Another Interesting Maritime History Book

As I promised yesterday, I will write about another maritime history book that I found interesting. The book I'm talking about is Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploration Expedition, 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: New York, NY, 2003).

As the title of the book states, the book is on the U.S. Exploration Expedition and the voyage's accomplishments. Before I read this book, I did not know anything about this voyage. This book is very interesting, and I highly recommend it to anyone, not just adults, to read.

Free Access to Immigration Records

In case you haven't heard, yet Ancestry is offering free access to its immigration records. You can find more information about this offer on Ancestry's blog: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1264

Another Martime History Book

I have just recently finished reading two other interesting maritime history books, one which I will write about in another post.

The latest maritime history book that I have read is Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen (Perennial: New York, NY, 2004). As you can see from the title of the book, this book is about Ferdinand Magellan and the expedition he led, but the book is not completely focused on Magellan. Rather, the book is focused on the voyage as a whole and the history behind the voyage. Also the author includes world history and events that is relevant to the time period of the voyage.

The book is quite fascinating, and I learned more about the voyage from this book than I learned from a textbook.

I must give one note of caution, though: I would not recommend this book to anyone younger than 17 because there is some information in the book that could be considered a little graphic. Other than that, it is an excellant book.

News on Ancestry.com

I just recently read an interesting article on Ancestry.com's blog about their offer of free genealogy help in the future at Jamestown. From what I have gathered from the post, this offer is to people find out whether or not their ancestry traces back to Jamestown. It seems to be a generous offer, but I don't know if they are going to offer free access to databases on their website to everyone else. Not everyone will be able to go to Jamestown to take advantage of the offer. (It would be nice if that did happen.)

You can read more about this offer here: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1261#more-1261

I wonder what Ancestry.com's customers think about this offer. I realize that it costs money to put records online, but I have to agree with others that Ancestry's subscription prices are a little too exorbitant. From what I have read of other people's comments (I realize that this is not the most a reliable source), Ancestry.com apparently has had recently a poor track record when it comes to customer service. From what I have read of some of the comments on Ancestry's blog, Ancestry removed some records late last year without notifying its customers, which of course, angered many customers, and that Ancestry has been slow in responding to customer complaints.

To those who are Ancestry.com customers, what do you think about this offer?