This was Cathryn Darling’s experience, after she learned that her father, who she’d been told had abandoned her as a child, had really been killed in a tragic fishing accident (watch her video here.)

“After I found out that my father had died as a fisherman and his body was missing, I couldn’t let that settle. It wasn’t going to be the end of the story,” she said. “He was going to live on forever.”

Learn what Cathryn did to preserve her father’s memory and share what you’ve done to preserve the stories of your family members as well.

 I acknowledge the frustration our Mac users in our community experiences when Ancestry produces products that are not Macintosh compatible.  While we do not have anything new to announce for our Mac community at this time I did want to say that your message is being heard and is a point of discussion in our product roadmap planning meetings as we explore our options for converting the keying tool so it will support multiple operating systems.    

 At best I can say, don’t loose your passion for this cause!

The first card was for a brewer, which reminded me that my Bavarian great-grandfather had worked for a brewery — driving a horse-drawn beer cart, just like the guy in the old Budweiser commercials. The next card was for a baker, which brought to mind my great-uncle Ludwig, who’d owned a bakery. The baker’s card shows his birth date, former nationality, date of arrival in the United States, date of naturalization and address in New York City. Henry (formerly Heinrich?) Otto immigrated in 1881, at the age of 16, and received his citizenship in 1886, after fulfilling the five year residency requirement.

This index card shows that the Common Pleas Court of New York County granted citizenship to Henry Otto on September 29, 1886.

Ever since 1795, U.S. naturalization has required two separate applications. The first application is called a Declaration of Intention (also known as the “First Papers”). The second application, filed at least three years later — after the immigrant has been in the country for at least five years — is called a Petition for Naturalization or Petition for Admission to Citizenship (also known as the “Second Papers” or “Final Papers”).

Before 1906, any court at the local, state or federal level could grant petitions for naturalization. In 1906, Congress established the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, which standardized naturalization forms and processes. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration systematically indexed the pre-1906 court records for New York and several other northeastern states. The index card above for Henry Otto was created during that period, several decades after Otto received his citizenship.

After keying a few index cards, I tried some original citizenship applications, including both declarations and petitions. These documents contain dozens of details about the applicant, including age, occupation, physical features, birth date and place, current address, date of arrival, name of the ship that brought the applicant to the United States, last place of residence in the native country, and names and ages of the applicant’s spouse and children.

This declaration of intention provides a detailed portrait of the applicant, Gershon Peck, who immigrated to the United States from Lublin, Russia in 1858.

By the time I finished keying Gershon Peck’s declaration, I’d outlined a whole screenplay in my head about his epic journey from Lublin (in present-day Poland) to Liverpool, his sea voyage to Philadelphia and his adventures in the new world. Unfortunately Leonardo Di Caprio is probably too tall to play the leading role. But imagining Peck’s exhausting, perilous travels, the persecution he was likely fleeing and the challenge of adjusting, rather late in life, to a new culture made me appreciate my relatively pampered existence — and the sacrifices my own ancestors made to start a new life in this country.

If you’re interested in getting involved, now is a great time to join the Ancestry.com World Archives Project because several sets of naturalization records are available for keying, including index cards from California, Illinois, New York, Montana and Washington, and original declarations and petitions from California, New York and Pennsylvania. The index cards are super easy. The originals take a little more work, but they’re fascinating to read. Who knows? One of them might just inspire you to write a novel about a paper hanger from Eastern Europe who immigrated to the United States a few years before the Civil War…

 The England & Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892– taken from 279 original paper volumes held at The National Archivesin Kew – document trials and sentences for crimes ranging from petty theft and fraud to the use of bad language and scrumping (stealing apples from orchards).

 Each register includes details of the crime, the full name and date of birth of the accused, the location of the trial and the judgment passed. During this period, almost two in three tried for their crimes received sentences of imprisonment and almost one in 10 were either transported overseas or sentenced to death.

In total, the England & Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 documents:

      900,000 sentences of imprisonment – 65% of those who went to trial during this time ended up serving a prison sentence

     97,000 transportations – many criminals who received death sentences had their sentence commuted to transportation as judges became increasingly ‘lenient’

     10,300 executions – including a boy aged just 14.

The collection also documents the brutal period of English history infamously known as the ‘Bloody Code’ – so called due to the large number of crimes made punishable by death as the authorities sought to deter potential offenders.  Famous names in the collection include Jack the Ripper suspect Dr Neill Cream, the inept highwayman George Lyon and Queen Victoria’s ‘would be’ assassin Roderick McLean. 

 You never know who you might find – as Colleen was arbitrating this collection her research trained eye caught the name of her ancestor William Perrin.  If you’re interested in finding out if you have jail bird ancestors click here to search the collection. 

Thank you to all of the contributors who spent their time keying this project!  Because of their contributions the index for this collection is freely searchable for all Ancestry users.

We began the beta portion of the project in June of 2008, since then we have had a wonderful response from many of you including a number of partnerships with genealogical societies.  Your passion for this work is evident through the phenomenal activity we see daily, you’re an amazing group and on behalf of me and the entire World Archives Project staff we want to thank you!

 I also want to take a moment to thank our staff who shares a love and enthusiasm for this project providing many hours of “behind the scenes” work.

 Just as the thrill of watching a baby take its first steps or say their first words this project has been filled with many firsts, all of which have been fun to anticipate and participate in.  I’m excited to see what can be accomplished in our next year!

 Key Data and Milestones

• Developed an industry leading desktop transcription tool.
• Public launch March 2009 with over 12,000 contributors participating in the beta
• Over 19,000 contributors YTD, located in 70 countries & territories.
• Over 28.7 Million records keyed and arbitrated (will result in more than 13 million free record indexes that will be published to the Ancestry sites.
• More than 367 thousand hours logged.
• Three collections, over 438k free records published to the site
• Partnerships with 19 Genealogical Societies

If you would like to participate in the project go to www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject

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!

We have an RSS feed for our message boards that we have recently improved.  In the past it was difficult to see updated replies to message board posts through the RSS feed.  We now send an update for each new message, whether it is a new original post or a reply.  We’ve found that this has helped us stay up-to-date on the message boards we watch.

If you are interested in subscribing to the RSS feed for one of your favorite message boards, just click on the “Subscribe to RSS” link on the top of the message board.

For those who weren’t aware, you can also add a box to your homepage to show you updates to your favorite message boards.  Just click the “Customize your homepage” link at the top right of the homepage to add this to your page.

We hope that this update has made it a better experience for those of you who use the RSS feature on the message boards.

The new Ancestry.com World Archives Project is a global initiative that gives individuals everywhere the opportunity to help index and preserve important historical records. Anyone interested in indexing through the World Archives Project can go to http://www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject. Soon, active contributors (those keying at least 900 records per quarter) indexing for the World Archives Project will be able to take advantage of several benefits including:

•  Free access to all images associated with all collections keyed through the Ancestry.com World Archives Project
• Discounts on their current Ancestry.com memberships upon renewal
• The ability to vote on which collections are indexed next (and thereby suggest collections that may be of personal interest to them)  

Current Collections in the World Archives Project include:

Current Projects

• Historic Postcards (France) – 40% complete

• Lubeck Marriage Banns (Germany) - 86% complete

• England and Wales, Criminal Registers, 1805 – 1892 – 28% complete

• England, Newspaper Index Cards (Andrews – UK) – 14% complete

• Nebraska State Census, 1885 – 38% complete

• New England Naturalization Indexes – 20% complete

• New York Naturalization Indexes – 2% complete

• NYC Naturalization Indexes – 1% complete

• Southern California Naturalization Indexes – 19% complete

We also have a few collections that are now in the arbitration process. These include:

Projects in Arbitration

• Middlesex, Criminal Registers – 69% complete

• Marriages of the Deaf in America – 71% complete

• Alabama State Census – 89.9% complete

• Historic Postcards (Swedish) – 69% complete

• Historic Postcards (Italian) – 76% complete

If you have a few moments, we invite you to click here to take a brief survey. Your feedback will help us improve the Ancestry.com World Archives Project. 

If you haven’t yet tried out the World Archives Project and are interested, click here to learn more.

Once again, thank you for being an active part of the genealogy community!