Company Offers Source Material

Sun., May 3, 1998

Donna Potter Phillips The Spoke

It’s the “Library” that makes the online Ancestry HomeTown so valuable for genealogists using computers to enhance their research.

This is the second of a two-part article on what Ancestry, one of genealogy’s premiere companies, has to offer genealogists.

Some of Ancestry’s hundreds of databases of information are free, but most are available with a subscription library card.

The databases are often original or primary source materials. The company brags it adds a new database every working day! Warm up your fingers and take a peek at http://www.ancestry.com.

One new database in the “Library” is the WWI Civilian Draft Registrations. In 1917 and 1918, some 24 million men born between 1873 and 1900 completed draft registration cards. These cards have all been microfilmed, and have long been available via Family History Centers. Now this material is online for everyone to use.

As of early spring, however, this database represented only 8.5 percent of all counties nationwide, with coverage from only 13 states. But I’m sure that in time, the entire database will be available for instant, online searching.

Another new HomeTown database is the Daughters of the American Revolution’s “Lineage Books,” a posting of 50 volumes of lineage records - some 750,000 names. The new Social Security Death Master File Index is also available for searching at this site.

PERSI, the Periodical Source Index, available as a $2,000 set of books, or a $100 CD-ROM, is available at Ancestry HomeTown to search for free with your library card. You can print out as many references as you’d like.

Myra Vanderpool Gormley’s “Shaking Your Family Tree” columns are also available. Look at the back-column list and print the ones you want. Dick Eastman offers a free weekly 10- to 15-page online genealogy newsletter through the HomeTown site.

The company’s pricing plan is called Ancestry Passport. There are two levels: the Silver Passport ($49.95 plus shipping and handling) and the Gold Passport ($99.95 plus shipping and handling). Both levels offer these parallel benefits:

“Family History Made Easy,” by Loretto Dennis Szucs, a $9.95 value.

“The Ancestry Family Historians Address Book,” by Julianna Szucs Smith, a $29.95 value.

Ancestry’s HomeTown Daily online newsletter.

Ancestry Magazine.

Research tools (binder, inserts and guidelines).

Discount purchasing and gift giving.

Discounts on research services.

In addition, the Silver Passport includes a one-month access to the Ancestry Library databases (a $6.95 value), and 50 percent off the subscription price of Genealogical Computing.

The Gold Passport offers unlimited access to any of the Library databases (a $59.40 value) and a full subscription to Genealogical Computing.

If you are already an Ancestry subscriber, when you call 1-800-ANCESTRY, they will adjust your subscription and give you double value for the time left on any subscriptions.

Bottom line: This is a $50 or $100 annual expense that will yield practically unlimited benefits to working genealogists. For that amount, you’ll receive one or two top-notch magazines to read, a daily online newspaper full of tips, reviews, stories and information, and access to exactly the same kinds of informational databases you’ve been traveling to libraries all over the country to use.

And, if, after a month’s trial, you’re not happy with all of Ancestry HomeTown, portions of your subscription fee will be refunded.

How’s that for a great deal?

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