I’ll be the first person in line to admit I don’t ever want to give up my Ancestry.com membership. It’s so convenient for searching. I know the downfalls and dangers but I just don’t care. It’s like my fluffy pajamas, they’re my security blankets.
I think sometimes it’s easy to forget all those other great resources out there in the shadow of Ancestry though. Just waiting to be found and utilized sometimes. I’m definitely making a trip to the National Archives this summer, I’m pretty sure the local historical and genealogy societies do day trip shuttles. Why shouldn’t I take advantage! I’m also thinking about volunteering at the local historical society. I used to know some people there and I think I could be some help. Especially if there are forms to fill out, I love forms.
Yesterday I posted about my chagrin at being denied access to NewspaperArchive.com from my home. I’m so spoiled you see, that I felt slighted. Well, I felt slighted for about 30 seconds when I decided I was going to play with that Heritage Quest thingy. Just for fun.
Unlike other things I won’t name, this one allowed me to enter my library card number and away I went.
Where to start? Where to start? I decided to start with something I already knew, just to see how easy it would be to search things. I’ve been having a little trouble with Census searching on Ancestry the last few days, so I decided to see what it was like here.
So I picked someone from my family file that I hadn’t really researched a lot, but that I knew the basics about. Sort of. I also wanted an easy to interpret last name. After all my frustrations and weirdness of the last few days I didn’t want to mess with spelling things too.
Oh look, we have three matches! My guy is on the bottom of course, but don’t be fooled all those yahoos are in my tree.
For some reason, I thought this would just be an index. Imagine my pleasant surprise when it also showed the actual image! They don’t have all the censuses online, but boy do they have a lot and this is all FREE to me through my library card. You can bet I’m going to be utilizing this a lot more now that I’m aware it’s there.
Just wait until I show you what I found on John K Taylor’s father and my 5th Great Grandfather Bartholomew Taylor.