Thursday, May 24, 2007

Searching the Ancestry Military Collection

Following yesterday's announcement of the Ancestry Military Collection at http://www.ancestry.com/, I went searching for a list of the databases included in the collection.

There is a search box for the whole collection at http://landing.ancestry.com/military/collections.aspx. You can input a surname and refine the search with a given name, a state, a particular war, etc.

A complete list of the databases can be found at http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/grouplist.aspx?group=war_all. There appear to be over 700 entries in this list.

The indexes for all of the databases appear to be free to non-subscribers. This is a shrewd marketing move by Ancestry.com.

One of the features of this collection is US Newsreels from World War II. A newsreel video starts when you go to the web page, but it is often broken up by delays. I really don't like that feature!

I put in "Seaver" and it came up with hits for 121 databases from the Revolutionary War to the Viet Nam War. The one I found interesting was the Rejected Revolutionary War Pension Claims. There was only one Seaver listed - Joseph Seaver of Lancaster MA. The record was a printed page from a book, not a handwritten record. The soldier's claims could not be proven by his widow, Abigail, and therefore a pension was not granted.

I will explore this list a bit more to try to find more nuggets of my own ancestry and the families in my one-name studies. This is really fun!

1 comment:

Damaris Fish said...

Randy, as you live in the San Diego area, if you are at home this weekend, would you post about some of the Memorial Day activities in that Navy town? I am having success with the Ancestry.com Military databases (good thing I was staying home this weekend!). Hopefully those who care will turn out or take their private time to honor our service personnel. Thank you for the heads up to Ancestry.com's military databases access :-)
Damaris Fish, Central Point, Oregon