no means comprehensive and needs to be used with other indexes and databases.