There’s much to be said about DNA testing in genealogy, but most of it is best said by Blaine Bettinger on his blog, The Genetic Genealogist, which I highly recommend. So please visit there soon. But for now, I’d like to describe my recent experience with Ancestry.com’s DNA offering. I got in on one of [...]
Last week, Ancestry.com updated and repackaged its U.S. Directories and U.S. Public information databases. These are now all a part of Ancestry’s “1940 Census Substitute.” Part of the upgrade was acquisition of what Ancestry VP for Content Gary Gibb called ” a huge collection of city directories.” I was excited about this from the outset. [...]
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This announcement on the 24/7 Family History Circle blog today: PROVO, UTAH – Feb. 12, 2009 – Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online resource for family history, announced today it will commemorate the 200th birthday of one of the nation’s greatest Presidents – Abraham Lincoln – with the addition of five new databases to its Civil [...]
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What?! Yes, you heard right. If you’re having difficulty locating a Louisiana relative or ancestor from the 20th century, perhaps you should try looking in California . . . well, at least in some of the California databases on Ancestry.com. During and after World War II, there was a huge movement of people from the [...]
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“No census taken between 1790 and 1860 contains even one slave’s name.” Harriet C. Frazier, Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865, (McFarland & Company: 2004), p. 12. Most genealogists will not find this statement particularly surprising. We all know that, except for a very few free blacks, African-Americans were not [...]
Well, I am both gratified and chastened! In the comments to the original post below, Chad Milliner points out what should been obvious to me. That is, essentially, that the Register of U.S. Army Enlistments includes only original federal enlistments. Chad reminds us that in the 18th and 19thcenturies, American wars were fought largely by [...]
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I got an e-mail from Ancestry.com recently that touted some new databases that had been added. Among these was “Registration of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798 –1914. So of course I was interested. I put in the search box a number of my family names, particularly the more unique ones, and turned up nothing. [...]
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Ancestry.com has recently added a collection called “Missouri Marriages 1805-2002.” Frequently, Ancestry’s state collections have seemed to promise more than they deliver–being limited to just a few counties or even a few years though the title implies many more counties or years. But this collection seems to be the real deal. Easily searchable, it has [...]
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I studied Ancestry.com’s AncestryPress for quite awhile without trying it. There didn’t seem to be a lot written about it. Eventually, I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. Ancestry Press lets one create family history books and charts. I decided to try a family history book. You must have a family [...]
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Ancestry.com has just added California Voter Registrations for the years 1900 to 1968. I tried this out last night. My great-uncle, Carl Edward Manson (1893-1966), was the first family member to migrate to California from Texas before World War II. I found him and his then-wife Mary on the 1940 voter rolls registered at 5820 [...]
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