After you have talked to all the older relatives and done your searches for family papers, documents, bibles, certificates, photographs etc and made a preliminary pedigree and group sheets of all the known data, you will probable want to begin with searching the vital records, i.e. births, marriages and deaths for data that you do not have. Remember to work backwards from the known to the unknown. So if you know your great-grandfather was alive in 1910, but you do not know the date of his death, the first task is to find this death record or an obituary, because it may have other leads or clues to the records further back, i.e. of his marriage and birth.

Several groups of records are available to help, but two will probably yield the most information, namely Jamaican Civil Registration Records and Jamaican Church Records. Although the originals reside in Spanish Town, Jamaica, do not despair, the Genealogy Society of Utah, better known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) or the Mormons has filmed these records, and they are available all over the world in their Family History Centers for a small fee for underwriting the copying of the microfilms. Master copies of the films are kept in an underground vault in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah and are copied by the Family History Library when requested by users. Some film records may be on permanent loan to a particular local Family History Center, as they are called. The parent Family History Library is located in Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Your first task will be to determine the closest Family History Center near you. To do this, look in the telephone yellow pages under Churches and find the listing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Phone and ask for the location of the nearest Family History Center, and the hours of opening. These centers are staffed by volunteers of the Church and so they are not always open. In large cities, you may want to also ask if there are times for signing up for use of computers, or film or fiche readers. Your first visit may not yield great quantities of information, but you should feel some accomplishment at learning to use the catalog and the equipment for reading the films, fiche or using the computer.

The films of the Mormons are cataloged. This catalog may either be on Computer CDrom or in smaller centers on microfiche. Some centers may have both, so if the computer is busy, you may still use the microfiche reader. This source is called the Family History Library Catalog or FHL catalog. The other source which many have heard of before they visit a center is the IGI, (the International Genealogical Index). This may also be on CDrom or on Microfiche. If you feel uneasy with unfamiliar computers, you should try the microfiche, but the volunteer in the centers are most helpful in helping you to master the equipment. You just have to ask. Another word of reassurance, volunteers do not try to convert you to their religious beliefs, and welcome people of all faiths. The tenets of their belief, require them to undertake genealogical research on their own families, which is why they have made the most extensive collection of records in the world, which they are willing to share with everyone.

The IGI. The IGI is not a great source for Jamaican genealogy. Under the Caribbean, or West Indies, most of the records which have been extracted are for Barbados. The only records for Jamaica which have been entered, even in the 1994 update, are records submitted by Mormons for their own families, and these are very few. There are not many centers working on extraction of records for Jamaica for the IGI, so you may have a long wait for this to come out.

The IGI is a collection of over 200 million world-wide names of people, mainly birth and marriage records, which have been entered first by Mormons identifying and performing temple ordinances, called Sealings, on their own ancestors, and then by a program of extraction of original sources to fulfill obligations to the church. Because temple ordinances do not require death or burial data, very, very few of these events are recorded in the IGI. Searching is easiest by computer on CDrom, but the fiches have the same data. An advantage of using the computer is that you can get printouts, whereas you need to copy data from the fiches by hand.

A new edition of the IGI comes out about every 4 years and the last edition was in 1992, with an update (Addendum) in 1994. The 1996 version is purportedly being shipped to centers at the end of 1996, so they should be available in 1997. As stated above, while I will check this source to see what has been updated, I do not expect to see a large increase in the number of entries for Jamaica. The church in Jamaica is relatively new, and very few centers in the U.S. are doing extraction work on births and marriages in Jamaica.

If you are lucky to find something in the IGI pertaining to your family, remember that the IGI should always be regarded as a finding aid, and not an absolute source. Errors could have been made in transcription or by the people submitting the data. So the original records should always be checked. The source of records is given in the IGI, either as film numbers or batch and serial numbers. You need to record these if you are doing this by hand or it means a return trip. Your print out from the computer will give you these data if you request the computer to include details and ordinance data.

AF and SSDI. Two other sources available on CDrom at Family History centers are the Ancestral File (AF) and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). These I have not found to be particularly helpful for Jamaican Ancestry except in certain circumstances.

AF is a file of submissions from both Mormons and Non-Mormons in the form of pedigree charts of their own families. Non-Mormons are encouraged to contribute their files and there are instructions in many computer programs, e.g. Roots IV, on how to do this on 3.5" diskettes. You can also look at what others have contributed at the center. If you have English, American or Canadian ancestors you may find entries that are of interest to you, but not many people with long Jamaican ancestry have contributed to this file. A caution is advised on using these files, since they are submitted by individuals and may contain errors. All data should be rechecked for accuracy. You can find out the person who submitted the data, and thus you may find a new relative!

The SSDI is of interest to those whose forebears immigrated to the U.S. after the 1930's and started to contribute to Social Security. The Death index, starts in 1946, but really is sparse until about 1962. If your immigrant ancestor came in the early 1900's, they may not have made any contributions and therefore received no benefits when they retired. Their deaths therefore would not be recorded here. So this index is useful mainly for those who came from Jamaica in the middle part of the century. The death index can yield the location of the source record and social security number and hence the place and date of death. Application to the appropriate office can yield where the person was born, if the informant knew this well it might even reveal the parish in Jamaica where the person was born.

Jamaican Church Records After you have exhausted Civil Registrations, you will want to look at Parish Church Records. The established Church was Anglican, Church of England or known in North America as Episcopalian. Again these records are cataloged by Parish. There are 14 current parishes, but an additional 7 parishes existed in the past. Some parish records begin as early as 1668, others start as late as 1804. On the Family History catalog CDrom or microfiche, you look under Jamaica/Church Records. Before the actual church record film listing begins, there are several paragraphs which explain the way parish records were recorded and hence filmed. It is well worth reading this preface to understand the system, because it gets fairly complicated after 1824.

There are hand written alphabetical indexes for each parish which usually take up the first films in the series under each parish. Some of the indexes are tightly bound and the volume and page numbers (folios) of the entry of interest may be blurred, so look carefully at the page before and page after the entry of interest. In particular be sure to note if the volume (liber) is listed as New Series because this leads to a different set of films with perhaps the same volume numbers. Up to 1824, each parish had a separate book with baptisms, marriages and burials included. In 1824, the Diocese of Jamaica was established with its own Bishop of Jamaica and the system of recording changed with many parishes in the same volume and hence on the same film, but separate volumes for the vital events. Thus it is wise to look up the index volumes (there may be up to four) under each of births, death, and marriages lists for your surname. Strictly speaking the surnames are under the correct letter of the alphabet in the indexes, but they are not alphabetical. So you may have to search through all the "A"s to find your ancestor Anderson. However in later indexes, they will be divided by year or a couple years, reducing the search. A few of the index volumes (St Ann, Vol 1, Port Royal, Vol II) are missing and so could not be filmed. These are noted in the FHL catalog.

After determining the year, page and volume, you can return to the FHL catalog, and determine the film to order for the actual record. This can be the fun part, especially after 1824, because of the mixed parish volumes with overlapping dates. Also before 1824, births, deaths and marriages were in the same volume, but after there were separate volumes for these events.

Remember that for church records, as compared to civil registration, you are looking at christenings and burials rather than births and deaths. In Jamaica however, you can assume that burials took place either on the same day or the day after death, because there was no way of preserving the body for any length of time in the tropical heat. Christenings could be separated by a long time from date of birth. Sometimes the family waited until they had a son, before all the older girls were baptized with the son.

Law 6 Registers Church Records take you up to 1870-72, but overlap with what are called Law 6 registers. These are government registers and started in 1866 up to Civil registration. They are separated into births, marriages and deaths and have also been filmed. Again you look under Jamaica/Church Records for the listing of these films in the Family History Catalog. There are separate indexes for Law 6 registers, so you will have to use these first before you get to the original record.

A Note on Bishops Transcripts (BT's) I am often asked if Bishop Transcripts for Jamaica exist, because some of the early parish records have been destroyed by hurricane etc. I wrote to Jeremy Gibson who has done extensive research on English BT's and asked if he knew of any place where there might be Jamaican BT's to fill in the gaps. The church in Jamaica was responsible to the Bishop of London, prior to the establishment of the Diocese with its own Bishop in 1824. Mr Gibson replied with a quote from a reference source, that said that there were holdings from some overseas places put no BT's were held in the Bishop of London's records for Jamaica and in fact he knew of no other likely source. Recently on the internet, I have seen suggested that Lambeth Palace may be a potential source for BT's from the West Indies, not specifically Jamaica, but I have not yet explored this resource. Essentially all records preserved in Spanish Town after 1824 are Bishop's Transcripts, because they were transcribed by the Rector of the parish, and sometimes previously the curate, who sent them in to the Diocesan Office where the clerks transcribed them into books. This is something to keep in mind, because if three different people transcribed them, that always opens up room for errors to creep in.

A Visit to Salt Lake City to the Family History Library is a possibility. Visitors come from all over the world and North America, and summer is particularly busy. Some commercial firms and some genealogy organizations do arrange for 3 - 7 day trips for this purpose, arranging accommodation and air travel. You should be aware that because of crowding on the Latin American floor, at the present time, Jamaican films are no longer housed in the open cabinets on the floor. Instead you need to request the films giving the numbers to the staff, who will get 5 films at a time from the high density storage which is not open to the public. Some of the most recently released films in the catalog may not even be in Salt Lake City but still at the vault. It can take up to three days for them to be delivered to the library, so if you have a short time in Salt Lake, it is wise to a) do some index work at your local family history center before you go to determine the numbers of the films you might like to see; b) write to the library, so it will get there at least one week ahead of your visit, and let them know the films you would like to see when you arrive. Otherwise your short trip may turn out to be a disappointment. If you have a week to spend in Salt Lake, then read the catalog in the Library (for latest updates) early in the trip, in case the films needed must be retrieved from the vault. I think that it is worth the trip when you can't find an ancestor and need to search many indexes and films. If you do run into a disappointing situation remember that you can explore the Jamaican and West Indian books from which some of the films are made, housed on the Latin American floor on open shelves, though not the records whose originals are in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Also if you have ancestors who are of Germany, England, Scotland, U.S., Haiti, Mexico, Canada etc, you can look not only for your Jamaican families but also those of other countries.

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