Comprehensive and well-organized handbook for ancestry.com.
The Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com is a wellspring of knowledge about how find your ancestors more efficiently. Beginning with a simple description of ancestry.com’s menu, this book then drills down past the site’s hint system into the databases themselves. Here is a list of some of the items covered:
- Family trees
- Why genealogy software is worth the money
- When to use other genealogy websites
- Free forms to use from another website
- Why, despite what your grandma keeps insisting, you cannot be related to George Washington
- Census and voter lists
- Birth, marriage and death records
- Military
- Immigration and travel
- Newspaper and other publications
- Pictures
- Stories, memories and histories
- Maps, atlases and gazetteers
- Schools, directories and church histories
- Wills, probate, land, tax and criminal
- Reference, dictionaries and almanacs
- DNA matches and circles
- Associated sites Fold3 and newspapers.com
If you have ever used ancestry.com, you know it is just an intimidating mass of information. Using the Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com makes taming the data beast much easier. After using the book, I have found ancestors who immigrated from England and Ireland. I found a relative who died in a confederate prison and a bunch who came home safely from virtually every war from the Revolutionary to the Korean. I even found a picture of a relative during the depression.
The Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com is highly recommended. 5 stars!
Thanks to the publisher, Family Tree Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
