We want to let you know that the Ancestry.com and related Ancestry International sites will be down for about 4 hours for scheduled maintenance tonight (Wednesday, Nov. 18) through early Wednesday morning beginning at 11:30 PM Mountain Time (that’s 1:30  AM ET or 5:30 AM GMT).  The Ancestry World Archives Project will only be available for offline keying.

Thank you for your patience as we improve our infrastructure.

Both old and new search are working correctly, it is just these pages that are not listing data collections as they normally do.

I will post an update when they are working.

We appreciate your patience.

The State and Country pages are working again, as are the images from the 1830 US Census.

And there is the story of Cary Christopher, who thought his great-grandfather was a German soldier during WWI but found out he was actually an American naval hero.

Well, recently we had a follow-up to Cary’s story that made it even more interesting. After we put the clip of Cary telling his story on Ancestry.com, we were contacted by one of Cary’s old friends and shipmates from Cary’s own time serving in the Navy.

Owen, Cary’s former shipmate, was also a member of Ancestry.com and his wife saw Cary’s video while doing some research on Ancestry.com.

According to Owen, he was reading the paper in one room when he heard his wife yell from the other, “It’s him. Honey, it’s him!”

“Who?” Owen yelled back.

“Christopher.”

“Chris who?”

“You know—him!”

When Owen finally figured out who she was talking about, he was ecstatic. He contacted us to see if we could put him in touch with Cary.

We took down Owen’s information and passed it on to Cary, in case he wanted to contact Owen. He did, and the two had a fun time connecting after so many years apart. They spent several hours on the phone catching up.

I love these kinds of connections because they just go to show you how doing your family history has a domino effect–one connection leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. Who knew when Cary made the discovery on Ancestry.com about his great-grandfather that it would help him reconnect with a former friend and crew member from his own life?

You can read the rest of the story about Cary and Owen’s reunion in the Learning Center. Plus, you can get some tips on how to make your own connections with family–past and present.

Note: This article was originally published in the November Ancestry Monthly Update.

I want to thank everyone for your participation in the search strategies webinar. We had a wonderful turnout with thousands of comments and questions.  We answered as many questions as time allowed.  We have a list of the questions asked during the webinar and we’ll be posting answers to the most popular questions and topic areas.

There were many questions about the card catalog and about topics that can be researched using the card catalog. Most of them fell into a few themes which are summarized below.

Question: How do you find the card catalog?

Answer: The link for the card catalog is on the left side of the search homepage.  The search homepage can be found by clicking on the search button in the navigation bar at the top of Ancestry.com web pages.  You can also hold your mouse over the search link at the top of the page without clicking and you will see the card catalog at the bottom of the drop down.  Here is a direct link to the card catalog and a screenshot of where you can find the links.

(Where to find links to the card catalog)

Question: How can you specify a place and a year to narrow down the list of census data collections? How can you search for a state or county census record? How do you look up individual census documents?

Answer: You can narrow census records by date and location. First, go to the card catalog and select “Census & Voter Lists” from the left side of the page under “Filter by Collection.”  Then, under “Filter by Location,” choose a  country or region.  Finally, select the year you are interested from the left side of the page.  At the top of the page, you can change the sorting order of the census records. See the drop down menu that says “Sort by.” I like to sort by “Database Title.” 

(Changing sort order in the card catalog)

To see the records for a particular state or county, repeat the first two steps above, but don’t choose a time period yet. Continue to narrow your location down to a state or county using the links on the left side of the page. The  screenshot below shows the first few counties in California. 

(Narrowing census data collections to California counties)

Finally, choose a census collection title from the list of data collections located on the right side of the page to go directly to the page with the search form and browse links for a specific census.

Question:  Where can you find cemetery records?

Answer:  You can use the search function in the card catalog to search for data collections about cemeteries or many other similar topics such as “graveyard” or “burial.” Just type “cemetery” into the title field and click “search.” Then you can narrow the results by collection type, location, and year.  The screenshot below shows where the title field and where the “filter by collection” links are located.

(Searching for cemetery in the card catalog)

Questions: How do you find collections by country? How do you research records from Germany?  How do you find records for France or Paris?

Answer:  You can use the card catalog to see a list of data collections for Germany and France.  Use the “Filter by Location” links on the left side of the page. Choose “Europe”, and then “Germany.”  As you can see in the screenshot below, there are 1,338 data collections available today for Germany.   

(German records in the card catalog)

You can also narrow the choices further by selecting a collection type such as “military.”  

Another way to search for place is to search by keyword. For example, to search for data collections about Paris, go to the card catalog and use the keyword field to input “Paris” and then click search.  For more information, you can view our webinar that focuses on European research.

Questions: How do you find military records from France during WWII? How can you find Navy records or records from other service branches from WWII?

Answer:  Many countries do not release military records. Some military records will not be made public until the country in question decides that enough time has passed such that record privacy is no longer a concern.   You can learn all about our military collections by listening to the military records webinar. In addition, Ancestry magazine published an article about World War II in May.

To find our military data collections about France, you can either search or browse the card catalog.  You could start by filtering the card catalog by “Military”, then filtering by location to “France.”  

You can also search the card catalog by keyword.  Try searching for “World War II” and for “WWII.” You may also want to search for keywords associated with the World War II such as “holocaust”.   Finally, I recommend trying a title search for “World War II” in addition to the keyword search.  Shown below is a screenshot for a search with “WWII” in the keyword field.

(Card catalog search results for WWII)

Question: Where can you find the ships records on Ancestry.com?

Answer:  Go to the card catalog and look on the left side of the page.  Click “Immigration & Emigration.”   Then scan through the collection choices. We have hundreds of data collections from passenger lists and crew lists to passports and ship pictures.

(Records about immigration and emigration including ships records)

Specific questions about errors or technical problems will be answered more quickly if you email support@ancestry.com or call the customer support center.  Our phone number is available on the bottom of the homepage and on our Contact Ancestry.com Support page.

During this same time portions of Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com and familytreemaker.com sites will also be unavailable.  Thank you for your patience as we improve our infrastructure.

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.

Thanks to those who joined us for the Search webinar on Wednesday. We had more than 10,700 members registered for the event, which is a record ever for Ancestry.com.

We also appreciate all of the great questions. In total, we had over 1,500, so unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to address these all individually.

In this post, and over the next few days, we’ll be covering some of the common themes:

1. Can I watch the presentation again?

• Yes, you can watch our recording of the webinar by clicking here

2. Can I just see the slides? I don’t want to have to watch the whole webinar

• We will be making these slides available shortly. I’ll provide an update on this blog as soon as we’ve posted them.

3. Where can I find a list of hot keys?

• We always show a list of hot keys on every results page, on the left hand side, below the “collections”.

•  In addition, you can find an overview of hot keys in our blog post  here

4. How do I make a correction if I have information about one of my ancestors that doesn’t match what is transcribed on the record?

• Nobody knows your ancestors as well as you do.  If you know an alternate name, date or place, you can add that to the record. Once you’ve made the correction, anyone searching in the future will be able to find that record based on either your alternate, or the original transcription

You can access this from the record pages:

or on the new image view page, on those collections where it is available:

• For a more in depth overview of this, see Anne’s post about how corrections work here

5. Where is the best place to start when researching African American family history?

• We have a special feature on African American ancestry that provides information and tips here

6. Where can I find the substitute collections for 1890 (which was lost) or 1940 (which isn’t released until 2012) censuses?

• Because these collections are not available, we have compiled a number of sources, including city directories and state censuses that cover the years that would have been in these censuses. Using these, you may be able to fill in gaps and track down who was living where at those times.  Our 1940 substitute in particular contains a huge collection of city directories from about 1935 to 1945 and has over 100 million names.
• For more information on 1940 see our blog post here
• These are available via the census and voter list page or you can find them directly by clicking here for 1890 or here for 1940

7. How do you reduce hits outside of the specified date?

• If you provide us with a birth, death or other date in the record, we will calculate when that person could have been alive, and only return records that could fall into that date range. You can find a detailed explanation of how this works in our post here.
• There are some examples where some dates may appear outside of this range, for example some family histories. However, if you find a specific example we’d be grateful if you could let us know so we can look into it.

8. When I go to Ancestry.com, my pages don’t look the same as the ones you showed in the webinar, why not?

• Last year, we launched a new search interface, which had a new layout and some additional features, some of which we discussed in the webinar. If you have started using Ancestry.com since last July, it’s likely you are using the new search interface.
• However, following feedback from experienced users (including much debate on this board) we have continued to make the “Old” search available for those users who joined before this time. If you did not recognise the pages we showed, you might be using “Old Search”
• The webinar was aimed at beginner to intermediate users, so it focused on the tools available in New search.

If you are using Old search, your screen will look like this, with a link to new search at the top right hand side of the page.

• At any time, you can return to old search by clicking on the same link in the same position.

9.  Is Tony from Yorkshire, Indiana, or New Zealand…?

• Some good guesses… but not right, I’m from Hereford, England and moved with my family to California in 2007

10. This webinar was too basic for me – will you be doing an “advanced” webinar?

• We’ve been really pleased that the majority of people found this webinar useful, and we are now considering options for extending this.
• In discussing within the team, it seems to make sense that a more advanced webinar should focus on particular topics, ie Searching for records in the South or Searching using specific collections. We’d love to get your ideas on what might be most useful to the greatest number of people.

Tony

The search team is excited about our free online webinar about searching Ancestry.com on October 14th at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. In this webinar, we will show you the best strategies for searching Ancestry.com’s thousands of databases. Improving your search strategies will help you to find more information about your ancestors.
It can take time to learn all the details of a search engine and keep up with new features. We’ll explain how to find more records and adapt your search strategies as you look beyond census records. We will start with a helpful overview and then provide step-by-step instructions for using several of the search engine’s features. This webinar is designed for beginning to intermediate members of Ancestry.com. To attend the webinar, please register here.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Laura

My husband’s grandmother died in Central Islip State Hospital in New York City in 1925. The hospital is now closed and the records apparently have been move to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. We would like to get more information about her and possibly a picture of her through the records that they have there. What is the best way to retrieve those records? They appear to be very protective of the patients’ information even though my husband is related directly to her.
 
Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
Sincerely,
Linda Blanchard

Because of privacy restrictions, hospital records can be difficult to access. We’ve tried unsuccessfully to access the records of a family member, so I can understand your frustration. Most of the initial research I did on the Central Islip State Hospital turned up the same references to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, but I was thinking that since it was a state hospital, you might have luck searching at the New York State Archives.

I searched the online catalog on the New York State Archives website  for Central Islip State Hospital. (To access the catalog, (click on the link to “Online Catalog” in the black navigation tabs.) That search brought up five hits, including one for Medical inspectors’ notes of visitation of state hospitals and private institutions, 1915-1939 (with gaps) from the New York (State) Dept. of Mental Hygiene. The catalog entry states that this collection includes,

“Narrative notes include date and time of arrival; professional staff on duty; list of staff vacancies, patient census statistics; notes on new admissions; discharges; deaths; and special interviews with patients about complaints regarding care and treatment, accidents, and injuries. They also provide remarks on food and recent improvements and repairs to buildings and grounds. Notes on patients include lists of patients to be examined by the inspector, ward, name of patient, admission date, age, duration before admission, diagnosis, and memorandum notes.”

These records are also restricted for privacy reasons, but perhaps with proof of your husband’s relationship to the patient, you’ll have better luck with the State Archives than you did with the hospital.

Browsing down to the subject index on that collection, I selected Psychiatric hospital patients New York (State) and there are 48 collections related to psychiatric hospitals in New York.
 
Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie’s Ghosts, a book about his search for information about his mother’s sister who spent her adult life in Eloise Hospital outside of Detroit.  I plugged Eloise Hospital Detroit into a search engine and found this site on Polish Ancestry, that has obtained records from that institution, so for those looking for the records of institutionalized family members, you may have better luck.

You might also want to look into court records. There may have been guardianship or probate records created for your husband’s grandmother. Mr. Luxenberg includes several court records examples on the website for his book. 

You may have seen some of these resources that reference the Central Islip State Hospital, but there are some interesting websites about the hospital with images.

Central Islip Psychiatric Center 
Photos, history, virtual tours, and maps.

Opacity Abandoned Photography: Central Islip State Hospital
Photos of remaining buildings and historical background.

For those with relatives who were in Ontario, Canada asylums, the Archives of Ontario has an online exhibit on Psychiatric Hospital Records.

2009 Federation of Genealogical Societies’ Genealogy Conference
September 2–5, 2009
Little Rock Statehouse Convention Center, Little Rock, Arkansas

Free Track of Ancestry.com Classes – Free to the Public
As part of the conference, Ancestry.com is excited to offer a FREE track of five classes designed to help you get the most out of your Ancestry.com membership. The free classes will be held on Saturday, September 5, from 8 am to 4:30 pm.

Class Schedule:

• 8 am – Getting the Most out of Your Ancestry.com Subscription – Discover how the historical records, tree–building tools, and search tools on Ancestry.com can grow your tree. (Designed for beginning users of Ancestry.com)
• 9:30 am – Best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com – Learn the best strategies for searching Ancestry.com’s thousands of databases to get the most information about your ancestors. (Designed for beginning to intermediate users)
• 11 am – What’s New on Ancestry.com – Find out about the most recent content, website features, product enhancements, and much more. (Designed for beginning to advanced users)
• 2 pm – Tapping into the Ancestry.com and RootsWeb Community – Discover the tools on Ancestry.com and RootsWeb that can help you find and communicate with other family historians. (Designed for beginning to advanced users)
• 3:30 pm – Getting the Most from Family Tree Maker – Learn how Family Tree Maker can help you more effectively organize, manage, and share your family history. (Designed for beginning to intermediate users of Family Tree Maker)

We’d love to know if you’re coming, so we can make appropriate preparations. Let us know if you’ll be able to attend by RSVPing at this URL: http://AncestryDayLittleRock.eventbrite.com

Conference Classes – Conference registration required to attend
Register to attend the four full days of the conference, which includes more than 150 family history classes taught by more than 50 nationally known family history experts and professionals.

In addition, Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com, will be the conference’s keynote speaker. Titled “The Future of Our Past: Preserving Yesterday’s Records for Tomorrow’s Researchers,” Tim’s talk will discuss how technology has and is drastically changing the way we pursue our family history.

Online registration is closed, but walk in registrations are welcome.

Exhibit Hall – Free to the Public
Ancestry.com experts will be on hand to answer questions about the website. Sit in on demonstrations covering Ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker, MyCanvas and more. And don’t miss special conference discounts on various Ancestry.com products.

Ask the Expert — Juliana Smith, popular editor of the Ancestry Weekly Discovery newsletter (formerly the Ancestry Daily News) will be in the Ancestry.com booth to answer your family history questions. Stop by the booth to sign up for a 10–minute, one–on–one time slot with Juliana.

The exhibit hall also features family history vendors from across the country. The exhibit hall is free to the public and is open:

• Thursday, September 3 — 9:30am – 5:00pm
• Friday, September 4 — 9:00am – 5:00pm
• Saturday, September 5 — 9:00am – 5:00pm

The Ancestry.com team looks forward to seeing you in Little Rock!