Monday Mailbox: Browsing Ancestry Database Images

Dear Ancestry Insider,

The database "Pennsylvania Wills and Probate Records 1683-1993," offers the subscriber a "Browse this collection" window which works perfectly for all Pennsylvania counties except for Philadelphia County. The list of available images for Philadelphia County never shows up anymore—it did when the database was first launched. Perhaps because it is such a huge amount of data, it cannot load properly. Because the list of digitized probate files for Philadelphia County can only be accessed by clicking on a link from this "Browse" function (administrations, etc), it is now not possible to access those files since there is no dropdown menu.

If you know someone at Ancestry who could correct this, I know many researchers would be grateful.

With thanks,

Sandi Hewlett

Dear Sandi,

I’ll see what I can do.

In the meantime, there is a workaround. There are two ways to access the browse capability of an Ancestry collection. One is the browse you have identified on the collection page. The other is accessed via the breadcrumb path at the top of the page, underneath the title when viewing an image. If you can find a way to see any image, then you can browse to any other image. You can get to an image via browsing one of the other counties that works, or by searching for a common name. Or do this:

1. Start at https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/8802/005871739_00002.

2. Underneath the collection title at the top of the page, click on “Administration Files, 1764.”

3. Select from the available options.

Signed,

---The Ancestry Insider

FamilySearch Reviews 2016 Accomplishments – Part 1

[THE INDICATED BULLET WAS UPDATED 14 JANUARY 2017 TO ELIMINATE MY BAD MATH.]
FamilySearch recently published a review of their 2016 accomplishments, just as they did last year for 2015. As I did last year, I thought I’d present the information here, along with commentary, and a comparison with their 2015 accomplishments. I found a few surprises.

FamilySearch organized the accomplishments around the five discovery experiences presented in Steve Rockwood’s 2016 RootsTech presentation.

Family Tree

In 2016, FamilySearch made Family Tree more stable, made it possible to merge duplicates, added more record hints, made record hints more accurate, added user-to-user messaging, and broadened the ability to identify your relationships to persons in Family Tree.

Facts and figures:

• 1.1 billion persons in FamilySearch Family Tree.  FamilySearch has previously reported that 28 billion people have lived since 1500 AD. Few records exist that uniquely identify people who lived prior to that date. Had FamilySearch met their objective that there be no duplication in Family Tree, then the Tree would contain 4% of all the recorded people in the world’s history. However, there is a lot of duplication in the Tree. 1.1 billion is the same size reported last year, so the number of new persons must be less than 100 million.
• 561,759 new contributors in 2016. This is up from 120,000 in 2015. I think this includes those who contribute in any way, not just the addition of persons.
• [Updated 14 January 2017]3.45 million total contributors. That sounds high, even though participation is considered a mandate for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Current Church membership stands at 15,634,199. Total contributors was up from 2.47 million in 2015.

Searchable Records

“Millions more searchable records were added this year as employees and volunteers digitally converted FamilySearch’s vaults of microfilm for online viewing and added millions of new record images from archives across the globe,” wrote FamilySearch’s Diane Sagers. “Partnerships formed with other genealogy search companies, such as Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.com, and MyHeritage.com, broaden its searchable databases.”

Around the world, 320 camera teams digitally preserved over 60 million records in 45 countries. FamilySearch reworked the U.S. census collections in 2016.

FamilySearch, along with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, other organizations, and 25,000 volunteers, indexed and published records from the Freedmen’s Bureau. “These records are pivotal for African American research because they document freed slaves and others who struggled to redefine themselves after the Civil War.”

Facts and figures:

• 5.57 billion total searchable records online. This is 260 million more than the 5.31 billion reported last year.
• 275 million total records indexed [during 2016]. This is up from 110 million in 2015. According to the math, volunteers indexed 15 million more names than FamilySearch published. Makes you wonder if they have a growing backlog.
• 37 million non-English records indexed. FamilySearch must be having trouble recruiting non-English language indexers, since that is just 13% of the total. On the positive side, 37 is up quite a bit from 19 million in 2015.
• 125 new 2016 historic records collections. This is down from 158 the previous year.
• 2,174 total collections. It was 2,049 at the end of 2015.
• 60 million record images published. FamilySearch cut in half the number of images, 122 million, published in 2015. That is disappointing. One possible explanation is that FamilySearch now publishes some record images exclusively through their catalog—much the same way that NARA does with their catalog. If you are not using the catalog as your primary search mechanism, you are missing out on what looks to be millions of records.

See tomorrow's article for more information.

FamilySearch Adds 141 Million New Record Hints

Two years ago FamilySearch added a feature (available on Ancestry.com for many years): record hints. FamilySearch compares names from its historical records with names in FamilySearch Family Tree. “When we put the data together for comparison and find high-scoring matches to people in your family tree, that’s what we call a hint,” explained Robert Kehrer, FamilySearch senior product manager. “In essence, the FamilySearch.org search engine is constantly working to make research discoveries for you without your having to do much more than login, validate what it found, and accept the hints.”

FamilySearch’s historical records contain five billion names. FamilySearch Family Tree contain 1.2 billion. Comparing the two in September, FamilySearch generated an additional 141 million hints over the 1.5 billion already found. Kehrer said 98.5% of the hints are accurate. Errors occur when persons in the tree have common names, are born in populated places, and have few known relatives, according to Kehrer. (I’m not too familiar with urban research, but it seems to me that companies don’t key enough identifying information about people in big cities. If they would key address, occupation, religion, and other differentiating information for people in big cities, it would be easier for users to find people and would improve the accuracy of their hint system. It shouldn’t be too hard to determine population levels necessitating the keying of additional information. FamilySearch and Ancestry don’t seem to understand the cost/benefit analysis.) Noteworthy among the new hints are those from the 1851 and 1881 England and Wales censuses.

To enlist the FamilySearch hinting system to find records of your ancestors, their names must exist in Family Tree. If they are not already there, you can add them at no cost. If you do, be prepared to defend your conclusions to other descendants. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; we should all be able to do that. Also, because of the uneven experience level of tree participants, expect to spend time teaching others with less experience.

For more information, see “FamilySearch Adds 141 Million Family History Record Hints” in the FamilySearch newsroom.

MyHeritage Provides FamilySearch Source Button

Click to view an infographic

FamilySearch announced last week that MyHeritage is providing a button to create a source in FamilySearch’s Family Tree. When viewing a MyHeritage historical record the button is available below the record details.

A single click or tap of the button creates a source in Family Tree. To associate the source with the correct person in Family Tree, you must have initiated the search from the person’s Family Tree page.

Ancestry.com features similar functionality: Attach the record to a person in an Ancestry Member Tree, link that person to a person in FamilySearch Family Tree, and transfer the source. This feature is available only to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For more information about the MyHeritage button, see “Family History Easy Button: Create New Sources in Family Tree from MyHeritage” on the FamilySearch blog.

FGS Next Project – #FGS2016

At their 2016 conference the Federation of Genealogical Societies announced both the completion of their Preserve the Pensions project and the beginning of a new one. FGS is teaming up with the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park of the National Park System to build a database of more than 130,000 soldiers of the U.S.-Mexican War. Efforts will be made to also include unit histories, digitized documents, and Mexican soldiers.

“FGS is thrilled to partner with the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park for this important preservation project,” said FGS President D. Joshua Taylor. “"“We look forward to working with our member societies and volunteers to provide new access to records for those researching the Mexican War.”

The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Park Service partnered together in 1999 for the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database project where FGS volunteers completed data entry for more than five million names. The efforts of the CWSS project can now be experienced on the NPS Civil War website.

Volunteers are needed for three different aspects of the project:

1. Indexers and arbitrators are needed to index the compiled military service Records of Federal soldiers and the pension Index files. This will be a closed project using the FamilySearch indexing program. You will need a free FamilySearch account and we will have to give you authorization. If you want to participate, please send your FamilySearch username so that we can add you to the project and give you access to the images. I may be prejudiced, but I think the FamilySearch indexing software is easy to use. However, if you are not familiar with the system, FGS will be glad to train you. While the pension index records are available now on the FamilySearch website, FamilySearch didn’t index the military unit. (That appears on the surface to be a failure on FamilySearch’s account, but they did it with good reason. I will try to remember to explain why in a future article. But I digress.) This indexing project will add the missing information.
2. Indexers are needed to enter information from various typed military documents into Excel spreadsheets.
   FGS will try to allow you to work with the states you are interested in. Each company has about 100 names.
3. Researchers are needed to locate rosters and other reliable sources for units that are missing soldier names. It may help if you are familiar with research in particular states.

If you are interested in helping out, contact Projects@fgs.org with your name, email, and FamilySearch username (if applicable). Indicate which particular part of the project you are interested in working on.

Coming to America by Juliana Szucs – #FGS2016

Juliana Szucs, social community manager at Ancestry.com presented “Coming to America: Finding Your Ancestor’s Arrival Record on Ancestry” at the recent 2016 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies.

Juliana remembers when you couldn’t get immigration records online. You had to wade through lots of microfilm. People weren’t very excited about using them. As I recall, the films were organized by arrival date, so if you didn’t know the date, you had to scroll through every name on every page on every ship on every day of every year until you found your guy—or started looking at another port. Having just an approximate date saved days of work.

Look for stories when researching migrations. Juliana had found the arrival record of her ancestors, William and Mary Ann Huggins, in New York in 1844. But they were missing their three children. It wasn’t uncommon for some family members to come before others. It’s called chain migration. Juliana finally found the record of the three coming in 1849 on the Liverpool.

Put your ancestor’s trip in the context of history. In 1849, it took one or two months to cross the ocean. Most of the Liverpool’s journey had been in January and February. This was in the middle of the potato famine. If starvation was driving the Liverpool’s passengers from Ireland, many may have been ill prepared for the journey.

Look at your ancestor’s passenger list as a whole. The Liverpool’s passenger list indicates that of the 416 passengers who boarded the ship, 37 would die before reaching America.

Juliana said there were three eras of passenger lists. The 1820-1890 era followed the Steerage Act of 1819. Very little information was listed about passengers: name, age, gender, occupation, and nationality. In 1891 responsibility for passenger lists was transferred to the Office of Immigration which instituted standardized forms that collected much more information.

Before 1820 there were no laws requiring passenger lists. Of the few that exist, some have been published. An example is Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680-1830 which is available on Ancestry.com. Another is the Great Migration series, also on Ancestry.com. Find published passenger lists on Ancestry.com through the card catalog using the filters along the left side of the page. Select the immigration and travel category and the USA location. Further filter down to passenger lists and the desired state. The results include databases and published books.

When searching for immigrants on Ancestry.com, there are some things to keep in mind:

• When dealing with non-English speakers, check ethnic name variations. BehindtheName.com is a good site for given name variations. Juliana gave an example list of variants for a surname: Mekalski, Mekala, Mensalski, Menkala, Menkalska. And this for a place name: Wyszków, Wiszkow, Vyszkov, Wischkow.
• Remember wildcards when searching. Me*kal*a will match many variations of the surname, above. W*zk*w will match many variations of the place name.
• Utilize the ability to add plus-or-minus values to dates.
• Don’t confuse country of origin with port of departure.
• Place the name of the ship in the keyword field when the search form doesn’t have an explicit ship’s name field.

Remember that Ancestry also has non-U.S. passenger lists, including “UK Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960”; “Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934”; and “Gothenburg, Sweden, Passenger Lists, 1869-1951.”

From Content to Discovery on Ancestry.com – #FGS2016

Saturday morning at the 2016 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies I was honored to attend the Ancestry.com  breakfast presented by Ancestry.com. The speaker was Quinton Atkinson, senior director of content acquisition and partner development at Ancestry. Quinton’s topic was “From Content to Discovery on Ancestry.” Quinton began by acknowledging Lou Szucs. Ancestry’s content would not be what it is without Lou, he said. He was able to work with many archives because the archivists knew Lou. Honoring that trust was always in his mind.

Ancestry recently moved to their new building in Lehi, Utah. Worldwide, they have grown to 1,400 employees. They have tripled their revenues in the last six years. (That was about the time I left. I feel bad now for holding them back.) They had $225 million in revenues in 2009 and $680 in 2015. Last year they received another round of money, a $2.6 billion investment. They have 2.4 million paying customers to core Ancestry sites. They have over 2 million genotyped customers. They have 18 billion digitized records from 80 countries. They have 8 billion profiles in 80 million user trees. (I think those 8 billion are counted in the 18 billion records.) Users have contributed 300 million sharable photos, documents, and stories. All of this totals to over 10 petabytes of data.

Quinton related his fascination with the Olympics. He watches sports he doesn’t normally watch. “Why am I enthralled with ping pong?” he’s asked himself. As he’s thought about it, he realized it was because the network has done such a good job framing their stories, their backgrounds, their struggles, and what has brought them to the Olympics. Because of their stories he feels connected and roots for them. (I only just now caught the double meaning of “roots.”)

“That is what we are trying to do at Ancestry,” he said. As they decide what records to acquire, as they decide what fields to index, as they publish more and more content, the challenge is to bring out those stories. “What will bring out the most meaningful discoveries?” he said. “This is what drives our business: helping people make those discoveries.”

How has Ancestry managed to get so many records? They begin by trying to understand the motivations of the archive. For the Library and Archives Canada, it’s access and preservation; for The National Archives of the United Kingdom, it is access and financial terms; for the National Archives of Australia, it is exposure and web traffic. Ancestry tries to be flexible, balancing the archive’s needs, the customers’ desires to have index and images in one place, and Ancestry’s financial goals.

Quinton told us a story that describes their situation in regards to the project to preserve the pension files from the War of 1812. A young boy was in a tie nearing the end of a wrestling match. His opponent had him in a hold and he found himself unable to get out. In this dire circumstance he noticed out of the corner of one eye his father in the stands, vigorously urging him on. What could he do? Then he noticed out of the corner of his other eye a big toe. His father, watching, saw his son suddenly escape the grip and quickly pin his opponent. After the match his father asked him, “How did you do it?” His son replied, “It is amazing what you can do when you bite your own toe.”

Quinton told us that for the past year they have faced challenge after challenge at the National Archives and Records Administration digitizing the pension files. But with the completion of the fundraising, it is a bit like biting your own toe. They are going to go back rejuvenated to get it done.

In the future, Ancestry will have to scrutinize record acquisition more carefully because they have already acquired most of the “low hanging fruit.” (That refers to the records that can be acquired and published that have lots of information for an inexpensive price.) In the future they will capture more fields to tell the narrative of the story. “There’s a lot more stories to be told,” he said. They’ve added more fields because more fields means a better story and a better story means more connections. And they will increase the use of automation in the extraction (indexing, as FamilySearch calls it) of information. There is another balance that must be struck, and that is the number of records that can be published versus the number of fields that are done.

In closing, Quinton showed the Momondo DNA video that I’ve highlighted before. (See “DNA Versus Extremism.”) He said that considering the conflicts we’re having in the world, this [video] drives home the importance of what we’re doing. “We love what we do.”

Life of a Record from the Barbour Collection

In my last article I illustrated the importance of coming to understand online records. I used an Ancestry.com record of Elenor Kendall’s birth and death. I went through the steps a researcher would follow to trace that record back to the original source. We learned the information had been copied from a copy of a copy of an original and neither the birth date nor the death date remained correct. (See “Take Time to Understand Online Records.”)

The reality is far worse. The copy on Ancestry is not a 3rd generation copy, but a 7th generation copy! And with each copy, small changes were introduced.

Generation 1 – The Old Paper Book

The original proprietors record of the town of Ashford, Connecticut was commonly known as “The Old Paper Book.” Elenor’s 1727 birth and death would have been recorded therein.

 

Generation 2 – Copy of the Old Paper Book

In 1770 “the Old Paper Book” was transcribed into a new volume:

Illustration 1 – Preface of the copy of the Old Paper Book¹

The following is a Coppy of What
is Called the old Paper Book and all
the old Record that I found Belonging
theirunto Without y^e Alteration of one
Word. tho not in Just the Same form
…
This Book Was Transcribed in the Months
of Febr^y March & April Anno Domini
1770 By Eben^r Byles Town Clerk
and attested at y^e End ---------------

Page 2 documents Elenor Kendall’s birth on 5 April 1727 and death on 2 August 1727:

Illustration 2 – Page snippet from the copy of “The Old Paper Book”²

Elenor y^e Daughter of Isaac Kendall by Elener his Wife Was Bor[obscured by paper repair]
5^th Day of April 1727 --- & S^d Eliner Kendall Deceas^d the 2^d
of August Next following ----------------------------------------------

 

Generation 3 – Barbour Collection Arnold Transcript

Lucius Barnes Barbour of Hartford, Connecticut directed a project to abstract Connecticut town vital records up to about 1850. Among those he hired to help was James N. Arnold, known for his Rhode Island vital record abstracts. Consequently, the abstracts were known as the “Arnold” transcripts.³ Among these was an abstract Arnold did in 1911 of Ashford’s “Ye Old Paper Book,” which he designated as volume A.⁴

 

Generation 4 – The Slip Index

Barnes gave the Arnold Transcripts to the Connecticut state library which typed the information onto printed forms. Each form was cut into twelve small slips.⁵

This is Elenor’s slip:

Illustration 3 – Slip from Barbour Collection Slip Index⁶

Notice that somewhere between generation 2 and generation 4 the birth year was changed from 1727 to 1827. Apparently, the typist was uncertain and added a footnote indicating it was “probably 1727?” The death month was changed from August to April. And a surname variation was added that wasn’t present in generation 2.

Generation 5 – The Volume Index

The state library alphabetized the slips for each town, grouped surname variations, retyped the information onto rag sheets, and bound them into volumes.⁷ Each town received a copy (labeled “The Arnold Copy”) of their town’s volume. ⁸ The state retained a set, which they call the volume index.⁹

The page from the Ashford volume containing Elenor’s birth and death information is:

Illustration 4 – Page snippets from the Barbour Collection Volume Index¹⁰

Notice what changed between the slip and the volume. The word “probably” was removed from the footnote. That’s a pretty important qualifier to be thrown away. The asterisk was removed from the footnote, leaving the asterisk superimposed over the comma looking like a semicolon. The surname grouping removed the surname variation.

 

Generation 6 – White’s Publication

Lorraine Cook White typeset and published the Barbour Collection in 55 volumes titled The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records.

Here is the page containing Elenor Kendall:

Illustration 5 – Page snippets from White’s Barbour Collection¹¹

Notice that White’s transcription of Elenor’s record is nearly flawless. A trivial quirk appeared because of the asterisk superimposed over a comma in the volume index. White interpreted it as a semicolon and then inserted a space before it.

 

Generation 7 – The Ancestry Database

Ancestry indexed White’s publication and published it as an online database.

Here is the record of the birth and death of Elenor Kendall:

Illustration 6 – A Record from the Ancestry.com Barbour Collection Database¹²

Notice that Ancestry’s indexers changed the death date from 2 April 1828 to 2 April 1727, a hundred years before the birth. The database design provided them no other way to capture the alternative year. Consequently, they lost the ambiguity of the century: 1727 vs. 1827.

Conclusion

Take time to understand the databases you use online. Try to get a sense of how many generations of changes precede the one you are viewing.

Changes are introduced just about every time a record is copied. Just like the children’s game, Telephone or Gossip, the more intermediaries, the worse the misinterpretation. Just like an old photocopy machine, the more intermediaries, the worse the degradation. Don’t bother with the intermediaries as I did here. Always pursue the earliest copy.

 

---

Sources

     1.  Ashford, Connecticut, Proprietors Records (1705-1770), preface; Town Clerk’s Office, Ashford; FHL microfilm 3,676.
     2.  Ashford, Connecticut, Proprietors Records, 2.
     3.  “Vital Records for Connecticut (Birth, Marriage & Death Records),” LibGuide, CT State Library (http://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/vitalrecords/Barbour : accessed 2 July 2016).
     4.  Lucius Barnes Barbour, “Connecticut Vital Records, Ashford Births – Marriages – Deaths, 1710-1851, Barbour Collection” (bound typescript, 1921, Connecticut State Library, Harford), ii; FHL microfilm 2,967.
     5.  Lorraine Cook White, comp., The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records: Andover 1848-1879, Ashford 1710-1851, Avon 1830-1851, [vol. 1] (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994), i.
     6.  Lucius Barnes Barbour, “Barbour Collection of Connecticut Vital Records prior to 1850” (card file, n.d., Connecticut State Library, Hartford), alphabetical entry for Elenor Kendall, born 5 April 1827. False coloring by the author.
     7.  White, The Barbour Collection, [vol. 1], i.
     8.  New England Historic Genealogical Society, “Connecticut's Barbour Collection of Vital Records,” American Ancestors (http://www.americanancestors.org : accessed 2 July 2016), Browse > Articles > Author > New England Historic Genealogical Society > Connecticut's Barbour Collection of Vital Records.
     9.  “Vital Records for Connecticut,” LibGuide.
     10.  Barbour, “Connecticut Vital Records, Ashford…Barbour Collection” (bound typescript), 95. The bound volumes have been digitized and indexed on AmericanAncestors.com, including p. 95.
     11.  Detail from White, The Barbour Collection, [vol. 1], 137; digital image, “Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)” (http://ancestry.com : accessed 25 June 2016), Ashford Vital Records 1710-1851 > image 121 of 253.
     12.  “Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection),” database, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 25 June 2016), search “Elenor Kendall” (do not specify date); citing Lorraine Cook, ed. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records, 55 vols. (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002).

Take Time to Understand Online Records

It is important that we understand the records we find online. Consider an example. Suppose we are trying to find the birth and death dates of Eleanor Kendall, daughter of Isaac and Eleanor from early Ashford, Connecticut. We search Ancestry.com and find the database record below. We snip the image, slap a URL on it, and we’re done. Right?

Source: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=try&db=CTvitalsBarbour&h=559520
Illustration 1 – Snippet from Ancestry.com with Anemic Citation¹

Not so fast. We need to understand this record. We need to evaluate how trustworthy it is. We remember that we are using an online database. That means Ancestry extracted (sometimes called indexed) information from a previous source.

Extracting information into databases introduces errors. Databases are not full abstracts (copies of all relevant information in records). Extractors, or indexers as they are often called, may misread or misinterpret information. They may be unfamiliar with the language, naming customs, or handwriting. They may lose their place and skip or duplicate information. And when extracting information into a database, indexers are constrained by the fields and data types; information that doesn’t fit may be adapted or discarded. Database publishers further manipulate the information to maximize the database’s searchability; names, dates, and locations are standardized to values the software program can understand.

Not content to grab and go, we examine the information surrounding a record:

Illustration 2 – Record from Ancestry.com²

We see Ancestry has provided a helpful citation stating where Elenor’s information came from: a series of 55 books edited by Lorraine Cook White titled The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records.

We scroll down and read the database description. There we read that this database is an index to the Lucius Barnes Barbour Collection.

The Lucius Barnes Barbour Collection, well known to the Connecticut researcher, serves as an index to and an abstract of most pre-1850 Connecticut vital records. …Barbour’s project was to abstract and collect all town vital records up to about 1850. There are two formats to the material. The first is a statewide paper slip alphabetical index containing a complete abstract of each vital record taken from the books in each town. …The second format is the group of separately bound volumes of abstracts of vital records for most towns, prepared from the slips.³

From this description we note the number of times this information has been recopied: it was abstracted, it was copied from slips into bound volumes, and it was extracted into a database. (As we shall see tomorrow, this is a simplified view of the number of times this information was copied.) Each of these steps introduces the possibility of errors.

We note there is an image attached to Elenor’s record. We look at the image:

Illustration 3 – From The Barbour Collection⁴

We see here that the information about Elenor came from vol. A, p. 2. And we see that Ancestry’s indexers actually did make an error. As you may have already guessed, Eleanor did not die before she was born. She died the 2nd of April following 5 April 1827, or in other words, 2 April 1828. We see the source of Ancestry’s error; there is a note that the year might be 1727, not 1827.

We want to examine the original source and come to our own conclusion: Did Eleanor die in April 1828 or April 1728? We set out to find vol. A, p. 2 of White’s source. The preface of a book of compiled information often tells how to use the book, explains abbreviations, and explains sources. We want to see what and where “vol. A” is. We use the Ancestry filmstrip view and find that, unfortunately, Ancestry excluded these important pages.

We check the FamilySearch Catalog for Ashford, Windham, Connecticut, and find it has “Records of births, marriages, and deaths, 1675-1849,” microfilm 1,376,249 item 1. The volume was created by the town clerk and was there when FamilySearch/GSU filmed it. We (if you’re me) walk down the street to the Salt Lake City Family History Library and look at the film. Sorry; I shouldn’t rub it in. We order the film, pay the rental fee, wait a long time, drive over to the FamilySearch family history center, and take a look at it.

We find the title board does not identify the volume and there is no photograph of the spine or cover. The handwriting is fairly modern, all written about the same time, has one vital record per line, and has surnames grouped together. We find the record of Elenor on page 4, not page 2.

Illustration 4 – Vital Record Book of the Town of Ashford⁵

We suspect this is not the earliest record of Elenor’s birth, but, gosh, it says some interesting things. This copy says that Elener’s birth and death both occurred in 1727 and the death was in August, not April.

Still in pursuit of the original source, we head back to the FamilySearch Catalog and find “Proprietor records 1705-1770,” microfilm 3,676, created by the town clerk and filmed in the town. The catalog entry notes that, as proprietor records often do, this record contains records of births (from 1670 to 1737). We walk down the street again—I mean, we order the film, pay the rental fee, wait a long time, drive over to the family history center, hope for the best, and take a look at the film. Here is what we find on the 2nd page:

Illustration 5 – Proprietor’s Record of Ashford⁶

Elenor y^e Daughter of Isaac Kendall by Elener his Wife Was Bor[obscured by paper repair]
5^th Day of April 1727 --- & S^d Eliner Kendall Deceas^d the 2^d
of August Next following ----------------------------------------------

We seem to have finally found our original. The year is clearly 1727 and the death month is clearly August. Feeling accomplished and satisfied, we are ready to call it a night when we realize we haven’t taken time to really understand this record. We investigate the first page of the volume and find this:

Illustration 6 – Preface to Ashford Proprietor’s Record⁷

The following is a Coppy of What
is Called the old Paper Book and all
the old Record that I found Belonging
theirunto Without y^e Alteration of one
Word. tho not in Just the Same form
…
This Book Was Transcribed in the Months
of Febr^y March & April Anno Domini
1770 By Eben^r Byles Town Clerk
and attested at y^e End ---------------

Oops. I guess we didn’t quite reach the original source.

Feeling less accomplished and not at all satisfied, we call it a night.

 

---

Sources

     1.  “Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection),” database, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com : accessed 25 June 2016), search “Elenor Kendall” (do not specify date); citing Lorraine Cook, ed. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records, 55 vols. (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002).
     2.  ibid.
     3.  “Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection),” database page, Ancestry (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1034 : accessed 2 July 2016); citing Alice Eichholz, “Connecticut”, Ancestry's Red Book, ed. Alice Eichholz (Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 2004).
     4.  Detail from Lorraine Cook White, comp., The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records: Andover 1848-1879, Ashford 1710-1851, Avon 1830-1851, [vol. 1] (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994), 137; digital image, “Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)” (http://ancestry.com : accessed 25 June 2016), Ashford Vital Records 1710-1851 > image 121 of 253.
     5.  Detail from Ashford, Connecticut, Vital Records, 1675-1849, p. 4, ; Town Clerk’s Office, Ashford; FHL microfilm 1,376,249, item 1.
     6.  Detail from Ashford, Connecticut, Proprietors Records, 1705-1770, 2; Town Clerk’s Office, Ashford; FHL microfilm 3,676.
     7.  Detail from Ashford, Connecticut, Proprietors Records, 1705-1770, preface; Town Clerk’s Office, Ashford; FHL microfilm 3,676.

Note: Credit for identification of an erroneous record in the Barbour Collection is due Marilyn Labbe, “Corrections and Additions to the Vital Records of Ashford, Connecticut and Brooklyn, Connecticut,” Connecticut Nutmegger (December 1998) 31:375; images, American Ancestors (http://www.americanancestors.org : accessed 3 July 2016).

Ancestry.com Preparing Large German Record Collection

And I’m guessing it is German city directories.

A number of years ago Ancestry.com developed technology allowing its computers to “read” (technically called OCR, or optical character recognition) and interpret U.S. city directories. (See “Data Extraction Technology at Ancestry.com.”) While the technology sometimes produces silly results, overall, it allowed Ancestry to publish over two billion records in record time and at minimal cost. The tradeoff seems reasonable.

Ancestry has nearly 700 German city directories but has yet to apply the technology to them. “The main challenge with German is the common use of the Gothic or Fraktur font when printing,” says Laryn Brown, Ancestry product manager. “This special script-like font is particularly difficult to recognize using the best OCR [optical character recognition] tools available today. Words and especially names can be misread as many of the characters in this special font are extremely similar.”

Ancestry’s solution is a quality-assurance check that compares the names the computer thinks it’s reading against a list of known names. If the computer sees something not in the name list, a reviewer is alerted. If the computer has identified a name not in the name list, the reviewer adds it. Otherwise, the name is mapped to the correct name or deleted. The results of these reviews are fed back to the computer so it can learn from its mistakes. It re-reads the books and the process is repeated. 

“When these records are finished, a random list of German words in a very difficult-to-read font will have been turned into a set of records about people that looks a lot like an annual census,” said Laryn.

This new collection will become available over several years and will include millions of pages of new content.

Monday Mailbox: Genealogy Search Engines

Dear Ancestry Insider,

Hi, 

You some time ago (yeah, real helpful) published an article about a search engine where you only had to enter information once and then it would save it while you searched multiple sites, one at a time. I have lost the link. (Getting old and, at 70, starting to suffer from crs :) Thanks.

Regards,
Richard E. A'Hern AFGC, SBH

Dear Richard,

You don’t have to be 70 to have bad memory. I’ve started losing memory with a vengeance. I might remember many years ago reviewing a website that did this, but I can’t remember what it was called.

I’ve dug around more recent articles and found two of interest.

• “Monday Mailbox: One Click Search of Acom, FMP, MH from Family Tree” – Enter your information once into FamilySearch Family Tree. Then launch searches on FamilySearch historical records, Ancestry.com, Findmypast, and MyHeritage.
• “Monday Mailbox: Best Kept Genealogy Search Secret” – You must use the Google Chrome browser and install an extension called RootsSearch. You can enter your information on several sites, not just FamilySearch. It can search a long list of websites, not just Ancestry, Findmypast, and MyHeritage.

Signed,
---The Ancestry Insider

Ancestry.com Provides Some Free Educational Opportunities

At RootsTech, Ancestry.com interviewed some genealogical experts. They are posting short, educational clips on YouTube taken from the interviews. They recently posted a couple that may catch your interest.

Loretta Evans answers questions about U.S. Military Pension Files in an eight minute video titled, “Exploring U.S. Military Pension Files with Loretta Evans.” Ancestry posted this information about the video:

Loretta Evans, AG ® specializes in researching the Midwestern United States. Her recent projects have included writing family histories, digitizing photographs, and cataloging family heirlooms.

Loretta shares what many consider to be among the richest family history records, pension files! Learn about some of the often overlooked details that can be found in military pension files + examples of how pensions have unlocked mysteries in Loretta's research.

Search Ancestry's military pension collections here: http://ancstry.me/23IxMNt

Pamela Boyer Sayre and Rick Sayre presented an eight minute video titled, “Historical Maps Reveal Much More Than We Think.” Ancestry provided this information about the video:

Certified Genealogists, Pamela Boyer Sayre & Rick Sayre share why maps reveal more than meets the eye along with their favorite online and offline resources to find maps to use in your family history research.

Find the Library of Congress Map Collections here: https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections/
University of Virginia Census Browser: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/
Newberry Library Atlas of Historical County Boundaries: http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/
Explore Preserve the Pensions effort here: http://www.preservethepensions.org/

Learn more about Rick and Pamela, explore their services and connect with them here: http://www.sayreandsayre.com/

Monday Mailbox: Irish Catholic Parish Registers

Dear Ancestry Insider,

Do you know if findmypast and Ancestry.com indexed the Irish Catholic Parish registers from NLI separately, or if they are using the same index? Since both announced the collections at about the same time, I am suspicious that they have collaborated in some way. I can't get a direct answer from either, but I think it is important for users of both sites to understand what they are searching.  Any clues who could answer that?

Will FamilySearch ever have the index?

Just wondering if you have the scoop!

Regards,
Lise

Dear Lise,

Something, something, something… yes, important for researchers to know… something, something, something…

Dear Ancestry Insider,

I hate to interrupt. Here’s the answer from the source:

“It was a joint venture. They both worked on this together! Regards,

“Christina McDonnell
Genealogy Advisory Service
National Library of Ireland”

Signed,
Lise

Dear Lise,

Glad I could help.

Signed,
---The Ancestry Insider

Findmypast Makes Good on Mocavo Promise

Good news for Mocavo users and—basically—all genealogists. After my story “Mocavo’s Free Forever Promise No Longer” Findmypast content marketing manager, Jim Shaughnessy, reached out with this comment:

All the Mocavo content either is or will shortly be published for free on Findmypast in line with our promise to Mocavo customers. All that is required to access the content will be for users to register and create a free account (just the same as was done for Mocavo).

Jim has since informed me:

I can now confirm that all US Census years are now free on Findmypast as per our Mocavo promise.

I verified access to a couple of the census years. I logged in with the free account I created last time. I think it is entirely appropriate for them to require registration. We should expect to put some skin in the game. I didn’t have to provide a credit card number and there is no automatic conversion to a paid subscription. I was able to view complete index entries and images with no hassles. I wasn’t plagued by nag-ware. Findmypast has done a completely classy implementation.

Thank you Jim, and thank you Findmypast for this generous gift to the genealogical community. Hat’s off to you.

New, Free Ancestry Academy Course: War of 1812

Ancestry.com usually charges for Ancestry Academy courses (other than those about its own products). They’ve made an exception in the case of “Ancestors, Family, and Associates in the War of 1812 Records.” The course is taught by FamilySearch Chief Genealogical Officer, David Rencher, AG, CG, FUGA, FIGRS. The course consists of 12 video segments of about five minutes in length. David teaches these record types: the Congressional Record, pension records, bounty land records, state militia records, and prisoner of war records. The course requires a free Ancestry Academy account.

Ancestry may have made the decision to offer the course for free because the pension files are also free. Access them at “https://go.fold3.com/1812pensions.” The collection is not yet complete. Surnames “A” through “MO” have been posted.

Fold3 (now, Ancestry) partnered with the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) to bring these records to the public, free of charge. To do so, FGS is raising the money to pay for digitization. Fold3 has been good enough to match those contributions. I saw last week on Facebook that contributions are tax deductible. If you wish to contribute, go to https://www.preservethepensions.org/donate.

Another free course about the war and its records is “The War of 1812 Records - Preserving the Pensions” by Rebecca Whitman Koford. It is one of the Legacy Family Tree Webinar series.

Monday Mailbox: A Banns Date Does Not a Marriage Make

Dear Ancestry Insider,

What is the difference between the third date of calling banns and a date of marriage? Nothing, according to the indexing projects at FamilySearch, the genealogy side of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

A few days ago, I downloaded a batch of marriage records to transcribe from the “UK, Cornwall-Pariah Registers, 1538-1900” project in FamilySearch Indexing. Upon looking at the register images, I immediately spotted that these were banns rather than marriage entries. The project expects the indexer to enter the third date of calling the banns as the date of marriage! Having transcribed many thousands of banns and marriages for parishes in Cornwall, I know that a number of these proposed marriages never actually took place at all—so how could FamilySearch allow this to happen?

I decided to email the support team at FamilySearch. The reply was not very helpful:

“…The completed index and links to digital images to this project will be freely accessible online to the general public when the collection is published.  Researchers will be able to pull up the image and see that the marriage date is actually the third banns date instead of the actual date of marriage.”

The inexperienced or those perhaps in a hurry to solve a problem may just take the marriage details as being exactly what FamilySearch indicates—a marriage—and not just the calling of banns for a proposed marriage. FamilySearch appears to be happy to accept incorrect and quite simply misleading indexing to appear on their website.

I’m interested in your views.

Regards,
Mark

FamilySearch has made the decision that minor compromises in genealogical integrity allow it to publish a greater quantity of records and access to images offsets the decrease in integrity. By carefully making these compromises, the overall value delivered to the public is increased.

There is another ramification that FamilySearch may not have considered. FamilySearch provides hints in FamilySearch Family Tree to its historical records. When the record is attached, the user has the option of adding record information to the tree. The banns date is added to the tree as a marriage date. So while the FamilySearch Trees team is busy taking steps to improve the quality of data in Family Tree, the Records team is taking steps that degrade it.

Signed,
---The Ancestry Insider

As is the usual practice, the Ancestry Insider edited Mark’s message before publication.

Beware the Ides of March 2016 News Ketchup

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Ancestry.com forecasted that RootsWeb would be back online about 15 March 2106 (today). I prognosticated it would take longer. Looks like I was mostly wrong as most of RootsWeb is back online. Since I write these articles on the weekend, I can’t give you the current status, but here’s what it was last Saturday:

• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Home page is up, including the message about the hardware failure.
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – World Connect is up.
• http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/FAQ/wcindex.html – Helpdesk pages are up.
• http://searches.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Most searches are up.
• http://bigfile.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search – Search thingy is down.
• http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Mailing list website is down.
• Mailing list emails are ?? Anybody subscribed to a RootsWeb email list?
• http://boards.rootsweb.com/ – Message boards are up, but I don't think they use the RootsWeb servers so they probably never went down.
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ – Freepages hosted websites are down. It has been long enough that Google has flushed these pages from its cache. You cannot use Google to find the URL of your websites in order to download them off the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. However, Bing.com and Yahoo.com had not yet flushed their caches (as of Saturday). As a contingency plan in case Ancestry is not able to resurrect them, if you have a Freepages website and don’t already have a backup, I encourage you to use Bing or Yahoo quickly to get the URL for your website. You can then access it via the Internet Archives.
• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~websites/ – Home pages hosted websites are up.

Since Ancestry isn’t using the established RootsWeb status page (mirrored here), to check availability you must select each URL individually.

Ancestry DNA is on sale for $89 (a 10% savings), plus shipping and tax. The sale lasts through 17 March 2016. Visit http://dna.ancestry.com for more information.

According to the US National Archives and Records Administration: “OUR COLLEAGUES AT FAMILYSEARCH.ORG HAVE RECENTLY FINISHED DIGITIZING AND putting online a new original series that will be of interest to genealogists and historians alike—the Massachusetts, Salem, and Beverly Crew Lists and Shipping Articles. This is the first time these records have been captured on microfilm or digitally. The series consists of three original collections from the National Archives at Boston:

• Crew lists and returns of seamen for the Port of Salem and Beverly, compiled 1797–1818. National Archives Identifier 1600758
• Shipping articles for the Port of Salem and Beverly, 1810–1899. National Archives Identifier 1600870
• Crew lists for the Port of Salem and Beverly, 1787–1934. National Archives Identifier 1600759”

FamilySearch combined these three collections as “Massachusetts, Salem and Beverly Crew Lists and Shipping Articles, 1797-1934.” Salem and Beverly were a large port in the early history of the country, so if you have New England roots, you might have relatives in the collection.

FamilySearch is updating the FamilySearch Research Wiki this week. To avoid losing any contribution made during the update, editing is not this week. If you wish to contribute to the wiki—which I hope you do regularly—please come back after 9:00am, 21 March 2016. Concerning the update, FamilySearch has said:

• “All information will be kept and put in the new upgraded version of the wiki.
• Navigation will change from the right side of the screen to the left.
• Country and State pages will be redesigned for better use.  This redesign will occur as close to the time of the new release as possible, but may not be completed when the upgrade takes place.
• The URL for the Wiki on the FamilySearch.org website will be changed for better usability
• The Rich Text editor will be replaced with Visual Editor.
• The upgraded version of the Wiki will be editable in all browsers including Chrome.”

FamilySearch is hoping to add a feature to Family Tree called Family Projects that will allow users to share living persons in the tree. This allows sharing of documents, pictures, and stories and makes it so families don’t have to reenter each other into Family Tree over and over. Currently, living persons are not shared as is most of the tree. Ron Tanner explains it in a short blurb (1:32) on YouTube.

The National Genealogical Society has announced that it will live stream ten lectures from its 2016 Family History Conference, which will be held 4-7 May 2016, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Details of the live streaming program can be found on the NGS Conference website. NGS members and others across the United States and overseas, who are unable to attend the conference in person, are invited to sign up for these live streaming broadcasts.”

People can sign up for either or both of two tracks of five lectures. Lectures can be viewed for three months after the conference. I know some attendees at last year’s conference bought the streaming lectures for viewing after the conference. The broadcasted lecturers are among the best, so their classes fill quickly onsite. If you can view them after the conference, that frees you up to attend other conference sessions.

One other thing: Remember that the conference discounted Early Bird registration will close on 31 March 2016.

As Kendall Hulet indicated at RootsTech that it was coming, Ancestry has released a feature allowing users to choose a color scheme other than the much maligned funeral colors first released with New Ancestry. For more information, see “Ancestry Product Update: Tree Color Preferences” on the Ancestry Blog.

Ancestry recently posted their monthly “What’s New at Ancestry” video, March 2016 edition, on YouTube. Crista Cowan talks about conferences Ancestry will be attending this spring and summer, new site changes, product announcements, and new record collections released last month (28 million records). New product features include Continue Searching and LifeStory and Facts View tutorials. New product announcement concerns the availability of Ancestry DNA in 29 additional countries, new course offerings in Ancestry Academy. and desktop support for Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic. Some of the new collections mentioned are

• “U.S., Definitive List of Slaves and Property, 1827-1828”
• “Alberta, Canada Homestead Records, 1870-1930”
• “California, Mortuary Records of Chinese Decedents”
• “Sydney, Australia Cemetery Headstones, 1867-2002”
• Two United Methodist Church collections
• Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915”
• “U.S., Selected States Dutch Reformed Church Membership Records, 1701-1995”

That clears out much of my inbox. I hope it made sense, because “it was Greek to me.”

Genealogy Life Blood at Kendall Hulet #RootsTech Luncheon

Part 2 of 3

Kendall Hulet is Ancestry.com’s senior vice president of product management. He spoke at a Saturday luncheon titled “Things to Look Forward to on Ancestry in 2016.”

Ancestry is expanding internationally. About a third of Americans claim German heritage. They are relaunching their German language website in a big way. They are doing television advertising in Germany for the first time. An increased involvement by users in Germany, adding content and uploading photos and things, helps everyone. They have 300 million German records and will have 400 by the end of the year.

“Content unlocks the family history story,” Kendall said. “Content is the lifeblood of the things we do.”

Ancestry is adding millions of German civil registration records each month. They have deals with the state archives of Berlin and Hessen, including records from East and West Prussia, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia.

They have a German national directories project that will add 500 million records from 5.5 million images of 30,000 volumes of the German Reich from 1910 to 1955.

In collaboration with FamilySearch, they are publishing Lutheran Church records. They have published 19.2 million with another 100 million on the way.

They will soon publish the World War II young-men’s draft cards.

They are also launching a full index of the Irish Catholic parish records. It has 10 million records from 1740 to 1900. An official announcement will be coming out in the weeks after RootsTech. It will give more details.

Kendall announced that they are working on the ability to let users add additional names to the US Probate Records collection. They’ve already released that collection, which was done in collaboration with FamilySearch. It required adding a new user experience because of the packet nature of probate records. Ancestry didn’t index all individuals named in the records, so allowing users to add names and relationships will make it possible to search for, receive hints about, and attach to your tree, others in the records.

“Mobile is taking over the world,” Kendall said. “At Ancestry 50% of our visitors come in on a mobile device the first time they are visiting.” Over time Ancestry has been pulling features available on the web into the mobile app. They are going to improve the search experience. They are going to provide a better way to capture content and put it online. They are adding the ability to capture audio and video capture of stories, both in the app and on the website. They will incorporate audio and video into Life Story. “Go interview people before they pass on,” Kendall recommended.

Making search results and hinting (Shaky Leaf) results right is difficult. Kendall showed a diagram similar to the one I’ve put together to the right. The circle represents all the Shaky Leaves Ancestry returned about your ancestor. Some were good and some were bad. The percentage that were good is defined as precision. “Precision is finding the right stuff,” he said. The rectangle represents all the records about your ancestor. Ancestry missed some of them (the portion of the rectangle outside the circle). The percentage that Ancestry found is defined as recall. The challenge is that if you try to increase one, it makes the other worse. “[If] you cast a wide enough net [to] catch all the good fish…you’re going to bring back a lot of other weird stuff with it,” he said.

For hints, Ancestry concentrates on keeping the precision high. For search, Ancestry concentrates on recall. They want you to be able to find “the needle in the haystack.” Some people are frustrated by the number of search results not about their ancestor. They want higher precision. “This is the constant challenge we’re dealing with,” he said.

“How are we going to go and make search and hints better?” Kendall asked rhetorically. “This is a big focus that I want to go after in 2016.” There is a concept in computer science called machine learning. If you can supply enough examples to the machine of results that you want and results you don’t want, the machine can learn how to return just the results you want. The more “training data” you can give the machine, the smarter it will become. “We have been working on a bunch of machine learning algorithms and we’re excited because we’re seeing higher precision and better recall from these machine learned algorithms,” Kendall said. This has an interesting side-effect. “What you’ll see over time is subtle changes to the results that you’ll get. They will be better.”

There is a problem with hints: users are receiving too many! It would help if they didn’t show you as many hints and if they made it easier to find the most valuable ones. They are focused on this challenge. They have a machine learned algorithm that increases both precision and recall, that anticipates where you were working in your tree, what your interests are, which hints are new, and which ones might add new information or people to your tree.

Stay tuned. Next time I will cover the last part of Kendall’s presentation.

Ancestry.com Releases Mexico Collection

During last month’s Dia de los Muertos celebration, Ancestry.com released a major new collection: “Mexico Civil Registrations of Death.” There are 87 new databases thus far in the new collection. Ancestry’s announcement reads, in part:

We are pleased to announce the launch of new online services that will help Mexicans and the estimated 34 million Mexican Americans* research their family history.

More than 220 million searchable historical records from Mexico, including new birth, marriage, and death records dating back to the 1500s are now available on the Ancestry site, many of them important historical records never before available online.

Civil registration began in Mexico in 1859. Like vital records in the United States, compliance took a few years. Registration was strictly enforced starting in 1867.

These new records are being made available in part through collaboration with the Mexican Academy of Genealogy and Heraldry based in Mexico City and FamilySearch International.

I believe it has existed for some time, but Ancestry also debuted the Ancestry Mexico site.

In another first, the new Ancestry Mexico site will provide a Spanish language experience tailored specifically to Mexicans and Mexican Americans…

Ancestry has been working hard over the past few years to help people of Hispanic and Latino origins discover, preserve and share their family history by making important collections from Mexico searchable online to get them started.

“The new service really unlocks for the first time online, family history research for Mexicans and Mexican Americans, whether you prefer to speak English or Spanish,” said Todd Godfrey, Vice President of Global Content at Ancestry.

For more information, read

• the Ancestry Blog article, “Ancestry Mexico Launches with More than 220 Million Searchable Mexican Historical Records” and
• the official press release on the Ancestry Corporate website.

Ancestry.com at Banking Conference – Part 2

On 30 September 2015 Ancestry.com’s Howard Hochhauser gave a presentation at the Deutsche Bank Leveraged Finance Conference. This is the second part of my report. I reported the first part last week.

Content

While helping acquire new customers, new content is also what it takes to retain existing customers. About 70% of Ancestry’s content is unique to them. That content is divided between content under exclusive contract and content that has been contributed by subscribers. They have 70 million trees with seven billion nodes and a million DNA profiles. This year Ancestry will spend $30 to 35 million to digitize new content. They digitize the content and put it on servers in Salt Lake City. Ancestry has spent $10 million on the probate and wills collection to digitize and index it.

Today they are digitizing content in Mexico and Germany. The content they digitize there (Germany? both?) is exclusive to them for 40 (14?) years, creating a huge barrier to entry for other companies.They’ve invested $30 million in content there.

Other Offerings

They have acquired or built adjacent properties: Archives.com (acquired), Newspapers.com (built), fold3 (acquired), and Ancestry ProGenealogists (acquired). About 5 to 6% of their subscribers buy a super-subscription including the first three for an incremental cost of about $10. They bought ProGen for just a million dollars but have grown it into a $10 million business.

He estimates that Ancestry.com is about 80 to 85% of their business, but it depends on how you calculate the other business units.

New Ancestry

New Ancestry took about a year and a half to build and is designed to add value, retain existing subscribers, and get more people into the service. The old site appealed to genealogists. The new site is more visually appealing. The old site was, essentially, a spreadsheet of the facts about an ancestor. Using machine learning, the new site is essentially a story about an ancestor. When you radical change your product, you run the risk of aliening your core base and that hasn’t happened. Test data shows that it has increased retention among their core base.

About half of their subscribers are using New Ancestry. They have tried forcing people into the New Ancestry to see if cancel rates change and have seen it doesn’t. They will not force a hard cutoff [near term]. Eventually they will. There have been complaints, but overall it’s been a net positive.

People are uploading photos and accepting more hints in a dramatically higher fashion with New Ancestry. They think that will increase the amount of bill through.

Health and DNA

Ancestry built their DNA offering from scratch. This year it will roughly be a $70 million business. It will be profitable this year. Roughly 10% of kit sales convert into an Ancestry subscription. That will be 60 to 70 thousand new subscribers.

They also want to launch a health product and a licensing business for research companies to mine the DNA data without personally identifiable information. (Doesn’t our DNA uniquely identify us? Hmmm.) This provides a new avenue of growth for Ancestry. They signed their first licensing deal this year. It is a multi-million dollar contract.

They launched a family health history beta website this year (https://health.ancestry.com/). From the beta site they will learn if customers will trust them with their health history. The customer will be able to store their family’s health history for free.

That’s it for my report. Listen to the presentation for yourself at http://ir.ancestry.com//eventdetail.cfm?eventid=165073.

---

Image collage originals accessed 3 October 2015: Douglas County, Nevada birth certificate (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-25463-34374-38), false colored. Weber County, Utah marriage certificate (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-45089-28892-91). Sacramento County, California death certificate (https://familysearch.org/photos/images/5290561).