FindFamilyCrest.com

NOTE: I publish an update to this article about once a year. In fact, several new Macintosh genealogy programs have appeared in the past twelve months.

Now members and visitors to Ancestry.com DNA can take a quick and fun quiz to discover our prediction of your ancient ancestors.  Post your results on Facebook or Twitter and share with friends.  It’s all free!

Ancient Ancestry Finder™ predicts likely ancestry for both your maternal and your paternal lines.  So, if you’ve only taken one of our tests try it out and see what our best guess is for the test you haven’t taken.

 We’ve offered ancient ancestry information as part of our results package for several years.  If you’ve taken a test, you’ve received a haplogroup designation and name (like The Ice Immigrants or The Stonemasons).  Your results include a short, basic story describing the lives of your likely ancestors.  In addition to connections that can help grow your family tree, we give you a bigger picture to let you imagine what your earliest people were doing back when humanity was just getting started.

To give everyone a sampling of these results, with Finder™ we’ve built a simple experience that takes a best guess at describing your ancient ancestors.   You answer 2 or 3 questions with the most basic info about your family (facts almost everyone knows).  And then we provide a few options for likely ancient ancestral groups, along with descriptions of those groups.  The only way to narrow down those options to the most likely result is by taking an Ancestry.com DNA test.

The spirit of Finder™ is a bit different from what you may have experienced on our site.  It’s part of our effort to introduce ancestry and genealogy to a wider audience.  And the more people who become interested in Ancestry.com DNA and genealogy, the larger our database becomes.  And that benefits us all.

Check it out here!

On a given day, about 75 people, including many Gilbert residents who have banded into genealogy clubs, come to the Mesa Regional Family History Center with a common query: "Who am I, and who are my ancestors?" They couldn't have chosen a better place to ask.

The size of Ancestry.com’s record collection is a fascinating topic. As of June 2009, subscribers to Ancestry.com and our international sites can search the historical censuses for the U.S., UK and Canada, U.S. and international vital records, amazing collections of military and immigration records, and many others, not to mention the 10 million family trees added to our site by members in the last three years with over one billion profiles (names) and 20 million user-submitted photos and stories. This much is certain: Ancestry.com is far and away the largest collection of family history records online.

Defining and counting records on Ancestry.com

The concept of ‘counting’ records sounds relatively simple until you get deep into the details. How is a record defined? Is it a mention of a person? A household? A page? If a birth record has the person, parents, doctor and witness, how many records is that? And what of records where we don’t know for certain how many people are referenced, such as newspapers or city directories?

For our ‘fielded’ or indexed collections - structured data such as censuses and passenger lists - a record count is defined as the information about each specific person included. For example, one WWI Draft Registration Card is counted as one record. Similarly, each line on a census page is also counted as one record as typically it to will contain information about a specific individual.

For our ‘unfielded‘ collections such as newspapers and family histories, there is no underlying structure to define a field and so until now pages have been sampled then an average applied to determine an estimated name count. For example, our 42.5 million (countable) newspaper pages were multiplied by 60 names per page to achieve an estimated total name count.

Traditionally, we have counted our total number of records by combining the number of records for each person contained in our fielded collections and the estimated number of names in our unfielded collections.

However, as our company and collections have grown so significantly in recent years, we have decided to apply a new and highly conservative counting methodology that better reflects our differing data structures. Going forward, all unfielded pages will now be counted as one record - no name estimates will be included in our total record counts.

So what does this mean?

Based on this new methodology we have over 4 billion records. Previously, we referred to an estimated 8 billion names listed with in our record collections. This is a change to our counting methodology only - no records have been removed. Ancestry.com members will continue to have access to all the great records they had previously.

With new records launching every week, these numbers are always increasing. More importantly, no matter how we count them, our goal is to continue to bring millions of valuable records to our members like we’ve been doing for more than a decade.

The Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society in coming months will be offering several programs for beginning to advanced researchers.

The Sheboygan County Historical Research Center's July genealogy class will be 'Using Newsgroups and Message Boards on the Internet.' On Monday, July 13, local history expert and researcher Mary Risseeuw will teach an introductory course in the use of these common research tools.

Today we are excited to announce the launch of our new “My Story” advertising campaign, which highlights five of our customers and their incredible family history discoveries. The campaign will run for at least the next 12 months, and features five 15, 30 and 60-second television ads. You can see the ads on cable networks such as AMC, CNN, Fox News, History Channel, Lifetime Movie Network, and Hallmark.

The new television spots feature the following heartwarming stories:

A New Yorker Finds Answers about His Father - Alton Woodman (White Plains, N.Y.) never knew much about his dad, who passed away when Alton was just 14 years old. Turning to Ancestry.com, Alton found his father in a 1920 census record as a 14 year old himself, and discovered that he was attending an orphanage. To help connect the dots, Alton got in touch with a representative from the orphanage and received a package that offered a more complete picture of his father’s childhood.

Above: 1920 Census Record for Alton’s Father.

One Man Discovers His Great Grandfather was a War Hero - Cary Christopher (Pittsburgh and San Diego) always wondered about his German great grandfather, who disappeared after a short-lived marriage to Cary’s great grandmother ended in divorce. After 40 years of futile searching, Cary discovered his great grandfather in a World War I draft registration card on Ancestry.com. It turned out his great grandfather had immigrated to the United States before World War I, became a U.S. citizen and rose to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Merchant Marines, where he was killed by a torpedo fired by a German submarine during World War II.

South Florida Man Connects Father to His Own Mother - Jim Lane’s (Key Biscayne, Fla.) father never knew his mother, who died when he was an infant. Through historical records and member connection services on Ancestry.com, Jim discovered relatives who sent him pictures of his grandmother, and for the first time, Jim’s father was able to see a photograph of his mother.

Above: A picture of Jim’s Grandmother Donna.

Chicago Cook Meets Like-Minded Cousin - When caterer Peggy McDowell (Chicago) began researching the cooking talent in her family tree, she had no idea she would end up going into business with a long-lost cousin. Through searching records on Ancestry.com, she connected with her cousin, who also shares her passion for cooking. Together, they’re opening up a soul food restaurant in Chicago’s Hyde Park.

Here is an example of one of the spots, featuring Peggy:

Washington Woman Confirms Father’s Passing - Cathryn Darling (Olympia, Wash.) had many unanswered questions about her father, who had disappeared when she was eight years old after her parent’s divorce. After searching Ancestry.com’s obituary records, Cathryn learned her father died as a fisherman while at sea in Oregon in 1970, and she recently held a memorial service in his honor.

We hope you enjoy these stories as much as we do! Take a minute and check out the rest of the television spots, or read the press release.

BURNS John and Florence lived New Orleans. Florence born Illinois. Sons James and Alfred both born about 1878 -1885 Has anyone info on an Alfred who died 1929 Caddo Parish? Associated Regions: United States Cross Search on other websites: View all matching genealogy records for the following surnames: View images of documents including ...

Happy 1^st Anniversary World Archives Project!

We began the beta portion of the project in June of 2008, since then we have had a wonderful response from many of you including a number of partnerships with genealogical societies.  Your passion for this work is evident through the phenomenal activity we see daily, you’re an amazing group and on behalf of me and the entire World Archives Project staff we want to thank you!

 I also want to take a moment to thank our staff who shares a love and enthusiasm for this project providing many hours of “behind the scenes” work.

 Just as the thrill of watching a baby take its first steps or say their first words this project has been filled with many firsts, all of which have been fun to anticipate and participate in.  I’m excited to see what can be accomplished in our next year!

 Key Data and Milestones

• Developed an industry leading desktop transcription tool.
• Public launch March 2009 with over 12,000 contributors participating in the beta
• Over 19,000 contributors YTD, located in 70 countries & territories.
• Over 28.7 Million records keyed and arbitrated (will result in more than 13 million free record indexes that will be published to the Ancestry sites.
• More than 367 thousand hours logged.
• Three collections, over 438k free records published to the site
• Partnerships with 19 Genealogical Societies

If you would like to participate in the project go to www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject

Have 80+ pages x 3 sets Genealogy: McCubbin Familes Scotland to Green County Kentucky includes Family Tree of Nicholas "Blind Nick" McCubbin 1780-1855 his ancestors and his descendents by Gleason Moss McCubbin all on loose sheets ready to go in 3 ring binder I purchased this at an estate sale last year e-mail me if this is your family and you are ...