Public Records Access

I have been a ward clerk for nearly 6 years now. A year ago I personally subscribed to a public records database and went through all of the "missing in action" members of our ward. I was able to find many members who had been gone a long time (no more address forwarding info available through USPS), verify their new address, and move their records to the correct unit. It really helped our reporting to be more accurate.

It would be so helpful if this was possible through the Leader and Clerk services menu. Access to this kind of tool would be such a help on the tough ones to locate and it seems like it would take such a burden off of SLC resources.

Just a thought. Has this ever been considered?

I have found that FamilySearch.org provides information from United States Public Records, even without having to login. Just go to www.familysearch.org and click the Search button at the top. Try searching for yourself.

All I can find on familysearch.org is people who hav died. The public records database gives me three or four last know residences, last known phone numbers, email address and birthdates that I can match up to church records. It is pretty amazing what you can do with a public records database and Facebook when you are looking to find missing members and get them to the right unit.

For example, I just did a search for John Boehner on familysearch.org, and got about ten listings for United States Public Records. They show his addresses, telephone numbers, and family members. I don't even have to login to do the query.

I must be missing something. I do a search and it asks for dead ancestor's name. If I enter John Boehner and united states I get 76k dead people. I must not be looking in the right place.

Anything you find would need to be confirmed. I looked up my own name. I got 3 "hits". All were from the date range of 1970-2009. One listed a a PO Box. I've never had a PO Box. Another address was seriously stale.

The public records databases are a great idea. I wonder how much in church funds are being spent for individual units to subscribe to such things. I not aware that we subscribe to such a database in our unit, but I know several other people around the US who have told me they do. I would think the church could negotiate a better deal by subscribing as a whole or negotiating a deal that individual units could purchase at a reduced price.

Come to think of it, if the church subscribed as a whole, I'm imagine some anti-church organizations might find ways to twist that and give bad publicity to the church for "stalking" people or something like that. Maybe that's why they don't.

I wouldn't be surprised if the "Address Unknown" service missionaries / employees are able to access such a system.