I Found My Great-Grandpa's WWI Service Records!

Yes, you read that correctly. I finally found my great-grandfather's World War One service records, and I wasn't expecting to look for his records, as I figured they hadn't survived the destruction caused by the Blitz in World War Two.

I couldn't find them before in Ancestry's British World War One records, but I happened to visit the site earlier today. There, I discovered that Ancestry had updated the service records and were making the available for free viewing. So, I decided to look, and I found his records. As you can imagine, I'm quite thrilled and excited! In addition, I also happened to notice that the other British World War One records are also available for a free viewing as well. I'm not sure why the records are now free, but it might have to do with this story about about a family receiving a World War medal for their ancestor. Either way, I do not know how long those records will remain free, so if you have a British ancestor or an ancestor who served in the British army during World War One, you might still want to check and see if your ancestor's records had survived or not. I hope you are as successful as I was. Enjoy!

I Just Noticed This!

I just happened to take a look on Ancestry's genealogy blog, and I noticed that they are planning to post the Michigan death records from 1897 to 1920 soon. Of course, I am also curious if they will be charging people to access these records, since these records are supposed to be available on the Library of Michigan's website as well except that death records can be viewed for free on the library's website. I can't wait for these Michigan death records to go online as I have some ancestors and relatives who died in that time period.

Limited Free Searching Of Ancestry's Newspapers

I just happened to read Randy's blog, and noticed that he had posted on Ancestry's limited-time offer on their historical newspapers. You can also read about it here. Enjoy!

Did Anyone See These Two Articles?

I was just wondering if anyone had seen Ancestry's post on fraudulent websites and Ancestry Insider's post on the article? I find it quite interesting that Ancestry is warning genealogists about fraudulent websites. I don't know how others might feel, but I feel this article was posted more to protect ancestry's image than it was to protect fellow genealogists. (Of course, that is not necessarily wrong, especially if another website is using their copyrighted images.) I guess I just have some mixed feelings about the news that they posted.

Of course, I have to agree with the two comments on Ancestry Insiders' post. Websites with genealogy links are almost always to Ancestry databases, and I think it makes it difficult for genealogists to differentiate between fraudulent and real sites since Ancestry owns most of the genealogy databases that are online.

Either way, I think it is sad that there are people out there who would use fraudulent means and steal images or formats to make money off of the interest in genealogy.

An Interesting Tip ...

I happened to be looking at Ancestry's Weekly Journal Blog, and I noticed an interesting tip. This tip offered a link to a paper on New England grave stones. Here is the link to the tip: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=2027#more-2027

Another Chapter...

Yesterday afternoon, an letter by Kendall Hulet (a manager at Ancestry.com) responding to the uproar over Ancestry's Internet Biographical Collection, was posted on Ancestry's blog. You can read the letter here.

I don't think I need to post anything further on this issue as other genealogy bloggers have commented on this letter. Among those are:

• Jasia's "Now That's What I Wanted to Hear!"
• Becky Wiseman's "Some Final (?) Thoughts on the Ancestry Fiasco"

I do not doubt that there are other genealogy bloggers who have commented on this letter; I just haven't had the time to read all of the blogs. I am sorry if I have not mentioned anyone.

Well, Believe This Or Not

I just checked Ancestry.com's blog and found out that Ancestry has decided to take off the internet its Internet Biography Database. You can read the rest of the article here.

What I find interesting is that Ancestry has labeled the uproar over its behavior as "concerns about the collection." If a person has not already read about the issue on other genealogy blogs, that person might get the impression that it was not an uproar, when in fact it really was. In short, if a person just happened to only see Ancestry's latest blog article, they would not be aware that many genealogists/family historians were angry and outraged over what Ancestry did.

This blog article also states, "We have decided to remove this collection and search engine from Ancestry.com for the time being." Interesting. Does Ancestry intend to only remove this database temporarily and repost it when the uproar has died down? I guess that means that the genealogy community needs to stay on the alert when it comes to new databases that Ancestry posts.

If you want to read my post on the database issue, click here.

Ancestry creates Ancestry websites for France and Italy

I've just noticed that Ancestry added an article to their blog about Ancestry's addition of two websites for France and Italy. You can read the article here: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1572 . Of course, I'm wondering what type of records they added to those websites, and I'm also wondering if members will be able to access those records. I guess it will be interesting to see what develops.

Native American Records added to Ancestry

I just noticed this post on Ancestry's blog just a few minutes ago, and I thought I would post on it. Ancestry has added records pertaining to Native America genealogy. From what I read, the databases added appear to census records of reservations. You can read the rest of the article here: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1573.

I don't have any experience in researching Native American genealogy, but I hope that the addition of these records makes doing genealogy reasearch easier for those doing research in Native American genealogy.


Update: 27 June 2007: I had to change the link to the article on Ancestry's blog, as Ancestry redid their posts from the past two days. I'm sorry if anyone tried the link, and couldn't find the article.

A Useful Article of Tips from Ancestry's Blog

I forgot to mention this article earlier in the week when it was posted on Ancestry's blog. The article is on how to determine the religious affliation of your ancestors. I read this article with a great interest because I am having difficulty determining the religious affliation of some of my ancestors. Without knowing my ancestors' religious beliefs, I will defenitely have difficulty tracing my ancestors. I hope to use some of the tips in this article.

You can read this article by clicking on this link: http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1501