U.S. Content Update: 1880 Census Images, 1935-1945 City Directories, Improved Obituaries Collection & Iowa State Census Fix

Here’s a summary of today’s U.S. Content releases:

1880 U.S. Federal Census

Over 99% of the 1,085,847 images were replaced today with higher quality images scanned from earlier generation microfilm. We’re looking closer at the images left to be replaced.
In many cases, the improvement in quality is the difference between completely illegible to complete legibility (see example… Read more

Temporary site problems

We wanted to let everyone know that we are having some temporary site problems this morning that we are actively working on.  The primary error you may notice is getting a message on the homepage when you are logged-in to the site stating “Everything has been removed from your page.”  We expect this and any… Read more

The new online Messages feature – A better way to connect with other members

I’d like to introduce the new online Messages feature that we added to the Ancestry.com site today. It is a great new way to connect with other members you come across on the site and replaces the email-based Ancestry Connection Service.

First, if you haven’t ever connected with other Ancestry members I hope you find… Read more

Changing text size on search results

Some of you may use the text size links on the search results page to increase the font size when you scan a list of results:

This functionality is controlled by javascript, and is performance drag on the page. And you can control text size of an entire page through your browser much more efficiently.… Read more

New Feature — “My Participants”

Interest in family history is not relegated simply to a maternal line which in many cases the female can only contribute DNA but spans across and between lines of many family trees.  
For example, the 1900 census listed a paternal grandfather, Jeff, in a household with his parents, Martha and Kenneth Thatcher, but Martha was listed as having only 2 daughters.  A review of the… Read more

Creating family tree posters from your online tree

If you have an online family tree on Ancestry.com, you know that this free service provides many, many benefits. You can connect with other researchers whose family trees overlap with yours. You get automatic “hints” of records that may contain information about your ancestors. You can easily attach records you find on Ancestry.com to your… Read more

How do you compare? — Fun Facts!

Now that you have your results in hand and have finished reading all of the educational material, following the links to more resources, and deciphering your values, matches and ancestry, you may find yourself pondering such things as:  ”I wonder if my stonemason ancestry could have promoted my welding instincts.” or “Are there any commonalities among people of such a large… Read more

Family Tree Maker: Making Colorful Charts

What family historian doesn’t want to brag a little about their latest find or show off their tree? And one of the easiest ways to showcase your family is with charts. Family Tree Maker lets you easily create a variety of standard ancestor and descendant charts, but with a little effort (and practice) you can… Read more

Free Webinar for Family Tree Maker – What are your questions?

Our next Family Tree Maker webinar is scheduled for March 12 at 8pm EST! We’ll discuss the new features in the Free Upgrade to Version 2009.
In addition, we’re going to try something new. All of the Family Tree Maker developers will be there to help answer your questions online. They’ll type responses to the questions you… Read more