Genealogy News for September 2007

This is the genealogy news for September that was presented to the Research Group today.

1. NEW GENEALOGY WEB SITES

* More social genealogy network sites have appeared including www.famillion.com, www.familyrelatives.com and www.familyinhistory.com. Some of these are free for a month but then require a subscription. www.FamilyLink.com has improved their free site so that GEDCOMs can be uploaded.

2. NEW GENEALOGY DATABASES

* New York Times newspapers 1851-1923 and 1986-present are now available for FREE (with registration) at http://www.nytimes.com/. 1923-1986 are not available yet for free. You have to use the search box at the top of the web page and choose either "NYTimes 1851-1980" or "NYTimes Since 1981." The file is a PDF that can be downloaded.

* www.Ancestry.com has added many pre-1923 published books on Mayflower families, RevWar Loyalist families, New England colonial families, etc.

* www.Ancestry.com has added US World War II MIA or Lost at Sea database.
* www.Ancestry.com has added Mississippi State and Territorial Census records, 1792-1866.

* www.Ancestry.com has added censuses for Mecklenburg-Schwerin (German states) for the years 1890 and 1900 for Ancestry members with World Deluxe or Ancestry.de memberships.

* www.footnote.com has added Confederacy Pardon Papers (1865-1867), Mormon Battalion Pension Files, War of 1812 Prize Cases (1812-1816), and several more databases. Check http://www.footnote.com/documents.php for all available databases.

* www.WorldVitalRecords.com has added 15 databases of Virginia records, many family history and locality books, Argentina family tree database, and more. See http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/recentcontentlisting.aspx for recent additions (10 days free for each database from date of issue).

* Cook County, Illinois records are going online - birth certificates that are at least 75 years old, marriage certificates more than 50 years old, and death certificates more than 20 years old. The expected availability date is January 2008.

3. GENEALOGY SOFTWARE

* Reunion software for the Mac was upgraded - see www.leisterpro.com for Reunion 9 information.

* FamilyTreeMaker 2008 announced Service Pack 1 which adds many things to the software, but not the standard report capability that was in FTM 2006 and earlier. Those may be added in Service Pack 2. SP1 can be downloaded from the FTM site.

4. ANNOUNCEMENTS

* The Generations Network, Inc., unveiled Ancestry.se – a new family history Web site focused on Sweden. At launch, the Swedish-language site offers access to more than 37 million names of historical Swedish parish and emigration records, all of which are available for U.S. subscribers on Ancestry.com. It's in Swedish, and you need a World Deluxe membership.

* Ancestry.com removed the Internet Biographical Collection (IBC) after many complaints from web site owners and bloggers about Ancestry caching and indexing web pages without permission and charging subscribers for access to the IBC.

* www.NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest newspaper database available online, has partnered with World Vital Records Inc.’s Web sites (www.WorldVitalRecords.com and www.FamilyLink.com) in a unique way to provide increased access to a half billion records from newspapers ranging from 1759-1923.