Family History, I am doing it....

...my family history, and I've caught that spirit of Elijah!

It all started last week. We had a Relief Society activity focusing on doing our family history and we talked about the New Family Search program that the church has put out. To make a long (but very interesting) story short I'll just skip ahead to the good part. The very next day I decided to start by doing some online indexing for the church. (I'll tell you how you can volunteer for this at the end of the post) After spending some time doing that, and getting familiar with reading a census (picture below), I decided to check out my family line to see what I could find.

After looking for about 30-40 minutes I located an individual on my dad's side of the family; my grandpa's cousin to be exact. Her name was Iris Marie and according to family search she wasn't married. I thought that was interesting and started doing some research on her to see if I could determine if she had been married. I started checking in census records to see if I could locate her and after a few minutes I was able to find her and her family. I also discovered that her birth location in family search was incorrect, so I made the change, searched a couple more things, and then hit a wall. After contacting a friend and trying out a few more things I decided to google her name just for kicks. This is what popped up

IRIS MEREDITH
REAL NAME:
Iris Marie Shunn

Iris Meredith is one of my favorite heroines ... and she is certainly among the most beautiful leading ladies of the B western and cliffhanger.
Her film career spanned from the early 1930s to the early 1940s. Most of her work was at Columbia Pictures in serials like THE SPIDER'S WEB (1938), OVERLAND WITH KIT CARSON (1939) and THE GREEN ARCHER (1940), as well as westerns starring Charles Starrett, Bill Elliott and Bob Allen. Her last films were a couple of sagebrush adventures for Monogram and PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation).
In later life, Iris Meredith fought a long battle with cancer which disfigured her face ... but the illness did not damper her grace, wit and spirit.
Meredith was married to Columbia Pictures director/assistant director Abby Berlin who is best remembered for helming many of the BLONDIE films of the 1940s. He later worked on TV shows for Columbia's Screen Gems TV subsidiary.
Les Adams has Iris identified in about 50 films, of which 32 are westerns and 3 are serials.
You may want to check the In Search Of ... page on the Old Corral, and go to the California Death Records database. There you will find a record for: Iris Marie Berlin, birth date and location of 6/3/1915 and Iowa, Mother's maiden name of Ross, Father's last name of Shunn, and she passed away on 1/22/1980. There is a corresponding record in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).

Right in front of my eyes was not only a picture of her, but details of her life, marriage, and recommendations on where to look for vital information. I was floored and overwhelmed with excitement. I could barely sit still in my chair. I quickly looked up her information under the California Death Records and the SSDI. I also continued to google her name and found some amazing things about her. I was even able to watch some of her films on youtube. The best part about all of this.....I had located her husband and his death record which contained information on his birth date. I went back into family search and did a search on him to see if there were any possible matches (or close matches) with that name and birth date.....none. In less than 24 hrs. of our activity I had found my grandpa's cousin's husband. I quickly added his information into family search, reserved to do his temple work, printed off the ordinance sheet, and had Chad take it to the temple where they printed off his ordinance card and a card to do a couple sealing for Iris and Abby.

HOW AMAZING IS THAT!!!!!

I could go on and on, telling you some very interesting things about all of this, but it would take forever. I will finish on this note though; in the midst of researching Iris and her husband I was able to locate their headstones. You'll notice that their headstones indicate that they were parents. Now all I have to do is find their children and add them to my family line. Guess I'd better get to work!

Here are a couple of images of Iris and, as promised, I've explained how you can spend a few minutes of your day indexing. Good luck to all you family researchers out there!

INDEXING:

The great thing about indexing is the fact that you can spend as much or as little time as you want doing it. I'll usually index a handful of names for a few minutes while the girls are napping and call it good. Also, the church could really use the help and all the volunteers they can get. It's also super easy to get started. Here's what you need to do:

1. Go to webpage http://indexing.familysearch.org/

2. Click on "GET STARTED"

3. Download program to your computer (I had some problems downloading the program, so I emailed them and the next day the responded with some tech support that helped)

4. Enter your login information (it's the same as your New Family Search account) or make a new account if you don't already have one.

5. Sign in and go through the tutorial (it's about 5 minutes long and is super helpful)

6. Start indexing

7.Remember, you are one of 2 people indexing the same project so you really can't mess it up. Also, there are tips to help you as you begin.
HAVE FUN!!!