Free On Ancestry Shut Down
Saturday April 28, 2007
The popular Web site FreeOnAncestry.com is no more - reportedly shut down at the request of The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com. The issue appears to be the domain name, according to the post by site owner, Steve Johnson.
FreeOnAncestry.com served as a portal to free resources and databases on Ancestry.com. It worked much the same was as the free coupons sites work - pointing out primarily databases that are free to access for a limited time based on various running promotions. The site was live for only a few months. Perhaps it was just too popular?
Comments
You know not everyone has the money to pay for what should be free. Most of the Seniors only have a little to live on and that’s very limited.
While I agree that it would be very nice if the information on our families could be free for everyone, it takes money to store, look up and provide copies of records. Governments generally don’t have the budget to be able to provide that type of information for free. The cost of digitizing records and putting them online are astronomical, and then you also have to add the costs of paying people to index the records and maintain the Web site, plus the cost of all the servers and other equipment needed to store and serve such a large amount of data. A subscription to Ancestry.com can be quite expensive, but they offer access to records that would have otherwise been extremely difficult and time consuming to obtain.
There is a great deal of free information available online, but in most cases this is due only to the generous efforts of volunteers. One of the best ways to encourage access to free records is to volunteer yourself to help get records online. Check with your local genealogical society, library, or GenWeb site to see if they have any opportunities. Or you might try FamilySearch Indexing.
For us old-timers (people that have done family research prior to the internet) Ancestry.com is a “nice to have” and not a requirement. For those people that have only started their family trees since the internet are missing two primary resources:
• Interviewing relatives, and
• Using the information kept at the various libraries
Interviewing relatives is the best and foremost way of getting information that you won’t find anywhere else.
All the information at Ancestry.com is free, at the library. Plus, there is more information at the local library where your relatives lived, than will ever be at Ancestry.com.
Keep in mind, the only thing that Ancestry.com copyrights are the database indexes of the records that are in the public domain.
the bottom line is always money so it was only a matter of time.
Hi,
I would like to share Cherished Memories, a resource ideal for tracking and documenting the life stories of family members from every generation. I have provided more information below.
Do You Know the Stories of Your Parents and Grandparents?
“Cherished Memories—The Story of My Life”
Sold Out in Minutes on QVC
(LOS ANGELES) Celebrities such as Oprah, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, Larry King, and President Clinton have discovered how enlightening and rewarding it is to write your own story and read the stories of their parents and grandparents.
I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.”–Oprah Winfrey,
on her TV show, January, 2003
Anyone who’s fortunate enough to live to be 50 years old should take the time, even if it’s just a couple of weekends, to sit down and write the story of your life.
–President William Clinton
There is an easy-to-use, comprehensive tool to organize and chronicle the story of your life or the life of a loved one.You can leave future generations your most cherished memories, values, wisdom, life lessons, and even a personal health history, all in one attractive portable 3-ring album/binder with over 100 pages of thought-provoking questions and more.
Cherished Memories includes separate sections for: childhood, teen years, adult years, values and philosophies (ethical will), my favorites, family tree, health history, AND a place for pictures and treasured keepsakes.
Co-author Debby Bitticks was inspired to create Cherished Memories—The Story of My Life after losing her own mother and mother-in-law without getting their life stories. Bitticks vowed never to let that happen again, and after writing Cherished Memories—The Story of My Life with her daughter Lynn Benson MSW, she interviewed her father and father-in-law, and their stories are family treasures since they died.
Bitticks emphasizes: completing the questions and discussing your life story serves as a springboard to meaningful conversations that you might have never otherwise had with the important people in your life. It truly brings you closer to the ones you love, and celebrates a life’s journey which bring the generations together.
For more information or to order Cherished Memories—The Story of My Life, visit www.biobinders.com.