A local church, which has a Family History Center, offers public access to genealogical information at no charge and has increased that offer with the purchase of licenses to several popular genealogical sites.

The Family History Center at Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is open to the public each Tuesday and Wednesday from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m. It recently announced the new state-of-the-art equipment installed to speed up research and many sites can now be accessed through one portal making research more available than ever before in history, said Buzz Cayton, the director of the church’s genealogical services.

The church, allowing members and the public to have complete access to genealogical information, purchased the licenses to three sites —ancestry.com, myheritage.com and findmypast.com, Cayton said. For a long time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah was the largest depository of genealogical information in the world, but now the information has been transcribed and available online through the volunteer work of churches, according to Cayton. There are also two different sites—familytree.org and familysearch.org—that users can use to access genealogical information.

As part of the service to the community, the church has also trained genealogy consultants on duty to assist those who attend, which is also free, Cayton said. The director of the center, Janet Yonally, said she instructs four members of the church each Sunday on how to access the different sites, how to enter their family members’ data and how to search out the information. Those that access the center’s capabilities will find that by searching for one family member, information on other family members can be found, Yonally said.

“This is a church-wide goal for all of us,” Yonally said. “It’s very important, as members of the church, to be able to do ordinances for those who have gone on before us — our ancestors that are dead — and to do the ordinances like baptisms and the temple work for them that we find important. That is kind of the driving force behind family history and the center we run.”

The information available at the center includes U.S. Social Security records, U.S. Federal Census records — which can also lead users to information on other family members living in the same house at that time — draft registration cards, state death and marriage records, newspaper records, military records and even passenger lists on different ships if one was searching for immigration information for a family member, Yonally said.

“There’s always ways to sneak in and get more information,” Yonally said. “It’s like a scavenger hunt.”

Cayton said the services offered at the center save those who utilize it a lot of money. For access to one of the sites like ancestry.com, it would cost users around $400 per year of service.

“We do this as a church service project,” Cayton said. “It’s absolutely incredible, and that’s why we were anxious to let people know that it’s available here. All of this is not available if you just go home and go online. Another thing is learning how to do it. If you come here, you have people that will help you and teach you how to navigate the system.”

Visit the center at 80 Cedar Circle, right off River Road, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Individuals may call 252-923-9619 for appointments and individual help on other days.