Ron, I am familiar with Heritage Quest, but didn't know about the on-line service. They previously had info on CDs only. Ancestry is another of the services that libraries can subscribe to and offer to the public. Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com are separate services with somewhat comparable costs. I am currently paying a bit over a hundred dollars per year for three of the services including including census, SSDI, Emigration/Immigration, etc. I think the costs are relative to each persons situation. For me it is so much easier to access from home as my time is very limited to spend in libraries. I will have to check out Heritage Quest again for comparison. The problem you cited about trial periods used to be a bigger problem than it is currently. I have even e-mailed Ancestry on-line and got a rapid and courteous response. Hopefully the competition keeps them all fairly responsive and helpful. Thanks for the new info on H.Q. Sandy

Ancestry sponsors Rootsweb and its funding maintains the free Rootsweb mailing lists and message boards. The parent company of Ancestry has recently purchased genealogy.com (know primarily for FamilyTreeMaker and for a different set of census images). There has been no indication that the two services offered by Ancestry and Genealogy.com will be combined. It appears they will continue to function as separate entities. I subscribed for about three or more years to Ancestry, primarily interested in the basic databases, then in the US Census, then in the newspapers databases. All are good, all are better for people researching colonial settlers and Anglo ancestry. What can't be filmed by the LDS is unlikely to be available at Ancestry. However, Ancestry is continuing to upload images of census pages and now of passenger manifests. One can run searches and the hits will indicate whether your surname(s) appear in the closed databases. Without a library or personal subscription one cannot access those databases. The first entry for my family is found in an 1870 census page in Chicago, I now have Slepicka listed in Udraz in 1756 (wedding of Petr, son of deceased Jacob ) The more distant roots might be looked for in the parish of Neznasov (possibly village Slavetice) or in the parish of Chrestovice. This information was made available by a researcher in the CR who was told to search the Udraz area based on a cousin's comments about where the family might have originated. The 1870 census image came from the Heritage Quest index, the page was found at Ancestry on line paid subscriber database, the Czech archival information obtained by a person on site in the CR. So I have jumped across the water without a passenger list. My names do not appear in Baca, nor in the GTA series, although many many people here will locate their families there. However, someone with an Ancestry subscription may well have located my great-great-grandparents: Name: Anna Slepicka Arrival Date: 5/7/1870 Age: 63 Gender: Female Place of Origin: Bohmen Destination: America Ship: Baltimore Ship Type: Steamer Port of Arrival: Baltimore Port of Departure: Bremen National Archives' Series Number: 17 Microfilm Number: M255 List Number: 36 === Name: Johann Slepicka Arrival Date: 5/7/1870 Age: 62 Gender: Male Place of Origin: Bohmen Destination: America Ship: Baltimore Ship Type: Steamer Port of Arrival: Baltimore Port of Departure: Bremen National Archives' Series Number: 17 Microfilm Number: M255 List Number: 36 and the surprise is that they traveled alone because they are actually with my family in the 1870 and caught by the Census which was taken between June 6 and September 13, 1870. So I plan to go to NARA to see what I can find about these two passengers. Always, I deal with the period being one of difficulty when searching. "Bremen, Germany - A majority of Europeans passed through Bremen after the 1830's. Unfortunately, virtually all of the departure lists for Bremen have been destroyed. In 1875, the destruction of the Bremen lists for 1832 to 1872 was authorized by the government to make file space available. They then continued to destroy lists each year, preserving only the lists for the current and two most recent years. This continued until 1909, when they began to again preserve the emigration records. However, most of these remaining records were destroyed during bombing in World War II. " http://home.att.net/~arnielang/ship04.html So while lists are on the internet, and certainly I am very impressed with what can be found, I do not ignore that my family came in the late 1860's and may not be found because records may no longer exist. As for the cost? I always thought the cost of on-line subscriptions was far cheaper than the cost of traveling to libraries or Family History Centers and paying for gas, parking, eating out, etc. The computer is a dream compared to driving around the city where I live <smile>. I never had a problem canceling a subscription to Ancestry and I have held three different types over three or four years. I also used a 14 day trial and had no problem cancelling that. I did pay attention to the agreement that I signed and met its requirements. Elaine Hello SANDY On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, you wrote > Ron, > I am familiar with Heritage Quest, but didn't know about the on-line > service. They previously had info on CDs only. > Ancestry is another of the services that libraries can subscribe to and > offer to the public. Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com are separate services > with somewhat comparable costs. I am currently paying a bit over a hundred > dollars per year for three of the services including including census, SSDI, > Emigration/Immigration, etc. I think the costs are relative to each persons > situation. For me it is so much easier to access from home as my time is > very limited to spend in libraries. > I will have to check out Heritage Quest again for comparison. > The problem you cited about trial periods used to be a bigger problem than > it is currently. I have even e-mailed Ancestry on-line and got a rapid and > courteous response. Hopefully the competition keeps them all fairly > responsive and helpful. > Thanks for the new info on H.Q. > Sandy