Thursday, February 15, 2007

AncestorSpy Data Portal

One of the most promising genealogy data portal web sites I've found is www.AncestorSpy.com. The web page describes it as:

"AncestorSpy.com is a directory to family history and genealogy records such as census and vital records. Organized by locality it is simple and easy to locate records that may reveal information about your ancestors. We search the internet daily and provide links to genealogy records. Records are organized down to the county and town level so that you can go to the list of towns on the state page and click on the town and view the available titles. Come back often. This site is free for your use."

There are links for each US state and for some record types (census, marriages, maps, and immigration). On each state page there is a list of counties and links for state resources. For each county there is a list of the different types of resources available for that county, and sometimes al ist of cities with links to information.

The links are to www.Ancestry.com databases, USGenWeb databases, published books, CD-ROMs, etc.

Unfortunately, the web site is incomplete. While some states and counties are well populated, others are not. I was surprised to see so much information for San Diego County (CA). I was disappointed that there was not a page for each Tennessee county. The Texas birth and early marriage index links are not included on the main page, but are included on some of the county pages (but the later marriage index and the death index are not included at all).

Still, it is a great finding aid for sorting out what might be available, especially on Ancestry.com. It has tremendous potential if it could be populated well and kept up to date. However, don't use it as a sole data portal since it is incomplete.

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