As my readers know, I am an Ancestry.com fan. I’ve used their services, and have had a subscription since 1997 when they first went online. I was privileged to attend an Ancestry breakfast this morning, where we were given a heads-up on some of the announcements being made at RootsTech. Later in the day I received the following information by email… I was impressed. I’ve added comments in brackets where applicable.
IN BRIEF:
● Ancestry is the industry leader with the largest family history record collection in the world, and it keeps growing. We have a long-term commitment to records, increasing our investment each of the last four years, totaling more than $300 million over 20 years. This continued global investment demonstrates the value Ancestry places on historical records in enabling members to make new discoveries.
● Ancestry added 1.8 billion records in 2019. [Yes – you read that right. That’s a new record]
● There are now more than 24 billion records available on Ancestry.com, including historical records from our archive partners and family tree records, stories, and photographs from the community.
Record Updates
● Leading Record Collection: In 2019 alone, Ancestry added 1.8 billion records, more than we’ve ever added in one year. Ancestry continues to add to its industry-leading immigration and military collections, and leverage the latest in technology to open up new categories of story discovery at a scale only Ancestry can provide. We’re investing 15% more in content in 2020, with more than $21 million in record digitization alone.
● Commitment to Innovation: Ancestry recently used AI technology to unveil the world’s largest, searchable digital archive of over 262 million worldwide obituaries and death announcements. To make it as easy and efficient as possible for members to search our millions of obituary records, our data scientists and engineers used cutting-edge AI to create our own innovative models unlike anything else currently available. Using this groundbreaking technology, the Ancestry team is currently working to extract other key events from newspapers coming soon!
● WWII Draft Cards: We are also proud to announce the completion of a multi-year project with the US National Archives & Records Administration and FamilySearch with more than 300,000 volunteers to digitize all 36 million of the nation’s available WWII young man’s draft cards. This fully searchable collection, including color images, are available now on Ancestry.com. [I found several cards for uncles and cousins today that I’d not seen before. Although I’d already saved one for an uncle, the others were new to me. The registration was to get info on the industrial capacity and skills of men who were born from April 27, 1877 to February 16, 1897 (ages 45 to 64 – thus the moniker “Old Man’s Draft”). No plans were in place to actually draft these men to fight – but their labor skills were important to the war effort. My father was the youngest of 10 children, most of whom were born in the late 19th century.]
● Philanthropic Efforts: As part of our commitment to preserving valuable historical records, we digitized and made searchable millions of records related to the Holocaust in partnership with Arolsen Archives. These records are available to all for free in perpetuity. Later this year, the remainder of this collection will be completed and published.
● Upgrading Yearbooks: We also made it easier to search and utilize yearbook records by adding a function to save an individual photo, rather than an entire page. Ancestry re-indexed the entire existing collection of US yearbooks and added more than 100,000 yearbooks, for a total of over 420,000 yearbooks—the largest collection of yearbooks online. [These yearbook photos have been very exciting for me. They have allowed me to put faces with the facts in my database – faces that I’d most likely have never seen without these digitized yearbooks. Some really great algorithms had to be written to do this project – which used machine learning to allow us search and find people. I’m sure you’ve noticed that you get a lot of “hints” about yearbook photos.]
● US Record Additions:
○ Building on the largest collection of core US Birth, Marriage and Death Records, additional new collections coming to Ancestry this year from across the US include:
■ New York City Certificate Indexes for Birth, Marriage, and Death records (over 14 million records from 1862-1949) [Newly available today] [The 1949 cut-off date reflects New York privacy laws – Birth certificates cut off with 1909, Deaths in 1948 according to the titles. This is a deep index, indexing all names listed on the documents. It’s an index only – with an option to purchase the certificate from New York City.]
■ Statewide digitization projects in many states including Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
■ Digitizing new US Naturalizations records from California, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia
● International Record Additions:
○ This year, over 100 million new records will be added from national collections in Denmark, Finland, France, Mexico, and Norway, including more than six million Mexico Catholic records and over 50 million France Census and Birth, Marriage and Death records.
○ Ancestry is also actively digitizing and publishing Census and Birth, Marriage and Death records in over a dozen international countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway and the UK.
● New Mobile App: Searching and reviewing records on-the-go is now even more accessible thanks to the new Ancestry mobile app. [I’ve found that with the new search capability of the app, I’m spending two or three hours each evening winding down with my phone and the Ancestry App. I’m hooked…]
Key Value
● With Ancestry’s continued commitment to innovation by debuting the world’s largest digital archive of searchable online obituaries and death announcements, AI technology helped open a treasure trove of historical family data to power meaningful discoveries and connections for members. This is a major asset for advanced and new members, as obituaries are one of the most comprehensive records available about an ancestor — it can include places of birth, marriage, occupation, residence, and family members, and may even suggest burial site location.
● Thanks to the addition of all 36 million WWII draft cards, finding your family members’ records on Ancestry is even easier—and a single card can be a very helpful starting point for new users beginning to build a family tree. These records also help lead to more impactful discoveries due to the rich and unique details they often include, such as physical description, eye color, employer, next of kin, and it even may cite reasons why someone was exempt from the draft.
● Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records are the foundation of genealogical research. These records are a priority for our members and a top priority for Ancestry.
Finding This Feature
● You can find a list of recently added and updated collections at Ancestry at www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections. To search Ancestry records, please visit www.ancestry.com/search/. [Tip – At the hone screen, click on Search, then Card Catalog (near the bottom). Type in what you’re looking for. It’s a quick and easy way to find collections pertaining directly to your research].
