RSS
« County Courthouse Records . . . A Vital Step In Researching Your Family History | Home | Genealogy.com . . . Another Place to Research Your Family History »
Ancestry.com . . . An Online Subscription Library for Genealogy
By Kathy Jones-Kristof | February 4, 2008
I discovered many of my family history facts on Ancestry.com. That’s right. I pay for genealogy information. It’s not a crime, as a lot of people believe. Genealogists rent microfilm from the LDS Library, local or state libraries. Some people buy compact discs to find their genealogy information. All this costs money. What’s wrong with paying for the ability to access a genealogy database—which is really an online library—that delivers first-rate genealogical information directly to my home computer? Ancestry.com saves me time, gives me great facts from verifiable sources, and I love sitting at home doing research anytime I want.
One of the best things about Ancestry.com is that they’re always adding new information to their already extensive holdings. Recently I did a search on an ancestor I hadn’t run through their system for almost a year and discovered his Civil War pension certificate. What a great find! This opens a whole new world for me to research, plus I’ve added another military hero to my family line—I love those guys!
There’s an option on Ancestry’s search form that’s called Spelling. Under it you can select either Exact or Soundex. Soundex is a system used to index names by sound, or phonetically. In an earlier post, I stated that I couldn’t find in an alphabetical list an ancestor named Orebach because his name had been spelled Arebach. The reason it was spelled that way is because my ancestor probably didn’t know how to spell his name so the country clerk spelled it the way it sounded to him. In a Soundex listing, names are grouped phonetically—by the sound of the name. This solves all the problems created by those creative spellings that we genealogists struggle with in our research. Therefore, when I do a search for my ancestors on Ancestry, I always choose Soundex for Spelling. This way if there’s a name on file that’s spelled creatively, the search engine will find it.
Remember that the Soundex spelling option only applies to your ancestor’s surname. The first name still has to be accurate. If you don’t find your ancestor, try another spelling for the first name or an abbreviation. I’ve also done searches for just the last name and then sorted through the results to look for my ancestor, although I don’t recommend that for Jones.
So, you’re asking, just what does Ancestry.com have to offer you? They have all the US and many European Census data. They have scanned history books and historical society research papers. I’ve accessed marriage data, death data, the social security death index, immigration data, obituaries, passport applications—and this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Go to Ancestry.com and under Collections, click on “See All Databases” to discover all their holdings. Don’t be fooled by everything they offer, however. Their Family Tree information comes from the public and therefore does not have verifiable sources. We want facts in our family files. Stick to the real data that gives you solid sources, which is 98 percent of Ancestry’s holdings. And don’t just list Ancestry.com as your source for any facts you find. Put that as a reference to where you found the source, but the actual source is where the information on Ancestry.com came from; the name of a book, the Civil War Index, the Social Security Death Index, etc.
If you can’t afford to subscribe to an online genealogy website, there are alternative ways to access them. Check with your local library to see if they have a subscription. If they don’t, petition them to purchase one. Genealogy is the biggest hobby in America. You’re probably not the only person in your neighborhood interested in doing family research. It’s also useful in learning about regular history. Use that argument on them. I’ve learned more about history since I began researching my family than I ever learned in school. Someone should clue teachers into the fact that history is more than just the date when stuff happened.
You can also access Ancestry.com at the Family History Center in the nearest LDS church. They have Ancestry subscriptions on their computers and anyone can use them for free. Of course, Ancestry.com isn’t the only subscription database on the Internet. Genealogy.com is another one I’ve used. I’ll discuss it in an upcoming post. Plus there are a lot of other subjects I want to tell you about to help you discover those elusive ancestors you’re trying to find, so check back often. Until next time, keep looking for those facts!
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to my RSS feed!
Topics: All Levels of Genealogists |
February 4th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I shunned Ancestry for a long time because I was not willing to pay for what I felt I could find for free. When I purchased Family Tree Maker 16, I received a one year membership for free and I have been pleasantly surprised. I’ll soon come to the end of my free year but I am already making plans for paying for the next year. I’ve found so many wonderful things on Ancestry and I haven’t even used it as often as possible due to a busy family schedule. I agree so much with your post!
June 10th, 2008 at 11:27 am
[...] Ancestry.com . . . An Online Subscription Library for Genealogy | Home | The LDS Library, A Great Place To Research Your Family History [...]