Monday, September 17, 2007

Family Tree Legends Records

With the acquisition of Pearl Street Software by MyHeritage.com, the record collection at Family Tree Legends is now FREE. They claim that there are over 400 million records on this web site.

The search box for the records is at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records.

There are records in five categories:

* Birth, marriage, death and other records -- see the list at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/list/1. There are 31 record sets here, most of them for US states.

* Military Records -- see the list at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/list/2. There are 76 different record sets here, many of them from the UK.

* Land, Court and Probate Records - see the list at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/list/3. There are few records on this list.

* Biography and History - see the list at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/list/4. There are hundreds of books available here.

* Geography and Reference - see the list at http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/list/5. There are hundreds of records here.

When you input a surname in the search box, you get a summary of the matches in each category.

I have not compared these records to what is available on Ancestry.com or other subscription sites. I did notice that many of the vital records sets are available on Ancestry.com - notably the California Birth Index 1905-1995. Some of them are available for free on other web sites.

Looking at the list of the Biography and History records, it struck me that I had not heard of many of them before - perhaps this is the only place that they are available - subscription or free.

Checking this site for your ancestral families is recommended since the records are free.

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