Genealogy Web Site Reviews

Ancestry.com

If you are researching your family tree then you must include Ancestry.com in your toolkit. Ancestry.com is a subscription based website that offers a wide array of databases to choose from. The site contains a variety of categories and listings. For U.S. researchers the Ancestry databases include:

U.S. Federal Census Records

The United States Federal government, since 1790, has collected statistical data every ten years virtually on every person living within the United States. In the beginning mostly what was collected was the name of the town, then the name of the head of household and how many males/females of a certain age group for each. By the 1850 Census names of everyone in the house were collected as well as age, occupation, birthplace and birthplace of parents. As the decades past more and more information was collected. The 1900 Census will tell you how long an individual has been married, how long they've been in the state, and what year they immigrated to America. The 1930 Census record has a box for recording whether the family had a radio in their home.

Keep in mind Census records are only as good as the person providing the information. While it may be assumed that an adult in the house provided the information you see it can not be taken as certainty. Sometimes, when the census taker came to the house the parents or adults were not around. But a young son or daughter was there and provided the information. They may not know all of the detail but guessed at a lot of it. If none of the family was home, the census taker might have tried to get what he or she needed from a neighbor. A neighbor may not be familiar with all the details of that family's life. And there was no provision on the census to indicate who had provided the details. So, you'll never really know.

To see an example of a census record CLICK HERE to view the 1900 Census of my family. The first five lines of this record are of my great-great-grandmother (Mary Dempsey) and her four sons Daniel, William, Edward (my great-grandfather) and Patrick. There is a lot of information here. Mary is a widow. Edward and Patrick are in school. Mary was born in Ireland in May 1853 and immigrated to the United States in 1869. And they are all living at 103 Tichenor Street in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey.

City Directories

City Directories are basically the 19th Century's (early 20th Century's) version of the phone book. These books were available in most major cities around the United States and list in alphabetical order the heads of household or any member of a household that was employed. In addition to the name there is the address, the occupation of the person and sometimes even the name and address of their place of employment. Son, daughters and even other relatives may be listed too. CLICK HERE to view city directory example from Ancestry.com. The above link is of the 1891 Newark City Directory for members of my Baumann family line. John Baumann, my great-great grandfather, is listed living at 22 Shipman Street and his occupation is japanner (definition: One who varnishes in the manner of the Japanese, or one skilled in the art.). A few lines below John is his mother, my great-great-great grandmother, Mary Baumann, listed as living at 301 Norfolk Street. She is listed as a saloon keeper and the item even lists her as widow of Melchior, my great-great-great grandfather.

City Directories can help a genealogist pin-point an individual during any given year. That information can be used to help confirm that you have the correct person in another document such as a will, a census, church records, school records, voter registration, draft registration and many other records. As I indicated above an an ancestor listed in a city directory can also provide you with that person's occupation or job title. You may also find that there are various other individuals living at that address that you were previously unaware of, possibly giving you more names to add to your family tree.

Let me give you an example of how using city directories helped me. Early on I had found my Dempsey ancestors in the 1900 United States Federal Census (see "U.S. Federal Census Records" section above) living at 103 Tichenor Street in Newark, New Jersey. Years later I found Mary and one son William in the 1920 Census. Still living at 103 Tichenor Street. But, I could not find Mary in the 1930 Census record. I made the assumption that since Mary would have been in her sixties in the 1920's that it was possible she had died sometime between 1920 and 1930. At this time I had yet to find a death date or death certificate. Using the Newark City Directories from 1920 to 1930 I was able to determine that 1924 was the last year Mary appeared in the Newark City Directory. With that information I proceeded to the Archives in Trenton, N.J. and requested any death certificates for a Mary Dempsey possibly living at 103 Tichenor Street in Newark. Sure enough, I received a the death certificate for my Mary Dempsey who died March 1924 and was still living at 103 Tichenor Street in Newark.

Maps

Ancestry.com has a vast database collection of maps that cover the years 1513 to 1990 (for the United States). There are seven different categories of maps at Ancestry:

1. Cadestal
2. Discovery and Exploration
3. Military
4. Panoramic
5. Thematic
6. Topographic
7. Transportation

Maps are a very important tool to a genealogist. Maps can help you, as the family historian, to visualize what your ancestor's neighborhood looked like. They can place your ancestors in context with the landscape around them, the transportation that was available and even identify who was living nearby to them. Maps can aid you in identifying what town or county an ancestor was located in. Uncle Jim may have told you over and over again that his grandmother lived in Union County, N.J. But you can't find her in the nearest census records for Union County. However, using a map you may find out that Great-Grandma's house was actually located in Essex County, N.J. prior to Union County splitting from Essex County in 1857. Therefore, you should look for her in Essex County records and not Union County where the house is located today.

Obituaries

The Obituary Collection at Ancestry.com contains a vast library of recent obituary listings from various newspapers from around the United States, Canada and the UK/Ireland. If you are looking for relatives who died within the past 30 to 35 years it's possible their obituary may be in Ancestry.com's database.

Obituaries are a great source of family information and can contain the name of a spouse, children, maiden names, names of relatives, towns/countries the person had lived in, occupations, churches that they belonged to, and even a short biography of the individual's life.

Ancestry.com provides an excellent search tool for finding individuals within the Obituary Collection database. You can search on a name, age, data of birth, date of death, date of the obituary, country, city, state, and even on other relatives who may be mentioned within the obituary. You may search on one or any combination of the above items. Ancestry also allows you to sent up "Obituary Hunters." You enter what search terms to look for and this program will look for your criteria in the future. If a match appears, the Obituary Hunter will email you with the details of what it found.

World War I Draft Registrations

In 1917 and 1918 every male born between 1872 and 1900 was required to register for the draft during World War I. When an individual registered a draft registration card was filled out by a draft board member. Ancestry.com just recently finished a project where it has digitized every draft card filled out and these cards are indexed in a searchable database only available through Ancestry.com. If you have male ancestors that were born between 1872 and 1900 and living in the United States chances are excellent that they may appear in this database. If you find them in the database Ancestry.com provides you immediately with a link to the actual image of the draft card.

These cards contain a wealth of information including:

• The individual's full name
• Place of birth
• address
• whether married and has children, wife's name
• nearest living relative and their address
• occupation and work address
• a brief description of the person's physical appearance
• medical info that would prevent the man from serving in the military
• and my favorite .... The ancestor's signature (if they could write)

It is estimated that the U.S. population at the time was about 100 million people. Every male between the age of 18 and 45 ws required to register which equates to about 25 million men or one-quarter of the U.S. population. If you do find your ancestor in these draft registration cards it does not necessarily mean they served during World War I. This was just a registration process of eligible men. If you do find someone in the cards and want to determine if they served you will then need to search for military service records.

There are actually three different registration cards that were used, corresponding to the three different registration periods that occurred on June 5, 1917; June 5, 1918; and September 12, 1918. The type and amount of information varies from card to card. To view a sample World War I Draft Registration card take a look at the draft registration card for my great-grandfather, Edward J. Dempsey.

Ship Passenger Lists

One of the features of Ancestry.com's Immigration records collection is the ability to search millions of ship passenger lists from around the world. These lists are indexed and Ancestry provides links to the actual image of the passenger list as well as links to images of the ships where available. These lists can provide the family researcher with valuable information on who came over together, at what age, what country they originated from, whether anyone died during the voyage, and whole treasure trove of valuable information. Again, these lists are indexed at Ancestry.com and offer a unique way to research your immigrant family. Many of these indexes are not available anywhere else.

Newspapers

Ancestry.com has just doubled the size of their Newspaper collection which provides the family historian with a unique glimpse into the daily goings on of various towns in the United States and around the world. You can learn what life was like, how they dealt with disease, severe weather, crime, politics and social life. If you're lucky you may even come across birth, marriage and death announcements and articles in your local paper. The newspaper collection is indexed and is searchable by date, location, a person's name, etc.

Ancestry.com Subscriptions

Just this year Ancestry.com dramatically simplified their subscriptions. It use to be that you ordered "packages" of data. Maybe you purchased U.S. Census records and the Newspaper collection only. Sometimes you would purchase these items at different times during the year. Ancestry has a nice feature where they will automatically renew your subscription. But, if you had ordered different subscriptions throoughout the previous year, when the renewal year came, you might be surprised to see a charge every few months to Ancestry because each subscription came due at a different time. Now that has all changed and for the better. Ancestry.com has streamlined their subscriptions to basically just two subscriptions. A U.S. subscription for all U.S. records. And another World-wide subscription that includes access to everything. You can order a monthly subscription or a yearly subscription. Obviously the yearly subscription is less expensive in the long run if you plan on using this from year-to-year. I use the Ancestry.com resources on a weekly basis. Sometimes daily. So, I have had a yearly subscription for the past three years. Thanks to the resources at Ancestry, I have been able to extend my family tree and unravel some of my ancestors hidden clues.

To learn more or to subscribe to one of the collections Visit Ancestry.com Now!