The Insider
Viva Learning Centers
by Anastasia Sutherland Tyler

I've been feeling particularly patriotic lately with Memorial Day and the Fourth of July just behind us. Couple that with the latest World War I draft card releases, and I'm very excited about researching my family's military history. (Even though my great-grandfather's draft card continues to elude me!) My family has a legacy of military service (a great-grandfather in World War I, another in both World Wars, a grandfather in the Korean War, and my father-in-law in Vietnam). I'm also going out on a limb and trying to find my great-great-great grandfather in any Civil War records; he was the right age in the right place to have served.

As I sat down to begin searching both online and off, I realized that I needed a little more direction. Military records are a rather new research area for me, and I didn't know very much about them. This is where Learning Centers, a new feature on Ancestry.com, became quite handy.

Introducing Learning Centers
Learning Centers are free areas on Ancestry.com where you can learn about various family history topics. Each of the ten learning centers focuses on a family history concept or an Ancestry.com record collection:

• Census records
• Birth, Marriage, and Death records
• Trees and Community
• Immigration records
• Military records
• Directories and Member Lists
• Family and Local Histories
• Newspapers and Periodicals
• Court, Land, and Probate records
• Reference and Finding Aids

These topic-focused areas allow you to easily find basic information for each topic, search tips for using Ancestry.com and for finding records in other places, success stories from researchers, pointers on where to look for more information, interesting facts about the topic, and answers to frequently asked questions. You can read articles detailing the use and value of a collection, view sample images, see records for famous people, and get ideas for next steps in exploring Ancestry.com.

For example, the Military Learning Center includes an overview of military records, a list of types of military records in the collection (with specific emphasis on World War I draft cards and Civil War Pension files), a short biography of General George Armstrong Custer (famous for his Last Stand) with links to his military and other records on Ancestry.com, and blank World War I draft card forms to aid my search for those great-grandfathers.

Locating the Learning Centers
Learning Centers are easy to find by clicking on the “Learning Center” tab from the Ancestry.com home page (www.ancestry.com/learn/). On the right-hand side of the main Learning Center page is the heading “Learn More About.” This list gives the names of and links to all the Learning Centers, clicking on one of these links will take you to the welcome page for each center.

From a specific Learning Center, you can access other centers by looking for the “More Learning Centers” text toward the top of the screen and selecting from the drop-down box to the right of the text, or through the search pages for main collections on Ancestry.com.

Learning Centers and Your Family History
Ancestry.com created these content areas so everyone could learn how to better search the website and how to research a specific topic in other locations. Learning Centers provide places where people can find out why they should search specific record types, who might be found in the records, and why the records are important sources of family history information. Rather than providing just a search box and a list of possible matches, as was usually the case on Ancestry.com previously, we wanted people to know the purpose of records and how those records relate to your personal history.

The main idea behind these learning centers is simplicity: The Library on Ancestry.com is filled with great articles on family history by our favorite Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Magazine authors, but finding all the articles on a specific topic can sometimes take a while. The military learning center includes links to articles focusing on major wars and conflicts that involved the United States. By bringing together the best content for a specific subject, Learning Centers can help you get the most out of your research time on Ancestry.com.

Learning Centers provide information for family historians at all skill levels. Most of the centers cover basic family history topics, thus their content is fairly basic. Some centers, the Court, Land, & Probate and the Reference & Finding Aids centers, for example, cover advanced topics and thus include more advanced content than other centers. The more advanced centers include tools to make the information accessible to all skill levels, for example a glossary of legal terms is provided in the Court, Land, and Probate Center for those of us without Juris Doctorates.

The Future of Learning Centers
The current Learning Centers will be expanded as new content is added to Ancestry.com and new articles about the topics are written. Additional Learning Centers will be created as new databases and collections are added to Ancestry.com. Other centers will be centered on specific holidays and hobbies related to family history.

The Military Learning Center helped me get to know the types of records that exist for the various conflicts in which my ancestors were involved. I have a good idea which records to search for my third great-grandfather's Civil War service and even found articles from the Library that will help me find more information about the both World Wars and the Korean War.

Anastasia Sutherland Tyler is an associate editor for MyFamily.com, Inc. Her heritage includes German, English, French, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, a fact that may explain why decision-making is always such an internal conflict for her. She can be contacted at adntech@myfamilyinc.com, but regrets that she is unable to assist with personal research.

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Ancestry Quick Tip
Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree

It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree! Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going. You can send your tips to ADNeditor@ancestry.com.

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.

Have a great day!
Juliana

Correspondents Files
We often find new "cousins" on the internet, and it is quite easy to forget just how we all connect. In order to help me keep everyone straight, I create a new personal correspondence file for each contact, and in the front I put a pedigree sheet that shows exactly how I connect to them. It sure helps when months later I pull their file and at a glance can see our connection immediately.

Happy Hunting!
Bettye Pribyl

Check Enumeration Household Numbers
When reviewing census images sometimes the family you're searching is enumerated at the end of a page. If you think there might be additional family members that should be listed on the following page, yet you don't see them, remember to take a look at the enumeration household number. Just recently, I've come across two incidences where I've located the parents and a child or two at the bottom of a page expecting more on the next and not finding them. Noting that there was a big gap between household numbers, I checked several pages both forward and backward and found the remainder of the family three or four pages before the image of the parents. I reported this error to Ancestry.com.

Bonnie L. Weber
So. Calif.

ADN Editor's Note: For more on reporting errors at Ancestry.com, click here for instructions from the Ancestry Help pages.

Stir Out Spiders
Though I do not pretend to know about insects and spiders, my entomologist friend says that we should always carry a strong stick or cane when cemetery hunting, and when finding a headstone with weeds, etc., grown up around it, before reaching down we should use that stick to vigorously stir up such weeds and grass. The reason is that the poisonous Brown Recluse spider may lurk in such weeds, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line. That stirring about, he tells me, will usually cause this very shy creature to leave or find hiding places away from such commotion.

Paul Drake

Plan for Fun on Research Trips
I took my five young children on many genealogy trips. I knew it was tedious for them to tolerate my hours of library research and visiting, so I always planned some fun parts such as underground caves in OH and family reunions with lots of kids to play with.

I must have been quite successful (and their memories short), because when my oldest daughter had been married for a few years, she told her husband she needed to go on a vacation with her mother again so she could have some fun.

Gloria Hall
Michigan

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Clipping of the Day
Important Decision
From The Ohio Repository (Canton, Ohio), 19 July 1848, page 2

The Sabbath a day of Rest.--The case of Specht vs. the Commonwealth, has at length been decided by the Supreme Court of this State, now in session at Harrisburgh. The following are the facts of the case. The man Specht, who is one of the sect of Seventh Day Baptists was indicted in Franklin County for working on the Sabbath, and fined by the Court. He appealed from the decision in order to test the constitutionality of the law under which he was fined. Judge Bell delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court affirming the proceedings of the Court below, and establishing the constitutionality of the law.--Gaz.

Subscribers with access to the Historical Newspapers Collection can view this clipping.

Click here to subscribe to the Historical Newspapers Collection at Ancestry.com.

Fast Fact
Need More Information About a Database?

So, you've successfully searched for an ancestor at Ancestry.com. Now all you need is the source documentation for your records. Just click on the database title (it is in blue at the top of the results page). This hyperlink will take you to the main database page where you'll find the extended description of the database, as well as the source information, ready for copying and pasting into your files.

Best of luck with your searches!
www.ancestry.com/rd/advanced.htm

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Thought for Today
Luciano de Crescenzo

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.