New Opportunities with Ancestry.com

I'm intrigued by some of these, so decided to post. This was released on 9 Nov 2012. 

New Military Burials Feature Lincoln, Custer, a Well-Disguised Jilted Lover and

More Than 100 Years of History and Remembrance

Ancestry.com partners with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and

National Archives and Records Administration to create a new collection of

online military burial ledgers and headstone applications

PROVO, UTAH – November 9, 2012 – Going beyond name, rank and regiment, a new collection of military burial registers on Ancestry.com provides insight into some of America’s greatest historical figures – including Abraham Lincoln, General Custer and others dating to the Civil War. The online, searchable collection launches today courtesy of a partnership between Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

“These began as around 60 amazing, handwritten burial registers – more than 9,000 pages of American heroes, where they are buried and other details,” says Dan Jones, Vice President of Content for Ancestry.com. “And today they can be searched by individual names and viewed online on Ancestry.com, allowing family historians everywhere greater insight into the military experience of ancestors as well as notable personalities.”

Highlights of the collection include:

·        President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s honorific entry in an Arlington National Cemetery register is framed with a hand-drawn black border. Under cause of death it reads “Assassinated; pistol shot by John Wilkes Booth the ball entering 2 inches below and behind the left ear and lodged in the brain.”

·        General George Armstrong Custer.  Custer is among those officers “taken up on Custer’s battleground” and brought to Fort Abraham Lincoln by steamer in 1877. Custer’s brother Thomas and brother-in-law James Calhoun, who were killed at the Little Big Horn, are in the collection as well. 

·        Captain Charles William “Charley” Paddock, USMC. Paddock, winner of the gold medal in the 100 meter at the 1920 Summer Olympics, and whose 1924 Olympic appearance was portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire, died in a World War II plane crash near Sitka, Alaska, where he is buried.

·        Vivia Thomas. According to legend, Thomas was a jilted fiancé who left home to exact revenge on an army officer who broke off their engagement. Thomas traveled west dressed as a man and joined the army at Fort Gibson, her ex-fiancé’s post. She eventually shot and killed him, before dying herself. When the soldiers of Fort Gibson, who knew her as Private Thomas, learned of the story, they honored her courage by interment in the cemetery Officers’ Circle. 

From the 1860s until the mid-20th century, in some places, U.S. Army personnel tracked burials at national cemeteries and military posts in registers that included name, rank, company/regiment, date and cause of death, age, grave number, and original place of burial in the case of re-interments.  The U.S. Army was responsible for all national cemeteries from the 1860s until the early 1930s, and they were responsible for depositing most burial registers at NARA.  In 1973, the Army transferred 82 national cemeteries to what is now VA, where the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) oversees them.

Concerned for the fragility of these documents and wanting to expand public access to the contents, NCA scanned about 60 handwritten ledgers to produce more than 9,344 pages of high-quality digital images.  Then in 2011, NCA initiated a partnership with Ancestry.com to index the ledgers so users can search them easily.  At no cost to the government or taxpayers, Ancestry.com spent close to 3,000 hours indexing NCA’s ledgers records to make them searchable by name.

The ledgers are one of two new Ancestry.com collections, U.S. Burial Registers, Military Posts and National Cemeteries, 1862–1960 and U.S. Headstone Applications, 1925–1963, both launching for Veterans Day 2012. More than 500,000 individuals are included in these records.

“We are excited to be able to share this wealth of primary documentation,” said VA’s Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs Steve L. Muro. “With the help of Ancestry.com, we have opened the doors to thousands of service members’ histories through the information contained in these burial ledgers.”

The Ancestry.com partnership supports NCA’s commemoration of the Civil War 150th anniversary (2011–2015).  More than 72 of NCA’s 131 national cemeteries originated with the Civil War.  More than 3.7 million Americans, including Veterans of every war and conflict — from the Revolutionary War to the Global War on Terror — are buried in VA national cemeteries in 39 states.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers. More than 11 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 40 million family trees containing approximately 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

Ancestry.com New Release: UINDY Teams with Ancestry.com on Identity Project

UINDY TEAMS WITH ANCESTRY.COM ON IDENTITY PROJECT

Relationship with University is First for Popular Family History Web site

(INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana) – November 8, 2012 - The University of Indianapolis is teaming up with Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, in a first-of-its-kind initiative to encourage students to explore and reflect on how their family history impacts their identity.

All UIndy students, faculty and staff have been granted access to Ancestry.com content from computers and mobile devices anywhere on campus. That content -- 11 billion searchable documents and images -- includes census records, prison logs, ship manifests, historic newspapers and yearbook photos in addition to 40 million online family trees.

The company is providing on-campus workshops and seminars to help the UIndy community make the most of the online product. UIndy faculty members, particularly in disciplines such as history, are enthusiastic about the classroom potential of giving students easy access to the vast database of historical documents.

Although Ancestry.com has worked previously with libraries and other institutions, this is its first such relationship in the field of higher education.

”Helping people discover their family history is at the heart of our mission at Ancestry.com,” said Brian Hansen, general manager of the Ancestry Institution Product. “We are excited to work alongside the University of Indianapolis to enable students and staff to uncover new information about their ancestors that will help them better understand who they are and where they come from.”

At UIndy, the Ancestry.com access is a key component in the annual University Series of programs and events. This year’s series features guest speakers, discussions and workshops built around the theme “Who Do You Think You Are?”

As a starting point for the students’ exploration of heritage, the university adopted a common reader for the campus community, the 2009 book “The Ties That Bind: A Memoir of Race, Memory, and Redemption” by Bertice Berry. Berry, an African-American sociologist and writer, explored her family history and found a story far more complex than the black-and-white tale of slavery and tragedy that she expected. Three-fourths of the university’s incoming freshmen voluntarily bought the book, and hundreds attended a campus lecture by Berry in September.

The coordinators of UIndy’s University Series hope students also uncover life-changing revelations in their own family histories.

“This is about being able to make sense of yourself – past, present and future,” said Dan Stoker, UIndy’s executive director of student services. “In confronting the truth, you can learn something vitally important and see the world in new ways.”

About UIndy The University of Indianapolis is a private, comprehensive institution of higher education founded in 1902, with a home campus of more than 5,400 students, a wholly owned branch in Athens, Greece, and partnership sites in Asia and Latin America. Its challenging undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs include nationally ranked offerings in the health sciences. Two centers of excellence make UIndy a leader in education reform and aging studies. More information is available at www.uindy.edu.

About Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers. More than 11 billion records have been added to the site in

Ancestry.com completes the 1940 US Federal Census Index

From Ancestry.com today:

Ancestry.com Releases Completely Searchable 1940 U.S. Federal Census

A searchable index to 134 million records makes researching family history in the latest available U.S. Census dramatically easier

PROVO, UTAH – (August 3, 2012) – Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, is proud to announce that it has completed the records indexing process for the 1940 U.S. Federal Census, which is available at www.ancestry.com/1940census. All 134 million records are now easily searchable by name, date, place of birth and other key information recorded in the census. These records, which are free to search, offer valuable insight for the nearly 90 percent of Americans who either have family members recorded in the 1940 U.S. Census or are in it themselves.

Since the initial release of the 1940 U.S. Census by the National Archives in April, Ancestry.com has progressively published information from this important family history resource state by state. Ancestry.com has made this vital family history information while providing an engaging user experience including the ability to search for maiden names or other family names, often a roadblock when searching records. Additionally, users can make corrections or update information that is incomplete, leading to a better overall database of information.

Assisting in navigation of the 1940 U.S. Census is Ancestry.com’s Interactive Image Viewer, which enables users to easily peruse document pages with simple graphical overlays. The viewer adds highlights, transcriptions and other functionality directly on the Census page. This enables searchers access to small census fields by simply scrolling over them for a pop up that magnifies the information recorded by census takers.  With the ability to zoom in on individual records, these new features dramatically improve the usability of the 1940 U.S. Census, which previously only included images of the paper records. These paper records, handwritten in small entry fields, have traditionally been very hard to read, making the visual enhancements in the Interactive Viewer a huge improvement.

“We are so excited to be publishing our index to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census for free on Ancestry.com,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com. “As one of the most anticipated family history resources ever, the 1940 Census is a fantastic way for almost every American to get started making discoveries about their family history as well as a key new resource for so many of our two million existing subscribers.  Experienced through our new Interactive Image Viewer, the stories and discoveries inside the 1940 Census really come to life.”

Users can now find basic information such as their ancestors’ names and where they lived, but also gain more insight about their ancestors’ daily lives. This information includes whether they owned or rented their home, the value of the residence and how many people resided there. For the first time, census takers in 1940 also asked questions specific to income and education. Interestingly, details like prior military service, the ability to read or write, and whether citizens spoke English – all asked in prior censuses – were not asked in 1940.

The entire census can be viewed online at www.ancestry.com/1940census

About Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 2 million paying subscribers. More than 10 billion records have been added to the site in the past 15 years. Ancestry users have created more than 38 million family trees containing more than 4 billion profiles. In addition to its flagship site www.ancestry.com, Ancestry.com offers several localized Web sites designed to empower people to discover, preserve and share their family history.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include our ability to digitize content, to provide desired content to our subscribers, to make our services convenient to use and to otherwise satisfy customer expectations. Information concerning additional factors that could cause events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is contained under the caption “Risk Factors” in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2012, and in discussions in other of our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date and we assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements.