Why FamilySearch?

FamilySearch is the largest and securest family history archive in the world.

The world’s largest collection of genealogical records is housed in a secure vault located in the mountains near FamilySearch world headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Granite Mountain Records Vault was built in 1965 to preserve and protect important family history and historical records. The vault safeguards more than 3.5 billion images on microfilm, microfiche, and digital media. Currently, FamilySearch is in the process of digitizing the microfilms and making those digital records available through its website. For security reasons, there is no public access to the Granite Mountain Records Vault, but click the video above to watch a behind-the-scenes video tour.

The Mathia – Matthia Family Organization has chosen to use the Granite Mountain records vault as the primary platform for archiving our research findings. All information, photographs, documents, stories, etc. that are put into the Vault are permanently preserved by the physical security, multiple-vault redundancy, and digital preservation methods practiced in these vaults. Additionally, no data, none, nada, nothing is ever lost in the creation and maintenance of the FamilySearch Family Tree. Ever change is logged with the user’s identification, date-time stamp, and with the previous state of the person or family’s record.

The previous database used by the Mathia – Matthia Family Organization preserved no change history. It did not back up and preserve automatically. It required us to manually update the software with no guarantee of forward or reverse compatibility..

The FamilySearch archive performs all of these functions in the background without charge to users. Read more about the history of FamilySearch and its advantages here:

https://www.familysearch.org/records/archives/web/about/