We doubled the size of our historical newspaper collection - adding a billion names and 20 million images. Different than census or other types of records, newspapers can add context through breaking news, gossip columns, entertainment listings, advertisements and much more.
As we dug into the collection, we found stories of local town heroes - such […]

Today The Generations Network and The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) signed an agreement that will make millions of historical records available on Ancestry.com. With the new agreement, Ancestry.com will have technicians and scanning machines onsite at NARA to continually digitize content for online access faster than ever before. To learn more about this […]

In conjunction with the 2008 National Genealogical Society Conference taking place this week in Kansas City, Missouri, Tim Sullivan has published a letter to the genealogy community. In it, Tim highlights several recently released content collections and product enhancements on Ancestry.com, and offers insights into new projects on the horizon.
Read the complete letter from Tim here.
  

Earlier this week, and just in time for Tax Day, we launched a collection of IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862 - 1918. Income tax was established in 1862 to help fund the Civil War, and most of the records cover the mid-1860s. Beyond stated income values, these assessments on Ancestry.com document personal property - pianofortes, […]

Today we launched a collection titled Former Colonial Dependencies Slave Register Collection, 1812-1834, which will allow Caribbean Americans descended from British Empire slaves to delve into their history online.
The registers now on Ancestry.com include details for more than 2.7 million slaves and 280,000 slave owners from a total of 17 former colonial dependencies, including Jamaica, […]

In honor of Black History Month, we’ve expanded our collection of African-American family history records with two new collections: Freedman’s Marriage Records and Southern Claims Commission Records.
Freedman’s Marriage Records
From 1865 to 1868, plantation marriages of thousands of former slaves from 17 Southern states were legalized. Ancestry.com has digitized and made available online a collection of […]

Our new collection of California Voter Registrations unlock more than 30 million names of Californians who registered to vote between 1900 and 1944. The collection reveals the political preferences of California residents - including several celebrities and political figures - who voted during the first half of the 20th century.
In 1942, actor and future U.S. […]

Ancestry.com has recently introduced a new Learning Center to help those researching family history find answers and advice. Our new Learning Center offers an abundance of resources for beginners to seasoned genealogists - including video tutorials, articles and how-to guides, genealogy communities, family history project ideas, and more.

The tutorials, narrated by Ancestry.com’s Chief Family Historian […]

In the spirit of the holiday season, we at Ancestry.com were curious to see how much Americans knew about their own family histories. A national survey we conducted revealed some surprising findings, such as:
- 83 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds are the most interested in learning their family history, compared to 35- to 54-year-olds at […]

Walt Disney. Babe Ruth. Tom Cruise’s great-grandparents. Our new collection of U.S. Passport Applications reveals the travels of several of America’s early-20th-century rich and famous. In total, the collection captures some 2.4 million Americans who traveled between 1795 and 1925, including vacationers and immigrants who often returned to their native countries to bring other family members back to America. The collection includes information on […]