databases

PROVO, Utah, PRNewswire – Ancestry.com announced today it has launched a collection of more than 1,700 recorded oral histories from immigrants who arrived in the United States through Ellis Island. This is the first time this collection of poignant recordings has been available online. To celebrate the new addition, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Immigration Collection free through Labor Day.
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GenealogyBank is the largest online newspaper archive for family history research, now featuring over 4,400 newspapers – an estimated one billion names from 1690 to the present day.

Thousands of newspaper issues published in 40 states were recently added to GenealogyBank. … [continued]

New newspaper titles have been recently added to the family history archives found in GenealogyBank and ObitsArchive. They’ve added more than 51 newspapers from 28 states – over 32 million new articles.

As a new member you can access everything at GenealogyBank; all historical books, documents, newspapers and obits for 30 days for only $9.95. It’s one of the best genealogy deals in town, in my opinion.

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New content added to ObitsArchive and GenealogyBank over the past month includes more than 25 newspapers from 17 states – over 23 million new articles. Personally, I’ve found more information at GenealogyBank than anywhere else except Ancestry.com. If you love obits and old newspapers, this is the place to go. A 30-day trial is only $9.95. … [continued]

For awhile it was looking like Renee Zamora and I might be cousins. She descends from a Harris family in New York, and so do I.  Same county, 1700′s. The odds were fair to middlin’.

A Harris cousin of mine got one of our Harris boys to take a DNA test for the paternal lineage.  That wasn’t easy.  He had some fear that his DNA would be used to clone him in the future. When he finally admitted it, my cousin snapped back, “Who would want to clone you? You’re 70 years old!”

So she got her sample, sent it off to the lab and got back the results which knocked out every theory we’ve held dear so far.  Seems our closest match had an ancestor in South Carolina.

DNA Testing by Ancestry.com doesn’t mention cloning … hmmm … Read the fine print.  They say they offer ‘complimentary’ storage but they don’t offer ‘secure’ storage.  Hello?

WorldVitalRecords has been revitalizing itself and send us this message:

Please visit WorldVitalRecords.com to enjoy dramatically improved search and browsing experiences and a more intuitive site design.

Here are a few of the changes you will find:

• Simple drill-down capability from the “View All Databases” tab to explore the entire collection
• New search interface on search results pages for databases and collections, so you can conduct new searches within a specific database without backing out of your current search
• quick access to the records you want
• More intuitive design that provides you with easier access to the tools that help you accomplish your research

We have also permanently discounted our annual subscriptions to $39.95 for the U.S. Collection and $119.95 for the World Collection to help our customers and potential customers afford to continue with their genealogy research during more difficult economic times.

Go see for yourself.

Announcing WorldVitalRecords new international offering, World Collection. The World Collection also includes all the U.S. records that can be purchased separately.

* Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild

This is a series of 9,000+ ship lists from all over the world. The coverage includes about 30 different countries (perhaps more). Of course, some countries have more coverage than others; England and France have records of several hundred voyages, where as Japan, Trinidad, Barbados, India, Sierra Leone, etc. may have only a few. … [continued]

After much pre-publicity, DNA Ancestry is finally here.

Since I haven’t tried this yet myself, and it’s pretty much news for all of us, I know about this much:

You buy a kit, swab the inside of your cheek, just like in the CSI shows, send it back to Ancestry and they will process your results and mail them back to you. Your results can also be added to an Ancestry database to be compared with other people’s results or be kept totally private. DNA matches are communicated anonymously.

Please open this user-friendly PDF called DNA Ancestry and read all about the process. They say it as well as it can be said.

What DNA Ancestry Tests Can Reveal

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