If there’s a theme for family history in the Church today, it’s that the work is hastening. Exponentially. Research that used to take weeks and even months—such as finding birth or census records—now can take just minutes, thanks to these records being digitized and put online.

FamilySearch has made billions of digitized historical records available on the FamilySearch website. Even so, there are billions of other genealogically-valuable records that aren’t available through FamilySearch. Some are easily available only on paid subscription sites. While family history centers offer free access to many popular subscription sites, not everyone has a family history center nearby or can get there easily when they’re open.

So, in their ongoing quest to help members succeed with their family history, FamilySearch has formed partnerships with key family history players, such as Ancestry, MyHeritage and Find My Past. As a result, members of the Church can get free subscriptions to these websites, which means access to a treasure trove of additional historical records anywhere they have an Internet connection. (Users age 13 – 17 require parental consent to sign up for free accounts.)

The free subscriptions may not cover all historical records on partner sites, of course—you may occasionally come across a specialized record collection that requires a paid subscription. But in my experience the free subscriptions cover the most important and helpful records, such as birth, marriage, death, and census records.

You can sign up for free partner access on this page:
https://familysearch.org/partneraccess

If you’d like step-by-step instructions for signing up, visit this FamilySearch blog post:
https://familysearch.org/blog/en/create-free-account-familysearch-partners/

Can we expect more partnerships in the future? According to Dennis Brimhall, the answer is yes. “This collaboration is one of the many ways we will accelerate the delivery of family history resources and make them accessible to the world.”

So take advantage of these amazing free resources, and watch for more to come.