Scanned family history books, made searchable
Upload a scanned county history, parish book or family genealogy and get back a clean PDF where every surname can be searched, with the original page numbers kept for your citations.
Key takeaways
- A scanned book with a text layer lets you search every page for a surname, place or date, instead of reading 600 pages by eye.
- FixMyScan keeps every page where it was, so the page you cite matches the printed book.
- It reads old German Fraktur type as well as English, German, French, Latin, Italian and Spanish.
- It reads print only. Handwritten registers, letters and wills need a handwriting tool such as Transkribus.
- Black-and-white pages are much smaller, which helps with upload caps such as FamilySearch's 15 MB per document.
The books genealogists end up with
Family history research runs on printed books nobody reprints: county and town histories, published parish registers, regimental lists, city directories, privately printed family genealogies, German village books. Many survive as scans from a library, an archive website, or a relative with a flatbed scanner.
Those scans tend to share the same faults. The paper is yellow or grey, the type is faint, the margins are wide, and the file is large. Worst of all for research, many are only pictures of pages. Your PDF reader cannot search a picture, so finding one surname in a 700-page county history means reading it.
What a searchable copy changes
OCR (optical character recognition) reads each page and stores the words as invisible text behind the image. The page still looks exactly like the original. But now you can:
- Search the whole book for a surname, a farm name or a year, and jump straight to each hit
- Copy a passage into your notes or family tree software instead of retyping it
- Highlight entries on a tablet or e-reader as you go
- Look up an unfamiliar word in the dictionary on your device
Not sure whether a PDF already has text? Drop it into the free scanned PDF checker. It runs in your browser and uploads nothing.
Making it searchable with FixMyScan
- Upload the scanned book. A PDF or DjVu file of up to 1,000 pages.
- Draw one crop. The pages are shown stacked, so one box around the text area works for all of them. Margins and dark scanner edges go.
- Download the clean copy. White paper, black text, straightened pages, and a text layer on every page. Pages with portraits, maps or engravings stay in greyscale, so the pictures survive.
Pages are never reordered or dropped. Blank pages, plates and fold-outs keep their places, so the PDF page matches the printed page and your citations stay correct.
Searching old print well
OCR on a clean page is far better than on a grey one, but old books still trip it up. A few habits help:
- Search for part of a name. “Schoon” finds Schoonmaker and Schoonover. Old printers also used long s (ſ), which OCR may read as f.
- Try spelling variants. Clerks and compilers spelled the same family three ways in one volume.
- Use the book’s own index. Then use search to find the entries the index missed.
- Read around each hit. A household is often spread over several lines or a page break.
Old German books and Fraktur
German-language sources (village books, church histories, emigrant lists) are often set in Fraktur, the blackletter type many general OCR tools struggle with. FixMyScan detects Fraktur automatically and reads Latin passages on the same page. Other languages it reads: English, German in roman type, French, Latin, Italian and Spanish.
What it will not read
Handwriting. Original parish registers, census sheets, wills and letters are handwritten, and FixMyScan reads printed text only. For those, Transkribus is built for handwritten text recognition: its free plan gives 50 credits a month, and a handwritten page costs one credit.
Typewritten family histories usually do work, since typewriting is print.
Smaller files for sharing and uploads
A scanned family book is often too big to email to cousins or to upload to a family tree site. FamilySearch’s own blog put its upload limit at 15 MB per document when it raised it from 5 MB in 2013. We have not checked whether that limit has changed since.
Clean black-and-white pages compress far better than grey ones. A 300-page book we processed on 2 November 2026 came out at 9.0 MB from 13.0 MB, with text on every page. A very long book may still need splitting for a 15 MB cap. Check your file against e-reader and email limits with the free will it fit checker.
Reading on a tablet or e-reader
A cropped, white PDF reads well on an iPad, an Android tablet, a Kindle, a Kobo or a reMarkable, so you can take the county history to the archive or the cemetery. On a Kindle Scribe you can also write on the PDF, if it arrives through Send to Kindle.
Copyright and your books
Use FixMyScan on books in the public domain, or ones you have the right to copy. Many county histories from the 1800s are public domain in the US. A family book printed more recently may still be under copyright, even if it was never sold.
Cost
Plans are $9.99 a week or $79.99 a year, with unlimited books under fair use of 5,000 pages a week, one book at a time. One paid week covers up to 5,000 pages, enough for several county histories.
Questions
Can I search a scanned county history for a surname?
Only if the PDF has a text layer. Many older scans are pictures of pages. FixMyScan reads each page and puts searchable text underneath, so your PDF reader can find the name.
Will the search find every mention?
Not always. OCR can misread worn type, ligatures or unusual spellings. Search for part of the name too, and still read the index and the pages around a hit.
Does it read Fraktur?
Yes. Old German Fraktur type is detected automatically, along with Latin text on the same page.
Can it read handwritten parish registers?
No. It reads printed text. For handwriting, Transkribus offers 50 free credits a month, at one credit per page for handwritten text recognition.
Will the page numbers still match for my citations?
Yes. Every page stays in its place, including blank and plate pages, so page 112 in the PDF is page 112 of the book.
How big a book can I upload?
Up to 1,000 pages, as a PDF or DjVu file.
Is my family's book kept private?
Yes. Files are private to your account and deleted 24 hours after the book is ready, or 24 hours after upload if you never convert it.