Meeting with the nation’s archivists

This is my first post on the Ancestry.com Blog. I work in the Content group and I’m responsible for many of the relationships with State Archives and Vital Records groups.
This past week, I along with Quinton Atkinson and Brian Peterson, some of the Content group colleagues, attended a conference of the National Association of Government… Read more

New Ancestry.com Homepage Update

In my previous post, I discussed some improvements and adjustments we were planning to make to the new home page based on your feedback.  Here is an update on those promised improvements:
Quicker access to the Search box
 
Based on the feedback we received since my last post, we changed how we were planning to give you quicker… Read more

U.S. Content Update: Maintenance to U.S. Census, Tennessee Marriages and more

Below are some updates on maintenance of U.S. content collections on Ancestry.com:
1) As part of our partnership with FamilySearch to improve the U.S. Federal Census collection on both sites, we’ll be performing maintenance to fix many known issues with the current collection, like misspelled place names, missing counties, and missing or blurry images, among other… Read more

Family Tree Maker – New Contact

I wanted to post a quick thank you to the Family Tree Maker community. I have decided to pursue a new career opportunity that will allow me to expand into some new career areas, so I will be leaving The Generations Network. Thank you for the opportunity to communicate with so many of you. As… Read more

Highlighting images with frames, masks and corners

This month I interviewed Marie McFadden, a very talented graphic designer in our Creative Services group, in the hope that she would give up a few trade secrets. When Marie designs a page in AncestryPress, she seems to achieve a magical balance between elegance and simplicity. Her pages are always visually compelling but never kitschy… Read more

Q&A with Marie McFadden: Design tips for family history books

Marie McFadden is an associate art director at Ancestry.com. She designed most of the country backgrounds in AncestryPress, as well as the “Photo Book for Mom” theme. In an interview with Stefanie Condie, Marie offers guidelines for creating a book that will make a lasting impression on your family and friends.
SC: If I’m creating an… Read more

Ancestry.com World Archives Project in Private Beta

We have recently released a beta version of our new public indexing initiative that we are VERY excited about! So far we have several people indexing in the new tool and giving us great feedback. We believe the project is a win-win to contributors as well as to Ancestry, and will give genealogists around the… Read more

1891 Census of Canada Now on Ancestry

Ancestry today launched the 1891 Census of Canada, online for the first time. The 1891 Canadian census contains 4.5 million searchable names and 90,000 images of original census pages. Included is information from all 10 present-day Canadian provinces and its three territories. The 1891 census is fully indexed and searchable and can be accessed on… Read more

Announcing New Search Webinar

On Wednesday, July 30, at 8:30 pm ET, I will be hosting a public webinar for anyone who is interested in learning more about how to use the new search on Ancestry.com. Geared toward intermediate and advanced researchers, the webinar will focus on how to use the tools in Ancestry.com’s new search:

Record Previews
Image Snapshots
Refined Searches
Type-ahead… Read more

New Ancestry.com Databases for July

We’ve added and or updated the following Ancestry.com databases between July 6 and July 11:
United States

Michigan Passenger and Crew Lists, 1903-1965
Alabama Census Returns, 1820
Pioneers and Their Homes on Upper Kanawha (West Virginia)
Roane County, West Virginia Families
The Soldiery of West Virginia
West Virginia Estate Settlements
American Wills and Administrations
West Virginia Revolutionary Ancestors

Great Britain

The Book of Household Management –… Read more