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.

We are soon going to release a small program update to Family Tree Maker 2010, which will address some of the requests you’ve made here on the blog and in other forums.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. Improved Relationship Calculator. Direct-line relationships now take precedence over less direct lines.
2. Greater control over hinting. A new option lets you turn tree hints off, so you can get hints from records only. See the new check box in the Options dialog. Also, the program will stop hinting on trees owned by the logged in user, as well as not hinting records that have been downloaded with a tree from Ancestry.com.
3. Improved data and formatting in a number of reports.
4. Improved support for GEDCOM, PAF and Legacy import.
5. Many other small changes throughout the program to help it run more smoothly.

We appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us; they have helped us tremendously in preparing this update.

Please watch for the update in the next day or two. When it’s ready, a prompt will display in Family Tree Maker after you start the program. For those of you using Vista or Windows 7, make sure to right click on the Family Tree Maker 2010 shortcut and chose the “Run as Administrator” option to ensure you receive the notification. More detailed information regarding the patch, as well as links to download the patch directly, can be found at the following location starting tomorrow morning: http://www.familytreemaker.com/Support/Patch_2010.aspx.

Thanks!

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.

The collection of Navy cruise books, available exclusively online at Ancestry.com, represents nearly 40 years of cruises following World War II (roughly 1950-1988) and chronicles an estimated 450,000 servicemen deployed at sea during that time. The Navy Department Library has on file an estimated 3,500 cruise books, which Ancestry.com plans to digitize and add to this collection over time.

Cruise books are modeled after yearbooks and typically include portraits of sailors, officers, and other personnel on board the ship. Other features of a cruise book may include candid photographs of crew members at work and play, details and history of the ship, and short biographies on officers. Below is a page taken from a Navy cruise book as an example.

A few famous personalities can also be found in the collection, including famed television host and comedian Johnny Carson. Carson is found in the 1946 edition of the U.S.S. Pennsylvania cruise book. Following World War II, Ens. Carson was assigned to the U.S.S. Pennsylvania, a battleship stationed in the Pacific. Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush is also found in the collection in the 1946 edition of the U.S.S. Jacinto cruise book.

Above: Ens. Carson (third row from the front, seventh from the left) on the U.S.S. Pennsylvania.

The Navy cruise books are part of the Ancestry.com U.S. Military Collection, which includes 100 million names and spans more than three centuries of American military service. Now through Nov. 13th, Ancestry.com has made its entire U.S. Military Collection searchable for free.

If you’re like me, you have family members who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. My own father spent 30 years in the Air Force. Why not take a moment this Veterans Day to see if you can learn a bit more about your military heritage and visit Ancestry.com’s U.S. Military Collection.

This tree service downtime will affect Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home Page that are related to Member Trees, and the sections of MyFamily.com 2.0 that are related to Member Trees. Other than that, all other areas of the site will remain functional.

For the vast majority of our members living outside Mountain Daylight Time, 1:00 – 2:00 AM MDT is the same as…

Coordinated Universal Time: 07:00 – 08:00 AM
In London: 8:00 – 9:00 AM
In Melbourne: 5:00 – 6:00 PM
In San Francisco: midnight – 1:00 AM
In New York: 3:00 – 4:00 AM
In Moscow: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
In Rome: 9:00 – 10:00 AM
In Tokyo: 4:00 – 5:00 PM

(Note: I got my dates wrong, it’s Tuesday, November 10th…so just a little more waiting.)
This change will happen on Monday, November 9th, sometime during the day.

The information you enter into your original search will appear at the top left of the search results page. Clicking “Edit search” will bring up your search query allowing you to edit your search criteria. (Note: You won’t be able to edit in the left hand panel any more; all editing will be done from a form.)

Also, the Narrow by Category panel is now higher on the page, providing easier access for narrowing your search results by types of records (e.g., census records, immigration records, military records, etc.).

These changes are designed to make searching for your family on Ancestry.com faster and more efficient, resulting in even more successful discoveries about your ancestors.

Here’s how it will work:

1. Do a search. Let’s say I’m searching for my ancestor, Zebedee Hash. You will see:
   
2. To help refine the search, I now click on “Edit Search”:
   
3. You’ll see a form pre-populated with the original query:
   
4. Add in the information:
   
5. Click on the search button either at the top or bottom of the form. (We put in two search buttons to make it handy to find wherever you are in the form. They do the exact same thing.)
   
   OR
   
6. You’ll now see the summary of your search query in the panel:
   
7. Now let’s say I want to make my Birth Year exact within a range. I click on “Edit search” again, and enter my new information:
   
8. Click on the search button, and see the new result set. You’ll notice in the query summary, that the birth year range is in double quotes, telling you that you’ve marked that field exact:
   

So look for change on Tuesday, try it out, and let us know what you think.

Happy Searching!

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.

“I had my DNA tested for mitochondrial results, but I’d like to do the same for my father’s side. My problem is that I have no brothers, no uncles, and my father has passed away. Can my son take the test? Or would his results only give his father’s Y-chromosome information? Surely my son must have inherited some of my father’s DNA?”

Types of DNA
DNA provides our genetic blueprint which makes each of us unique and yet genetically similar to other family members and to a lesser extent to all humans in general.  There are 2 major types of DNA useful in tracing one’s family history through DNA genealogy:

• Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA)
• Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)

Y-DNA
Y-DNA passes from male to male in a family.  Location markers on the Y-chromosome are found in the Y-chromosome of males and are passed down from fathers to sons making it ideal for tracing paternal lineage.  In many cultures, the surname is also passed from father to son. This fortunate coincidence is what makes tracing your paternal lineage through genetic similarities so powerful for genealogy.   And because the Y-chromosome is passed largely unchanged from father to son, DNA results from a male participant today can be used to represent the paternal lineage dozens of generations into the past.

To test your paternal lineage you need someone on your male line to take the test.   If you are female, you can recruit a brother, father, or paternally related Uncle or Cousin to provide the DNA sample to use as if it were your own.  The key to remember in recruiting a “proxy relative” for the Y-DNA test is that the individual must be a direct line descedant of the ancestor of interest.  Thus, a woman’s son would NOT be a candidate for testing her great great grandfather as her son would have received his Y-DNA from his father NOT her father.

mtDNA
Mitochondrial DNA , or mtDNA , is a unique kind of DNA found outside the nucleus of the cell in the mitochondria.  Because mitochondria still replicate on their own, they need their own special DNA , which exists in a loop (unlike the strands of chromosomal DNA ).  A cell can have hundreds or thousands of mitochondria.  This unique factor and the rate at which the mtDNA changes make mtDNA a strong indicator of one’s ancient ancestral heritage.  Mitochondrial DNA testing is very valuable for unlocking clues about your ancient ancestors.  It can also be a powerful genealogical tool to eliminate possible relations through the maternal line.

Because a father’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is destroyed at fertilization, a child inherits only the mother’s mitochondrial DNA, thus preserving the maternal link to the ancient past. Due to this unique inheritance pattern, both males and females may directly contribute a DNA sample for testing the maternal lineage.

Should you have questions about a potential proxy or DNA test, please contact dna@ancestry.com.