My understanding is different. The "pre 1970" does not always mean that the work was done. It is not used in the Online IGI. You must use the Online IGI to check what has been done. Pre-1970 will not be there. When the original IGI was being prepared to be used from the computer ( or maybe in the original microfiche) the records had to be transcribed, generally by hand entering each ordinance. The sources of the ordinance dates were old temple records, from the family group sheets submitted and used for the ordinances, and from other records used to submit the names to the temple. Sometimes the Baptism, endowment and sealing to parents would be in the same record. Sometimes only one or maybe two ordinances were found in a record. "pre-1970" was added as a marker that the real date needed to be found. It was not a guess that the work had been done. When the Online IGI was put together, the pre-1970's were omitted as well as the older "cleared" left over from submittals from years ago. The "cleared" that you see now is because the name was submitted since the new Family File Card program was started. This is not an official statement. I have seen several message over the last few years with this information. Mary Lou Harline Alan Jones at home <alanjones10@cox.net> wrote: Over the years the church tracked temple ordinance dates in different kinds of systems. In order to automatically migrate in some data from the system used prior to 1970 they were not able to get the program to copy the dates. They thought it was better to have them there with partial information than not there at all. Their goal is to eventually get all of it there and correct but it is taking manual effort to set it straight. Alan Jones Mission Viejo, Calif. -----Original Message----- From: bbousha@comcast.net [mailto:bbousha@comcast.net] Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 5:17 PM To: PAF-5-USERS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [PAF-5] ordinance dates? I've been searching the IGI for missing ordinance dates on some of my family and have noticed an entry I don't understand. It is the entry "prior to1970" and is also sometimes written as <1970>. It seems to be used in lieu of the actual date. I guess my question is what happened in 1970 that was so important that it was granted an exception to the rules of entering dates? I searched carefully in the text book I used to learn genealogy from, but it was printed in the 50's and would be unlikely to have anything about the 1970's in it. Can anyone help? -- Byron O. Bousha bbousha@comcast.net (503)231-7190 ==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List ==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List Search http://searches2.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=PAF-5-USERS ==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List ==== FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service http://www.familysearch.org/