Is Ancestry Up for Sale?

On Lisa Louise Cook’s “Genealogy Gems” she writes:

“Reuters recently reported that Ancestry “is exploring a sale that could value it at between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, including debt.” According to unnamed sources, Permira (a buyout firm that owns most of Ancestry) “has hired investment banks to run an auction for the company.”

It’s far too soon to say what this might mean for paying customers, users of Ancestry Library Edition and corporate and community partners.

It’s far too soon to say what this might mean for paying customers, users of Ancestry Library Edition and corporate and community partners …

Our best advice to those whose master family trees are on Ancestry? Download and backup your data! We’re not being alarmist. This announcement is just a good opportunity to do something we routinely recommend anyway.”

To read the complete article, please click here.

This is a bit of a “wake-up” call. Even if nothing happens, the article is worthwhile taking note of, especially if Ancestry is where you maintain your family tree. – just in case! You might like to seriously think about getting your own Family Tree software – ensure it is one that both imports and exports gedcoms, which is the special programme for transferring your family tree from one package to another. There are many available. Just Google Compare+Family+tree+software and state your operating system (for Mac or for Windows).  There is also a very comprehensive comparison chart at PC Magazine well worth a read.

Family Search Records Update

FamilySearch has added to its collections more than 2.9 million indexed records and images for Australia, Canada, Peru, and the United States.  The entire article, including links to all the new records can be read by clicking here.

Of notable interest to most of us is the fact that the Canada Passengers List collection from 1881 – 1922 has been updated.   There is now a total of 191,573 records.   Most of us are either first or second-generation immigrants or our ancestors were immigrants to Canada so it is definitely worth a search through the records to find any of your ancestors on a passenger list.

Good luck with your search – you may just find the passenger list for that elusive ancestor we all seem to have!

Your Family, Past, Present and Future

Tim Urban, on his Wait but Why blog wrote a very interesting article about how we all seem to wait too long to talk to our parents or grandparents about their lives.     He begins his article saying:

“I have one living grandparent—my father’s mother, who’s 89 – Nana.

 I visited Nana recently and went through the usual activities—talking about myself in a loud voice, fixing her “broken machine” by unminimizing the internet browser window, being told to “slow down Timothy and get in the left lane”, even though the turn is still a half mile ahead. But I also used the visit as an opportunity to do something I have not done nearly enough in my life—ask her questions about our family.

I don’t know you, but I can almost guarantee that you don’t ask your grandparents (or older parents) enough questions about their lives and the lives of their parents. We’re all incredibly self-absorbed, and in being so, we forget to care about the context of the lives we’re so immersed in. We can use Google to learn anything we want about world history and our country’s history, but our own personal history—which we really should know quite well—can only be accessed by asking questions …”

His article speaks to us all, as most of us have lost the opportunity to talk with a parent or grandparent about their lives.   To read the complete article, please click here.

“Wait But Why posts regularly.  You can also follow Wait But Why on Facebook and Twitter.”

Ancestry – a Medical Research Juggernaut

A Huffington Post article dated April 6, 2015 stated that, “Ancestry.Com Is Quietly Transforming Itself Into A Medical Research Juggernaut”.  The article states:

“In 1984, a genealogy geek named John Sittner published The Source, a book meant to unearth and analyze never-before-seen records that genealogists could use to put together family histories with unprecedented detail. Several years later, he founded Ancestry magazine to teach people how they could use public archives and technology — which, back then, meant CD-ROMS and primitive websites and search engines — to build out their family trees.

Sittner sold the company long ago, but three decades after it began, Ancestry.com — the $1.6 billion Internet company that his magazine evolved into — is poised to become one of the most unlikely, yet powerful, scientific tools in the world. For about three years, it’s been collecting and analyzing genetic information through a service called AncestryDNA, and in the process, quietly asking consumers if they’d be willing to share their data with Ancestry for research. To date, it’s banked more than 800,000 samples from customers all over the world, rivaling the database of Google-backed genetics-analysis company 23andMe, which boasts about 900,000 samples. And now, armed with mountains of health data, Ancestry.com is slowly transforming itself from a retiree’s hobby into a medical research juggernaut …”

The complete blog post is well worth reading as it shows the future of DNS research.  Please click here to read the entire article.