I listed to General Conference while working on my genealogy today. In the morning session of Conference (for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)President Gordan B. Hinckley spoke, he said, that 32 million ordinances were performed in the temple this past year, more than any previous years. He said that a new temple would be built in the west or southwest part of Salt Lake Valley in the Daybreak development. I don't know where that is.

But the exciting thing is he somewhat mentioned the new "Unified System" we (genealogist) are waiting for. He said, one troublesome aspect as we get more and more temples is the duplication in proxy work. Across the world people are working on the same family lines, they do not know that others are doing the same thing. The church has been engaged for sometime in developing a very complex computer technology, preliminary efforts show it will work. It is a truly remarkable thing with world wide implications.

I know in the PAF User Group we have been waiting for the church to speak of this new system being developed. It's to bad more information wasn't given. But it must show that the church is getting close to a wider beta testing of it and hopefully we will know more about the aspects of the system. I am very excited about it's release.

The last day of the FGS Conference I was riding home on trax. I met a sister that was serving a mission for the church in the Joseph Smith Memorial building, I think it's on the 6th floor. Anyways, I discovered that she is working with the team that is developing this new "Unified System" for the church. She of course couldn't give me any details but she said it is remarkable and I couldn't imagine what it could do. I think she said the finally release of the whole program is schedule for release in 2008. That is such a long time away.

These are sure exciting times for doing genealogy!

This is information off of one of my genealogy mailing lists I belong to.

Subject: New York Marriages 1600-1784 - FREE ACCESS for 2 wks

Hi all,
The New York Marriages 1600-1784, normally a fee-based database at Ancestry, has been opened up for free
searches for NYGenealogy.com at http://www.nygenealogy.com for two weeks only, ending Oct. 13, 2005. Get all of the searches that you can while you can! The search can be made from the main page at http://www.nygenealogy.com ONLY. Let your friends know since I'm evacuated and can't access much internet.

The description of this database is here:

Description:
Acquired from the Dutch in the seventeenth century, New York became one of the most important English colonies in North America. This database is a collection of marriage records from the state prior to 1784. Each record contains the names of both bride and groom and marriage date, with the earliest marriage dating to 1660. Reference information is also provided to aid the researcher in obtaining the original record. For those seeking ancestors from New York prior to the American Revolution, this can be an informative database.

--
Hope this helps.

Bill Cribbs
GenealogyBuff.com
http://www.genealogybuff.com