Ancestry.com 15 Days of Free Access and Prizes

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Ancestry.com is in the middle of a 15 day celebration of their 15th anniversary. They are making one data collection free each day between the 1st and 15th of October (thus they are a little over half way through) and they are giving away a prize each day, and a grand prize after the 15th (going behind the scenes of the NBC TV show Who Do You Think You Are? with Lisa Kudrow). Each collection they make available for free remains free through October 15th, so you can access all the ones made available so far:

Oct 1 – Social Security Death Index
Oct 2 – Ireland, Griffith’s Valuation, 1848–1864
Oct 3 – California Marriage Index, 1960–1985
Oct 4 – Bavaria, Germany, WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914–1918 (in German)
Oct 5 – 1920 U.S. Federal Census
Oct 6 – Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903–1980
Oct 7 – Texas Birth Index, 1903–1997
Oct 8 – Sweden, Births from the Swedish Death Index, 1947–2006 (in Swedish)
Oct 9 – World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918

More collections will be made available Oct 10-15.

Today’s collection, WWI Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 is a particularly interesting collection if your family lived in the US during WWI, as all males were registered (even if they were unable to be soldiers) and the registration cards can provide information on where the person was living, where they were born, etc. I discuss these draft cards in my article Finding Information on US Immigrants.

To access these collections, go to the Ancestry 15th Anniversary Collections page.

From that page you can also click on the link (and orange button that says Enter Now) to take you to the daily sweepstakes page where they are giving away a prize every day until the 15th (and then the aforementioned grand prize to go behind the scenes on the NBC TV show Who Do You Think You Are?).

Today’s prize is an iPad 2…

36 Hour FamilyTreeDNA Sale

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Celebrating reaching 15,000 fans on Facebook, FamilyTreeDNA is having a 36-hour sale on their genetic genealogy tests. FamilyTreeDNA has previously had sales when they reached 5,000 and 10,000 fans. Unlike those earlier sales, there is no special code needed for this sale. Discounts are as much as $200 (for the Comprehensive Genome bundle).

I’ve previously written about using genetic tests for genealogy, first briefly when FamilyTreeDNA had their 10,000 fan sale, and then again in more detail in my article Using DNA for Genealogy: Y-DNA and mtDNA.

The sale ends midnight on Tuesday, September 27th (Central Time).

Their official announcement:

Thank you for helping us reach 15,000 LIKES on our Facebook page! To show how much we like you too we’re offering a 36-HOUR SALE! Please help us spread the word!*

Start: Monday, September 26 (TODAY) at 12:00pm CDT
End: Tuesday, September 27 at 11:59pm CDT

For NEW customers:
Y-DNA 12 . . . $59 (was $99) (via projects only)
mtDNA . . . $59 (was $99) (via projects only)

Y-DNA 37 . . . $129 (was $149)
Family Finder . . . $199 (was $289)
mtFullSequence (FGS) . . . $229 (was $299)

Y-DNA 12 + mtDNA . . . $118 (was $179) (via projects only)
Family Finder + Y-DNA 12 . . . $248 (was $339)
Family Finder + mtDNA . . . $248 (was $339)

Family Finder + Y-DNA 37 . . . $328 (was $438)
Family Finder + mtFullSequence . . . $398 (was $559)
Comprehensive Genome (Family Finder + mtFullSequence + Y-DNA67) . . . $597 (was $797)

Upgrades & Add-Ons for CURRENT customers:
mtDNA add-on $59 . . . (was $89)
mtFullSequence upgrade (HVR1 to Mega) . . . $199 (was $269)
mtFullSequence upgrade (HVR2 to Mega) . . . $199 (was $239)
mtFullSequence add-on . . . $219 (was $289)
Family Finder add-on . . . $199 (was $289)

Prices will be automatically adjusted on the Family Tree DNA website — no coupon code needed! Important: Promotional orders need to be paid for by the end of this sale. Visit us at http://www.familytreedna.com/ to order now.

We hope this limited-time sale will give you yet another reason to “LIKE” us!

Thank you for your support!

Family Tree DNA
___________________________________

This offer ends TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th, 2011 11:59pm CDT.

* You do not need to be a member of Facebook to take advantage of this offer. Payment must be received at the time of your order. Valid only on products listed. No substitutions. No adjustments will be made on previous purchases. This promotion is not valid in combination with any other promotions. Family Tree DNA reserves the right to cancel any order due to unauthorized or ineligible use of discounts and to modify or cancel these promotional discounts due to system error or unforeseen problems. Subject to change without notice.

Have you used genetic tests for genealogy from FamilyTreeDNA or other companies? What has been your experience, good or bad? Have you made connections to cousins using genetic genealogy? Share your experiences in the comments.

How do you do genealogy online?

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I have three simple questions for all the readers of this blog:

1) Do you use one or more online family tree websites such was MyHeritage.com, Geni.com, Wikitree.com or Ancestry.com (their family tree features, not necessarily their databases)? If so, which one(s) do you use?

2) If you use a family tree web site, list what you like best about it – and what you like least. Also, for sites that offer subscription plans, do you pay a subscription or only use their free features? If you don’t use any family tree website, is there a reason you don’t – and is there something that would change your mind (i.e. if they only offered X I would use their site)?

3) How do you interact with other relatives when doing your genealogy research? If through a website listed above, how does that work? If you intact in a different way, such as via e-mail, explain how well that works.

I hope you will share your experiences with the various services available online, so others can learn about how different readers of this blog are using those services, successfully or less so.

If you have a twitter account, please tweet this post to your followers so we can get as many responses as possible. You can find my tweet of this post at twitter.com/bloodandfrogs and re-tweet it.

Please post your answers in the comments to this post on the blog.

Volunteer Opportunity at the JDC

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Back in May, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (known as the JDC, or simply the “Joint”) launched an online archive web site called Our Shared Legacy which contained scanned documents from the JDC archives with over 500,000 names. Those documents included lists and cards that showed how the JDC helped Jewish refugees during and after the Holocaust to immigrate to various countries around the world (in addition to other relief efforts, including before WWII). See my article from the launch in May for more information on the online archive itself.

Since May the JDC has continued to scan and index more files from their physical archives and add them to the archive web site. In order to assist in getting these records up quicker, the JDC is looking for volunteer indexers who can contribute a day or half-day per week in time, in the JDC offices in either New York City or Jerusalem, to help with the indexing effort.

This is a really great opportunity if you’d like to help make these genealogically significant records available online. The JDC has really created a unique resource, going far beyond what most similar organizations have provided online. It is particularly impressive that they have made all of the high-resolution images available to download on their web site. If you live in or near New York City or Jerusalem and you’d like to help make these records available to people online, this is a great way to give back to the genealogical community and the Jewish community as a whole.

The full request for volunteers follows. Contact Naomi Barth at the e-mail address below if you’re interested in volunteering. Let her know you heard about it here.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is seeking Indexing Project Volunteers for an exciting opportunity to help with a forward- thinking archive endeavor to index historic lists. The volunteer will have the opportunity to engage with primary source material regarding The Joint’s work since 1914.

This project is perfect for those with an interest in genealogy, Jewish or general history, transnational migration, the non-profit sector, library science or archival work.

Position Requires:
• Interest in history and the treasures of the JDC archives
• Working as a reliable team player
• General computer skills
• Foreign language skills helpful but not necessary

A full day or half day per-week time commitment is required. Volunteer work must be completed on site at JDC’s NY or Jerusalem offices. All training and supervision will be provided.

Please send inquiries to:
[email protected]
Indexing Project Coordinator

Please enter “JDC Archives Indexing Project Volunteer” in the subject line.