FindFamilyCrest.com

Was there ever a more perfect day than Halloween for a cemetery shot? This photo was forwarded to Ancestry magazine by Ancestry.com subscriber, Lisbeth Schoenfeld Rogers. “I was visiting my sister in New York and I took a drive to the cemetery in Orange [New Jersey] because I have ancestors buried there by the name of Jones. When I saw the tree growing around the headstones I thought to myself that these people really want to be part of a tree. I’ll look them up on Ancestry.com when I get home and find out whose tree they belong to,” says Lisbeth.  

Putting on her family historian hat, Lisbeth took the following notes:

Cemetery: Old Burying Ground at the First Presbyterian Church of Orange, New Jersey

Names and dates on tombstones (L-R): Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1712, d.; 1785; Deborah, wife of Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1716, d. 1791; Ebenezer Canfield, b. 1761, d. 1831.

Lisbeth, who has been tracing her own family tree for two years, was able to find a family tree for the Canfields at Ancestry.com. With a stroke of good luck and some savvy research, she also found a connection between the Canfields and her own tree: Ebenezer’s grandmother Sarah Ward shows up in both.

Think you have a photo that tops Lisbeth’s or one that takes family history in a whole new direction? I’d love to see it. You can forward it to me directly at jcroasmun@ancestrymagazine.com. And if you’d rather look at photos than take them, be sure to check out the latest issue of Ancestry magazine—our Backstory for this issue shows commanders of the 17th Bomb Squadron receiving the Croix de Guerre in World War II.

A Big Island couple who founded a genealogy service company has tracked GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's family ties to Hawaii and to actor Alec Baldwin.

GENE scientists delving into the 5,300-year-old remains of Oetzi the Iceman, the mysterious mummified man found high in the Alps, say he most likely has no modern-day relatives.

We’re excited to introduce a new tool which will help you find information from across the web and organize it back inside your family tree on Ancestry.

What is it?
It’s called the “Ancestry Toolbar”.  It’s a toolbar you can install and add to your browser (If you use IE or Firefox), adding an instant connection to Ancestry and your family tree from where ever you wander in the great wide web.

Here’s a picture:

What does it do?
Primarily the Ancestry Toolbar lets you save photos and stories you find on the web to a person in your tree.  It creates a link pointing back to the website you found the image, which acts a sort of source citation for the photo or story.

Here’s a quick recap of the features of the toolbar:

•    Save Photos and Stories and attach them to people in your family tree
•    Save links to web pages to people in your family tree
•    Access your Ancestry Quick Links
•    Quickly access your family tree(s)
•    Google Search tool (for both Ancestry and the web)

How does it work?

Well, lets suppose you’re out on the web looking for something about Franklin Van Valkenburgh.  You may find a page with some photos you’d like to add to your tree, or a story.

.

Just click the “Save…” button on the Ancestry Toolbar to launch the toolbar’s features.

Then choose to quickly save a link to the page, or instead to select photos or text to save.

If you choose to save pictures and text, the toolbar will let you click on the pictures or text items to select which ones you want added to your tree.  Now, remember: only items in the public domain should be selected–you’ve got to be judicious about what you save, just like you would be about what you upload.  Fortunately there is a wealth of information in the public domain that you can save and attach to your tree.

After selecting the items you like, click on the orange “Save selected items” button (top right) and the toolbar will guide you through choosing which person to attach the items to.

Ready to try it?
Download the toolbar now and check it out!

Comments or Feedback?
We’d love to have your comments on this blog, or also please feel free to email me directly (kfreestone at tgn.com).

The Generations Network - Press Releases : "NEW YORK and PROVO, Utah, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Ancestry.com, part of The Generations Network, Inc., announced it has introduced the world's largest online ...

Today Ancestry.com introduced the world’s largest online collection of Jewish family history records, with more than 26 million records documenting Jewish life. Ancestry.com has partnered with two leading organizations committed to the preservation of Jewish heritage – JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City that maintains the world’s premier Jewish genealogy website, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an overseas humanitarian aid organization committed to providing relief for Jews in more than 70 countries.

These partnerships will make millions of important Jewish historical documents available on Ancestry.com, including photographs, immigration records, Holocaust records, maps memorials, and more. All records from the JDC and JewishGen included in this release are searchable for free on Ancestry.com. Two collections from the JDC are available for the first time online on Ancestry.com, including:

A new online collection of millions of historic Jewish records is helping families trace their personal history _ especially during and after the Holocaust.

The documents on Ancestry.com include Schindler's List _ the names of almost 2,000 Jews saved by a German businessman who employed them. Their story was told in the Oscar-winning 1993 film.

Many of the 26 million documents are online for the first time _ from photographs and immigration data to a list of people who died in Nazi camps that directs users to memorials with first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Also on the site are records about displaced Jews provided with food, medical care, clothing and emigration assistance.

We have over 26,000 collections of data and records that we search every time you press a search button. By choosing a specific nationality or ethnicity, we will give the collections that we know to have data pertinent to that nationality or ethnicity a little more weight.

So if you are searching for someone you know lived in Canada his entire life, you can tell the search engine to give more weight in ranked search for records that have been specifically identified as Canadian records. This includes Census records, newspapers, various vital records as well as others.

In addition to prioritizing collections, choosing a value helps us know whether to apply a different soundex algorithm or use different name dictionaries to better find approximate matches for the names you entered.

For example, let’s say you are searching for Robert Jones, and you know he was born in England about 1830, but he lived most of his life in Canada. Our search engine will find many matching records for Robert Jones in England, Canada, the US and elsewhere. If you choose to prioritize Canadian collections, we know that those will be more likely to contain records you want. So if multiple records match your search equally well, we will list records from our Canadian collections first.

If you ancestor has lived in multiple places, I would suggest you do multiple searches, using a different set of collections that might contain your ancestor with each search. It never hurts to check anywhere that might be even remotely possible. You never know where that elusive record you are looking for might be.

If you are not sure which collection to use, choose the “All Collections” option, and we will look at every collection equally.

We don’t have enough data sets to form a good collection for all countries and ethnic backgrounds. As our collection of data sets grows, we will continue to add more collections.

To find databases that cover a specific topic, the best place is to start with the Ancestry Card Catalog, which you can find under quick links on the ancestry home page. When you are at the Card Catalog, type a word into the Title or Keyword field and press Search. You will see a list of data set titles that pertain to that topic. From there you can click on a data set title and search it individually for your ancestor.

Looking for anyone who might be able to fill in missing parts of the MILLIGAN family.

Today we rolled out an update to the logged-in homepage that we are really excited about. You can now add and remove sections from your homepage, as well as re-order them.  So you can create a page that is customized to how you use the site and to your style of research.

Just click the “Customize your homepage” button at the upper-right to customize your homepage.  This will let you move or remove sections you already have on the page, as well as add some new optional tools to your homepage.

You can still move sections up and down on the page by clicking the arrows or by dragging them to the desired location.  Click the “trash can” icon on each section to remove it from the page.  To add a new section, select one from the list at the top of the page and click the “Add to your homepage” button.  All of your changes are saved automatically, so when you are done customizing you can simply click “Exit.”

As part of this update, we have also introduced a few new optional items that you can add to your page. We will continue to add new ones in the future, so watch for the yellow announcement banner beneath the header to know when they are available.  The new items include:

Record Collections

Navigate quickly to key record collections including individual U.S. Census years, plus birth, marriage and death titles and the Ancestry.com Card Catalog. You can also quickly find special collections focused on U.S. Military records, African American family history and Jewish family history.

Message Board Favorites

Keep track of all your favorite Message Boards with this one handy tool.  View a complete list of your favorites and the most recent threads posted to each board.

Ancestry.com Blog

Stay up to date with informational posts from the people behind the scenes at Ancestry.com.

24/7 Family History Circle Blog

Enjoy an educational blog perfect for anyone who loves family history. View recent articles, family history columns, research stories, photos and how-to articles.