United States Obituary Collection – This database continues to grow weekly.  Plus, beginning this year, it now contains more extracted fields, and in some cases, photographs.

Jewish Collection – Several new databases were added, including content from AJHS, JewishGen and Miriam Weiner.

AJHS Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum Records, 1878-1969

Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s – Over 100,000 records were added to the database.

Selected U.S. Naturalization Records – Original Documents, 1790-1974 (World Archives Project) – 15 new states were added to this important collection of original documents, including Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Montana, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Washington.

Original Declaration of Intention Document from Colorado

1810 United States Federal Census & 1820 United States Federal Census – The new, higher quality images provided in cooperation with FamilySearch were added.  Be sure to take a look.

U.S. City Directories – Since May, we’ve added over 4,200 new city directories to this huge collection, ranging from the years 1820-1949.  Over 1,000 more from later years are coming within the next 30 days.

Virgin Islands Slave Records – For the first time ever, these priceless records have been published online.  More collections are in the works.

U.S. School Yearbooks – The largest online school yearbook collection grew by 2,000 with the most recent update.

NARA Collections on Ancestry.com – This new catalog was added to give users the ability to search by keyword, title, and series number to see if a NARA collection is available on Ancestry.com.  To see the full list of NARA titles available to subscribers, click here.

Historical Newspaper Collection – Newspapers from over 80 new U.S. cities and towns were added.

U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 – Draft cards from the state of Illinois were added.

WWII Draft Card from Illinois

See all recent U.S. Content releases

Please let me know if you have any questions about the collections above or on U.S. Content in general.

This database contains state censuses for the years 1820, 1850, 1855, and 1866. Each of these censuses recorded the names of the heads of household and the number of other household inhabitants according to gender and age categories. Some years also included race categories and distinguished between individuals who were free and who were slaves.

Returns from U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916
This huge military collection consists of over 1,500 rolls of microfilm.  The digitized images are browseable now on the site.  The index is currently being created by World Archives Project contributors.

Army Regulations stipulated that every post was to submit a return to the Adjutant General, usually at monthly intervals. These returns showed:

• The units stationed at each post
• The strength of each unit
• Names and duties of the officers
• Names of civilians who played a roll at the post
• Number of officers present and absent
• Listing of official communications received
• Record of events

If you are interested in helping index this collection, you may get started today!

• KENTUCKY Lexington City, Stalion, Carl – Z Lincoln County, A – Z Livingston County, A – K
• KENTUCKY Lexington City, C – Staley, George
• MISSOURI St. Louis County, no. 3, J – Z Saline County, A – G
• OREGON Portland City, no. 2, Steward, Charles William – Wilson, Henry Clifford
• PENNSYLVANIA Pittsburgh City, no. 15, Abbs, Benjamin James – Dewan, Timothy Joseph
• PENNSYLVANIA Pittsburgh City, no. 15, Dewey, Roland Edward – Goldman, Harry Benjamin
• UTAH Salt Lake City, no. 4, G – Z San Juan County, A – Z San Pete County, A – C
• WYOMING Indians, Prisoners, Insane, In Hospitals, Late Registrants, cont. Robinson, Zell F. – Z

Draft Card from Pittsburgh, PA

• 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 below).
  • This update is a product of our partnership with FamilySearch.
  • The free index, which largely consists of the work of GSU/FamilySearch volunteers many years ago, was not updated today.  Several known errors in the index will be fixed in coming months.
  • New vs. Old images – extreme case (old on top, new on bottom):

    

    

• U.S. City Directories
  • Over 2,000 1935-1945 city directories were added today.
  • This is the first installment of directories from this time period to this database.  Hundreds more will be added in coming months.
• Obituary Collection
  • Now twice as many contemporary obituaries are being added to this database on a regular basis, with significantly fewer duplicates.
  • Our technology to extract the data from these obituaries has greatly improved, parsing the information into several more fields to allow for more accurate search results and more relevant family tree hints.

All in all, today’s U.S. content releases contain tens of millions of new records, many of which were never before accessible online.  Please let me know if you have any questions or if you find any issues with these releases that you’d like me to address.

P.S. The Iowa State Census 1925 missing images problem was fixed and rolled live yesterday.   Thanks to those of you who brought this to our attention.

The concern stems, I believe, from the format of the Genealogy Databases Posted or Updated Recently list on Ancestry.com.  This list can be a bit confusing in that it displays all new releases regardless of country and size.  Also, notice the launch dates on the right side of the list.  For several months we’ve been releasing multiple books, mostly Canadian, each day. On the new releases list these stack up and visually overwhelm other, much larger databases. The number of U.S. records released thus far in 2009 is actually almost double the number released in 2008 for the same period.

To see a list of only new or updated U.S. collections, use the new card catalog feature, filter by country and sort by date released.  Here’s a link straight to the list: New or Updated U.S. Collections.

Finally, this is shaping up to be a banner year for U.S. content, with many valuable new or updated collections in the works, including improved U.S. census images and indexes, state vital records, passenger lists, military records, city directories, state censuses, naturalization records, and maybe even a few nice surprises.

Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925
Added the 1925 census, containing 1.8 million names.  The full collection now contains 8.2 Million Names.

State censuses were often taken in years between the federal censuses. In some places, local censuses were designed to collect specific data, such as the financial strengths and needs of communities; tallies of school-age children and potential school populations to predict needs for teachers and facilities; censuses of military strength, cavalry horse resources, and grain storage; enumeration for revenue assessment and urban planning; and lists to monitor African Americans moving into the northern cities.  Taken from Szucs, Loretto Dennis, “Research in Census Records.” In The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, ed. Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997).

Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000
10,000 maps and atlas pages were added from the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.  The full collection now contains over 50,000 maps.

This database is a collection of maps and atlases detailing land areas that comprise the present-day United States and Canada, as well as various other parts of the world. It contains a variety of maps and atlases created for different scopes and purposes, including land ownership atlases and bird’s-eye view maps. Land ownership atlases usually show the names of contemporary owners or occupants of land and structures. Some of the maps depict countries and wider geographical areas, while others depict counties, cities, towns, and smaller geographical areas.

New Database
Selected U.S. Naturalization Records – Original Documents, 1790-1974
In an effort to get these records out to you sooner rather than later, we have released the images with a light index including name, state, record type, court type, court, court location, naturalization number, roll description and archive series. To capture the remaining rich information (birth date and place, country of origin, parents, occupation, residence, etc.), these records will soon be released to the World Archives Project.

This release includes the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California.  Soon to be added to this database are the states of South Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts and Maine.

Once World Archives Project indexing is complete, these records will be merged together with the other completed originals (U.S. Naturalization Records – Original Documents)

Updated Databases
U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946
Errors with the occupation and state codes have been fixed.

U.S. City Directories & U.S. School Yearbooks
Truncation of very long entries in these databases were fixed.

Stay tuned for the next U.S. Content Update.  Some really good stuff is on the way for February!

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Chinese Arrivals, 1900-1923
This database contains descriptive lists of Chinese seamen arriving at the port of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between 1900 and 1923. Information recorded in these documents includes: name, date of arrival, ship name, and age.

U.S. Chinese Immigration Case Files, 1883-1924
This database contains court case files regarding strict immigration laws against the Chinese enforced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It includes case files from: the Western District Court of Texas at El Paso (1892-1915), the INS District Number 4 Regional Office (Philadelphia, 1900-1923), and San Francisco, California (ca. 1883-ca. 1916).

New York Chinese Exclusion Index – Updated
This is an index to over 18,500 “Chinese Exclusion” case files created by the New York District Office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  The case files document the entry into the United States of Chinese aliens and the reentry of U.S. citizens of Chinese ancestry under the Chinese Exclusion Acts passed by Congress between 1882 and 1930, and repealed in 1943.

Chinese Surname Index for Jiapu Collection
This database serves two purposes, the first being a lookup tool to assist researchers in learning Chinese surname variations, including Pinyin and other Romanized variations, along with Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese characters. The second purpose of this database is to allow researchers to check for a given surname in the large and growing Jiapu Collection (Chinese family history books).

Chinese records coming soon:
Chinese Arrivals at Vancouver, British Columbia, 1906-1912
Chinese Arrivals at San Francisco, 1882-1914

This new release adds tremendous value to our U.S. city directories collection in the following ways:

1. it adds 50 million names in 1,100 city directories from 45 states and Washington, D.C.
2. these directories are concentrated around the year 1890, which bolsters our 1890 Census Substitute collection
3. most of these city directories have never been published before online
4. the images in this collection are high-quality greyscale, much clearer than previous collections:

Newly-released city directory image:

Previously-released city directory image:

Thousands more high-quality and unique city directories will be added to this database over the next several months.  The ultimate goal is to make this the aggregate source for U.S. City Directories.

• NEW IMAGES: Ancestry’s images, produced several years ago, were replaced with FamilySearch images, created recently from earlier generation microfilm and with the latest imaging technology.  In the images below, a piece of tape that obscured text in the census image on Ancestry (top) is more transparent on the recently added FamilySearch image (bottom):

   

  

  

• NEW INDEX: We took our existing index with user-submitted corrections, and the new, double-keyed and arbitrated FamilySearch index and programmatically merged the two.  A complex algorithm was designed specifically for this operation.  The following are a couple quotes from one of our developers:
  • “If a TGN (Ancestry) record was not linked [to a FamilySearch record], we also did a check to see if we could identify the FS (FamilySearch) image.  If we got a match on state, county, township, ED, page number . . . then we would use the higher quality FS image in place of the TGN image. In summary, where possible a FS image was used in place of the TGN image.”
  • “Also, FS provided more fielded data (several fields) in addition to what we had . . .  Merging the two gives a more complete keyed set. Example: Where we estimated the birth year, they keyed it. Where they estimated the age, we had that keyed.”

• REMAINING FIXES: We do know of some issues with the browse, as well as some other items, that need to be fixed and we’re already working on those.  If you find bugs or errors, please forward them on to me.

Again, for a limited time, the index is free.  Search and view the data to your heart’s content.  I hope you’ll take advantage of the first of the new and improved U.S. Federal Census databases on Ancestry.com.