Free access on NEHGS AmericanAncestors.org website, June 29 to July 6

Question

In honor of the Independence Day holiday in the United States (July 4th), the New England Historic Genealogical Society has announced 8 days of free access to all records on their website, including vital records, genealogical journal articles, probate records, and other collections. This starts at 12:01 a.m. EDT Thursday, June 29 (about an hour from now), and runs until 12:59 p.m. next Thursday, July 6. Go to https://www.americanancestors.org to sign up -- you will need to sign up as a guest member.

I have become very fond of the NEHGS resources, which are particularly good for New England, but are not limited to New England. And while they are best known for The Great Migration and colonial New England, their resources include specialized databases for research on Jewish heritage, African American ancestors, records from the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and more. And since this is a nonprofit organization (with staff who actually respond when I submit questions or concerns about databases), it feels much better to send money to NEHGS than to certain other subscription resources.

Comments

Awesome! I can't wait to get home from work and search! Thank you!

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Free access continues today and tomorrow!

Answer 1

This is the first time I have heard of American Ancestors.  Thank you for the explanation of who they are.  I will have to check them out this week!

Comments

That's great, Emma! You'll find that the tricks for searching on this site are different than for other sites (every site is a bit different). On this site, you can miss good results by doing something as simple as adding a date to your search. It's often best to search solely by a person's first and last name, then filter the results to look through results from a particular source (such as Massachusetts Vital Records to 1850 or The American Genealogist or Wills and Probate Records from a particular jurisdiction).

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Thanks Ellen!

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Ellen, I am not having any luck on the site.  I have signed up as a guest, but in order to click on a record it says I have to sign in as a member??

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Hmmm... That seems odd. It's possible that it's telling you your guest login needs to be entered again. I sometimes have to log in again when I least expect it. Have yoy tried logging in with your guest ID and password?

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It just redirects me to the home page when I click on log-in on the pop up.  I am already logged in at the home page :-(

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And what happens if you enter your login data on the main page AGAIN, then go back to the result page you were trying to access?

If that doesn't work, I'm out of ideas for tonight, and it's past my bedtime...

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Well, when I logged out and then searched for the record and then logged in from the pop-up to see the record--that worked.  Very weird!  Thanks for your help :-)

Answer 2

Bravo ! .. Thank You .. Ellen Smith !

Answer 3

This is fantastic! Thank you, Ellen.  This will definitely help in my research efforts into my mother's side of the family.

Answer 4

If I could choose just one subscription genealogy site, it would be NEHGS and its American Ancestors.