New Features and Content from Ancestry.com

Over the last several weeks Ancestry.com has added some new features and some new content to their site. Check these out...

Ancestry.com New Features

New Paging Control for Sweden Church Records

The Sweden Church Records is an important collection for those doing Swedish research. This unique collection contains over 20 million images, but no name index.  You would typically browse or search by location and date to narrow down the images you need to evaluate.

Some of these images have hand-written cross references to other pages in the collection. These page numbers do not correspond to image numbers. We have implemented a Page Number control in the interactive image viewer that helps users get to the correct page number.

Save an Image after Browsing

Prior to this update, if you did any browse action after coming into the interactive image viewer - next page, previous page, changing a setting in the browse breadcrumb – and tried to save the image, your only option was to "Save to Computer" unless you opened up the Index panel, selected a person, and then clicked Save. There was similar, but worse, experience on the old Content Viewer.

Now, you can select the person (record) on the image that you want to save and select the person in the tree you want to save it to in one simple step.

  

  

Updates to sliding controls for search results

We are expanding the functionality of the sliding controls in your search results to allow more of the fields entered in the search form to be controlled by sliders – up to 10 fields. Additionally, we have improved the display of the fields entered that are not editable with sliders. With this update users can expand the section of fields below the sliders to see all of the entered search criteria.

 NOTE: These sliders actually save time in searching with Ancestry. They are exactly the same categories as previously available, but now you don't have to back up to the prior page, or edit the search, and then run the search again. It cuts out a lot of load time by performing the functions on the same page. 

Ancestry.com April New Content

U.S., Military Registers, 1862–1970 (update)

Records (new): 657,627

More men and women guarding the home front. 

London, England, Selected Poor Law Removal and Settlement Records, 1828–1930 (update)

Records (new): 72,000

We’re adding Bethnal Green Settlement records this month. According to the Guardian, while Bethnal Green has developed some trendy spots of late, including a boutique hotel, there are still “alleys that look like they’d do you mischief.”

Savannah, Georgia, Registers of Free Persons of Color,

1817–1864

Records: 11,329         

Prior to changes brought on by the Civil War, free persons of color in Savannah had to register with the city. An 1839 ordinance also required owners of slaves and guardians of free persons of color to register and obtain badges before permitting their charges to be employed. You’ll find those registers here.

  

Florida and South Carolina, Airline Passenger Arrivals, 1907–1957

Records (new): 17,518

Among the records from ships and planes being added in this update are alien and Chinese crew lists for vessels arriving at Charleston.

  

 

New South Wales, Australia, Butts of Marriage Licenses, 1813–1835, 1894

Records: 1,300           

Registers and butts for marriage licenses issued in New South Wales, Australia, 1813–1835, 1894. A butt is the portion of a certificate that remains in a certificate or license book. (It’s also the object of a joke. Which we won’t be making here.)

Texas, Naturalization Records, 1881–1992

Records: 219,154                   

This database contains original U.S. naturalization records from the state of Texas. For people applying to be citizens of the U.S., not Texas. Just to be clear.

New South Wales, Census and Population Books, 

1811–1825

Records: 55,887                     

Find out who was who, where, worked for whom, and owned what in these population, land, and stock books from New South Wales, 1811–1825. (While some of the records do count cattle, they are not listed by name.)

Isle of Wight, England, Methodist Registers, 1813–1937

Records: 17,241                      Images: 4524

How’s this for a curious fact: The Isle of Wight is the smallest county in England—at high tide. It was also home to various Wesleyan Methodist, United Methodist, Primitive Methodist, and Bible Christian congregations whose baptism and marriage records you can find in this collection. (Queen Victoria and Jimi Hendrix both visited the isle, but neither was a Methodist.)

  

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Passenger and Crew Lists, 

1901–1954 (update) 

Records (new): 1,236,035

We’re adding 1.2 million new records to this index to manifests of aliens arriving at San Juan and Ponce, Puerto Rico. In them, you might discover anything from where these folks came from to details on their luggage.

  

Brazoria County, Texas Marriage, 1870–2012 

Records: 210,399       

Brazoria County bills itself as the place “Where Texas began.” Since these are Brazoria County marriage records rather than birth records, we can’t confirm that. 

New South Wales, Australia, Convict Applications for the Publication of Banns, 1828–1830, 1838–1839

Records: 3,309           

During these early years of New South Wales history, convicts who wanted to marry had to get official permission. Applications can provide everything from name and age to an applicant’s sentence and year of arrival or even comments on his (or her) character. Plus, these folks lived in places with great names, like Bathurst, Sackville Reach, and Field of Mars.

  

Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Births and Baptisms, 1758–1912

Records: 197,227  

     

Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Marriages, 1758–1937

Records: 103,637       

Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Deaths and Burials, 1758–1987

Records: 97,860                     

Manchester has been inhabited since the Romans pitched up in 79 A.D. John Dalton came up with atomic theory in Manchester. Rolls and Royce met here. And it’s the birthplace of the oldest professional football league on the planet—as well as these free-thinking folks who told Henry VIII they didn’t want to be a part of his new church, thank you very much.

Germany, Confederation of Jews, 1930–1944 

Records: 1,662

The Confederation of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) became a repository for thousands of documents that have been recorded on microfiche. This database contains a list of people with files in the collection and the relevant fiche number.

Germany, Sachsenhausen Deaths, 1938–1942 

Records: 1,504

In the early years of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, deaths in the camp were recorded at the Oranienburg civil registry office. Including these.

Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906–1962

Records: 2,477,238    

The thing about death records like these is they provide a summary of a life: name, address, gender, race, age, parents’ names and birthplaces—you get the idea. Our first installment to this database includes records for 1906–1924.