Friday, November 24, 2006

Free Access to Subscription Sites during Thanksgiving Weekend

I have heard that there is free access to subscription genealogy websites during Thanksgiving weekend.

Ancestry offers free access to its Immigration Collection until November 30th. They've recently added 80.5 million names to the collection, mostly in passenger lists. If you find your ancestor on a passenger list, you may also be lucky enough to find an image of the ship posted. I blogged recently about finding my TON and Van KLINKEN ancestors at Ancestry. They came over on the E.C. Scranton, an image of which is not available. However, there is a drawing of a similar ship available here, along with the history of the Scranton.

Another site that is offering free access is the National Genealogy Society, which has opened up its "Members Only Section" to the public, using the user name member and the password ngspromo. Warning: the site was hit so many times, it was rendered virtually unusable. I sent out an e-mail to the webmaster, and received three very nice e-mails in response, encouraging me to keep trying. I was able to get in for a short period (15 minutes), but the results I got on the searches I made were rather disappointing.

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