About a month ago, I accidentally came across a genealogy website called GenealogyBank. Ever since then, I get occasional email from them that tells me about resources that have been added to their website. They recently added 25 million new records.
GenealogyBank.com describes itself as “The Largest Newspaper Archive for Family History Research”. You can use the search engine on the website to start your search for information about your ancestors. Type in your ancestor’s first name and surname, and it will search over 6,100 United States newspapers and 1 billion records for you.
I originally came across GenealogyBank after following a series of links from some other genealogy website. I learned that you can search GenealogyBank for free, but, if you want to see the full results of your search it will cost you some money. I found this rather disappointing because the bread crumb trail of links I’d been following gave me the impression that GenealogyBank was a free website.
If you wanted to, you can get unlimited 30 day access for free, to check out their service. You can also join their newsletter for free. Those of you who want to start a paid membership at GenealogyBank might want to do it soon. Right now, they are offering their membership for $55.95. The website says this is 75% off their regular price. It appears that this offer ends September 7, 2012.
At the beginning of August, 2012, GenealogyBank added 17 million new records. Now, at the beginning of September of 2012, it seems that they have added “Over 115 Newspapers and 25 million new records”. This brings their total number of family history records to over 1 billion.
Newly added newspapers include: The Winona Post (Minnesota), Indianola Enterprise-Tosin (Mississippi), Amherst Village Messenger (New Hampshire), Newark Daily Advertiser (New Jersey), North Country Now (New York), and the Duplin Times (North Carolina). It also includes a newspaper called “The Farmville Enterprise”, which is from North Carolina. Rest assured that it doesn’t have anything to do with the Farmville game.
Image by NS Newsflash on Flickr