Maps, Atlases, and Gazetteers
Place matters in family history research. Boundaries change over time, and you need to know where your ancestors’ town sat in relation to everything around it. Was it near a county or state line? Could their records be filed in more than one place? Ancestry’s collection of maps, atlases, and gazetteers helps answer those questions, but most of these maps aren’t indexed by name, so they won’t surface on their own.
Oral Histories and Recordings
Ancestry has a collection of actual audio recordings of immigrants describing their arrival through Ellis Island. Your ancestor may not be among the speakers, but imagine hearing a woman who left Ireland in 1897 describe, in her own voice, leaving home and sailing into New York Harbor. Even if she isn’t family, her story gives you a firsthand sense of what your own immigrant ancestors went through.
Another powerful collection is the U.S. Interviews with Formerly Enslaved People, 1936–1938, gathered by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA). These firsthand accounts can be browsed by location, so you can read the experiences of people enslaved in the same Southern community where your ancestors lived. Interviewees sometimes mention family members and the names of their enslavers. Unlike most collections in this post, these interviews are indexed by name, but they’re still worth browsing for the context they provide.
Newsreels
In the same spirit, Ancestry offers newsreels, like the World War II reels shown in theaters before movies in the 1940s. They won’t name your relatives, but they show you the events and atmosphere your ancestors were living through.
Postcards
Ancestry also has a collection of historic postcards. These aren’t cards sent between individuals with names attached. They’re a private collection Ancestry acquired and published, featuring historic places. You can’t search them by name, but you can search by keyword, such as a town, landmark, or historical event, to bring up a list of matching postcards.
How to Find Them
Search the Card Catalog. Use the Keyword field rather than the Title field: a title search only matches words in the collection’s title, while a keyword search matches anywhere in the collection’s descriptive information. Try a place name, landmark, or event to see what turns up.
Submitted by Robin McCarthy
