Miscellaneous

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Run & Hug family edition contest, sponsored by Archives.com and Whitepages.com. The contest called for the public to vote on submissions of photos and stories about a long-lost relative to win an all-expense paid trip for two to reunite with that relative, along with $1,000 cash.

Shirley Franklin, a homemaker in Lexington, OK, garnered 16,324 votes to win a trip to visit her grandmother in Cleveland. She plans to take her mother, a recently retired nurse who lives in Norman, OK, with her on the visit in April. Read More »

Are you looking for a family-oriented gift this year? These eight gifts are great to give your family members. The best part? You can enjoy them together. These eight ideas focus on bringing families together, you can learn something new about your heritage or discover a new interest to share.

1. Archives.com gift membership: $25-50. Give the gift of family history without breaking the bank. Archives.com offers gift memberships for three, six, or twelve month subscriptions. Your loved ones will enjoy the opportunity to trace their ancestors and learn about their heritage, whether they are serious hobbyists or just beginners. Read More »

Have you lost touch with any of your relatives? The holiday season is when many take the time to connect with family members near and far. If you ask anyone who has been able to reconnect with a family member separated by time or distance, the opportunity to finally see one another can be magical.

As a website built around the importance of connecting families, Archives.com is excited to announce that we are sponsoring a contest with WhitePages.com to connect one lucky winner with their long lost relative. From now until December 19th, we want to hear your favorite memory about that particular relative you would like to see again. Read More »

Today, we'd like to share the most recent addition to our Content Development team. Amy Johnson Crow, MLIS, CGsm , will join Archives.com as a Genealogical Content Manager and Contract Specialist. We're excited to welcome Amy to the Archives team, where she will be assisting in the acquisition and management of historical records collections.

As a researcher, editor, webmaster, and database developer, Amy's background unites genealogical expertise and technological savvy. A certified genealogist, she has written dozens of articles in genealogy publications, including a piece that garnered first place in the 2003 International Society of Family History Writers and Editors Excellence-in-Writing Contest. Read More »

This Veterans Day, take some time to honor the veterans in your life, and remember your ancestors who served in the military.

Veterans Day was established on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month of 1918 to mark the peace agreements that ended World War I. In other parts of the world, this day is known as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day (as it was originally called in the United States). Do you have veterans in your family tree?

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Happy Jewish Genealogy Month! Recognized annually since 1999, Jewish Genealogy Month is now held during the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. This year, Cheshvan corresponds to October 29 through November 26. Whether or not you or your ancestors are Jewish, this month is a great time to celebrate and learn more about Jewish history.

You can start by reading our Expert Series articles on topics specifically related to Jewish genealogy.

Robert J. Friedman's overview of Jewish genealogy offers insight to starting your research and outlines how names may have changed as they were translated from Hebrew into other languages. Read More »

At Archives.com, we like to spotlight the fascinating things you can find in our record collections. We're proud to offer members access to millions of newspaper pages (U.S. and international), spanning 400 years courtesy of NewspaperArchive and the Library of Congress. Today, we wanted to share a lively story we found, about a milestone that occurred on this day 101 years ago.

On October 11, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane. On his way to visit to St. Louis, a year and a half after he left office, he stopped at an aviation field in Kinloch, MO. A pilot named Alex Hoxsey had just descended from a flight and soon was introduced to the former president. "Colonel," Hoxsey said, " I'd like to have you for a passenger." Read More »

Yesterday we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dick Eastman of the popular genealogy blog www.eogn.com to talk about this year's FGS Conference.

The interview was hosted by Anne Roach, Director of Content Development for Archives.com. Watch the video below for some reactions on the conference, and other interesting tidbits. This will be especially helpful if you weren't able to attend FGS this year! Read More »

The Archives team is having a great time at the FGS Conference. In particular, we've enjoyed talking to other attendees at our booths 621/720! It has been a pleasure meeting lots of new folks, and also seeing many that we recognize from previous NGS and RootsTech conferences.

We're particularly excited to share information about our newly launched Community Contributions Project. This program helps societies, libraries, archives or individuals make their records available online. Come by booths 621/720 to pick up a flier and learn more.

Here are some of the other activities we've enjoyed so far. Read More »

We're happy to announce the new Archives.com Community Contribution Program, which will allow individuals and organizations to easily make their digital indexes of family history collections accessible online! Archives.com will host submitted content at no cost, providing custodians of digital genealogical records with a free and easy way to reach an audience of millions.

Contributors may be anyone with digital indexes of genealogical records, and may be individuals or community-based organizations such as libraries, archives, and genealogical societies. Contributions must be digital indexes of records in Excel or .txt format. Examples of appropriate record types include vital, church, obituary, military... Read More »

We've arrived in Springfield, IL and are excited to be exhibiting this week at the FGS 2011 Conference. This city holds much historical significance, as the home to Abraham Lincoln for over twenty years leading up to his ascension to the White House in 1861. Not only are we looking forward to meeting lots of new folks, but also demoing what's new at Archives.com, getting together with genealogy friends, and sitting in on some of the fantastic sessions lined up.

Setting up in the exhibit hall today we saw the conference begin to come alive, and we are looking forward... Read More »

We are pleased to announce that Anne Roach, RootsTech 2011 conference developer and chair, will join Archives.com as the Director of Content Development. Anne has considerable expertise in the genealogy industry, as an accredited and certified genealogist with 19 years of research experience. She will lead the Archives content acquisition and digitization effort along with a dedicated team, to bring hundreds of millions of new records to Archives this year. As part of this, we're particularly excited to bring many new collections online which have never before been digitized.

Anne has been involved in the genealogical community for many years... Read More »

Greetings from Charleston, SC! Archives is a platinum sponsor of the NGS 2011 Conference, running May 11-14. Like other exhibitors today, we're setting up and looking forward to the week ahead. Archives is located at booths 229 and 231, so please stop by to say hello! We'd love to meet you, and help you learn a little more about Archives.com. We've recently made many exciting product enhancements which we'd love... Read More »

Season two of "Who Do You Think You Are?" has come to an end, but last week's episode was a true treat to watch. The episode explored Ashley Judd's ancestors, who accomplished some truly amazing feats. First she explores the life of her third great grandfather Elijah Hensley, a man who at the age of 15 enlisted to fight as an infantry member of the Union Army in the Civil... Read More »

American actress Gwyneth Paltrow was featured on the latest episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" which aired Friday, April 1st. Starting out, her story was similar to that of many beginning family historians. She knew bits and pieces about her ancestors but wasn't sure what was fact and what was fiction. One of the myths passed down to her was that someone on her mother's side of the... Read More »

This episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" followed famous signer Lionel Richie, who came into the experience curious to learn more about his maternal grandmother's line. He didn't leave disappointed. Richie's search focused around his great grandfather, John Louis Brown. Despite having grown up with his grandmother, he never heard any mention of his great grandfather. Richie worked with local historians to discover J.L. Brown was the founder... Read More »

Family history research is extremely rewarding, in part because of the intriguing stories you can learn about your ancestors. Recently, we asked Facebook community members "What's the most interesting fact you've learned about an ancestor?" We've chosen to share a couple real stories which demonstrate some truly remarkable things they've learned about their family heritage. "That many of my close friends turned out to be cousins." - Irene "LOL...I just... Read More »

In the fourth episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" actress Kim Cattrall dives into the 70+ year mystery of her grandfather's disappearance. In case you missed it here's a quick recap of this powerful, emotionally charged episode. Kim's journey begins with a visit with her mother and aunts, who tell what little they remember of their father George Baugh. It's clear that the children suffered considerably after their... Read More »

Whether you tuned in at RootsTech or at home, everyone was sure to enjoy last Friday's "Who Do You Think You Are?" episode featuring Tim McGraw. As an American country music icon, McGraw brought star-power, and also a really interesting family story. We were excited to see Archives.com Expert Series author Kathleen Brandt featured as one of the historians helping McGraw to trace his ancestors. Brandt appears in the first... Read More »

February 14th is the day to appreciate the love in your life, and it can also be a great time to learn more about your ancestors. Who was your ancestor spending this special day with? Did he write her a poem, or buy her chocolates? It's said Americans probably began exchanging homemade Valentine's Day cards sometime in the early 1700's. It can be particularly fun to look at historic valentines,... Read More »

Did you tune in Friday for the first episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" Season Two? We did! Here's a quick recap of the episode which brought in 7.3 million viewers - a series high. The actress and former beauty queen Vanessa Williams was featured, exploring the lives of several ancestors who much like Vanessa herself broke through racial barriers and stereotypes in their day. The search took... Read More »

Archives just released the Online Family History Industry Trends Report, and here is the corresponding infographic which summarizes important data points presented.This infographic was created for public use, so please feel free to pass it on, and share with your friends!  Please let us know your thoughts on recent trends at trends@archives.com.... Read More »

At Archives.com we're deeply engaged with genealogy market trends, but we've never found a central place that synthesized the data we were curious about. We created this report to investigate the genealogy trends that impact our business and the space as a whole. The results are interesting and worthy of sharing.  Please note, our intention is to provide a snapshot of a handful of ideas we find meaningful - this... Read More »

Yesterday, Archives.com's parent company Inflection made two major announcements: one about a $30 million Series A financing round led by Matrix Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures, and another about the launch of new website PeopleSmart.com. (read the press releases here) Inflection's goal is to organize and provide easy access to public records past and present. Archives will focus on serving users looking for historical content, while PeopleSmart is primarily for... Read More »

Archives.com is one year old! The site was originally launched as GenealogyArchives.com July 2, 2009, and it's amazing to think how far we've come in this short period. Not only do we provide access to over 1.2 billion records, but we also have hit some truly amazing milestones. Archives.com surpassed 2 million unique monthly visitors in February 2010 (according to Compete.com) Members have created or uploaded tens of thousands of... Read More »

It was our pleasure to attend the 2010 National Genealogical Society (NGS) Conference in Salt Lake City. Three representatives from Archives made a day of it on Friday, April 30th. It was great to reconnect with friends and make many new ones! We were impressed overall by the venue, organization, and professionalism of conference staff. I slipped into Kip Sperry's talk on "Tips For Field Research" and greatly enjoyed... Read More »

Scads of bloggers have made genealogy resolutions for 2010. These are great posts to read because they set goals we can all take to heart like making better source citations, planning a long-overdue genealogy trip, or finally organizing that shoe box of old pictures in the closet. However, instead of discussing resolutions in this post we've asked the Archives.com expert authors to weigh in on tips, tricks, and must-attend events... Read More »

Did you catch the first episode of The Generations Project, a new reality show, on BYUTV last night Jan. 4? If not its worth a look. We had the opportunity to interview Mary Wollenzien, a member of the Generations Project team, and we're passing along the story to you!  Mary gives us a couple sneak peeks into highlights from the show, as well as helpful pointers for our own research.... Read More »