Unless you can find something newer, I think that following the trail shows that Ancestry.com is indeed owned by the LDS church: http://www.infobaseventures.com/our_companies.html Infobases Inc. Founded in 1990 by Paul Allen and Dan Taggart. Published religious and educational software on CD-ROM. An Inc. 500 company in 1996, growing from $0 to $4 million in revenue in its first five years. Acquired Bookcraft, Inc. in 1997. Acquired by Deseret Management Corp in 1999. Infobases, Inc. invested in Ancestry, a 13-year old print publishing company, in May 1996 and became its managing shareholder. Later, Infobases acquired 100% of Ancestry from its original founder, John Sittner. By July 1997, Paul Allen and Dan Taggart were running Ancestry as a company independent from Infobases and began building the world's largest online genealogy database and subscription service. Ancestry.com changed its name to MyFamily.com in November 1999. MyFamily.com was launched in December 1998 and quickly became one of the fastest growing community web sites in history, gaining 1 million registered users in its first 140 days. Led by CEO Curt Allen, the company raised more than $90 million in venture capital from investors such as Intel, CMGI, AOL, Kodak, Compaq, Sorenson, Esnet, Vspring and Tango Partners. Today, MyFamily.com owns Ancestry.com, Rootsweb, Genealogy.com and is the leading genealogy company in the world. According to the New York Times (Oct 2002), sales for 2002 were projected at $62 million. 2003 sales were $99 million. CEO: Tom Stockham AND - if you check out Deseret Management Corp, you'll find the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Management_Corporation The Deseret Management Corporation is a for-profit management company of assets for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Kathryn Parson wrote: >Ancestry.com is not owned by the LDS church. There are some LDS members that work there and run the site. >The LDS genealogy archives in Salt Lake City do contain many records submitted by members as well as non-members of the LDS church. Many errors are found there because of lack of knowledge in research and piggy-backing of the records. >Unfortunately those records were seldom documented as they were submitted as their own family lines. The church is in the process of a huge clean-up of the records which is costing an incredible amount of money and man hours and will be ready soon to begin to accept documented lines to be submitted by anyone who wishes to do so. And of course Salt Lake Family History Library is the repository of massive amounts of actual documents and records that have been photo copied from all over the world, from churches to court houses. It is a wonderful place to research and they even have copies of records that only exist there when old churches have finally burned or had floods or such things. The church was in the process of filming the records in New Orleans just before it was flooded and those records were saved and now the church will give the city copies of the records that they would have lost forever. I am a member of the LDS church and have been involved in research for! ! > many years and YES, I do document my records. Unfortunately I didn't in the early days, as many of you have learned to do. >Kathryn > > >==== PALEBANO Mailing List ==== >Lebanon County Gen Web Home Page: ><http://www.chm.davidson.edu/PAGenWeb/> > > > > >

Family Tree Maker, which is very good software, makes me a little afraid of it now as it's owned by Myfamily. What bother me was the rep. of the LDS of taking data and incorporated in their database without the owners permission. Jon Miller

I wondered about that when a I learned that all the managers were BYU graduates. I have a cousin who is a Mormon bishop. Terrific preacher. I would not have known about the BYU connections that if I hadn't done a little digging, However, what made me dig had nothing to do with LDS. When the former principal of a firm called Big Hugs joined Ancestry.com, it raised some red flags. The Big Hugs guy has a less than stellar reputation among adoptees and birth parents searching desperately for biological relatives. You know how it is, you are known by the company you keep. I've been less confident in Ancestry.com ever since. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara" <brivas1@cox.net> To: <PALEBANO-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 1:20 PM Subject: Re: [PALEBANO] ancestry LDS or not Unless you can find something newer, I think that following the trail shows that Ancestry.com is indeed owned by the LDS church: http://www.infobaseventures.com/our_companies.html Infobases Inc. Founded in 1990 by Paul Allen and Dan Taggart. Published religious and educational software on CD-ROM. An Inc. 500 company in 1996, growing from $0 to $4 million in revenue in its first five years. Acquired Bookcraft, Inc. in 1997. Acquired by Deseret Management Corp in 1999. Infobases, Inc. invested in Ancestry, a 13-year old print publishing company, in May 1996 and became its managing shareholder. Later, Infobases acquired 100% of Ancestry from its original founder, John Sittner. By July 1997, Paul Allen and Dan Taggart were running Ancestry as a company independent from Infobases and began building the world's largest online genealogy database and subscription service. Ancestry.com changed its name to MyFamily.com in November 1999. MyFamily.com was launched in December 1998 and quickly became one of the fastest growing community web sites in history, gaining 1 million registered users in its first 140 days. Led by CEO Curt Allen, the company raised more than $90 million in venture capital from investors such as Intel, CMGI, AOL, Kodak, Compaq, Sorenson, Esnet, Vspring and Tango Partners. Today, MyFamily.com owns Ancestry.com, Rootsweb, Genealogy.com and is the leading genealogy company in the world. According to the New York Times (Oct 2002), sales for 2002 were projected at $62 million. 2003 sales were $99 million. CEO: Tom Stockham AND - if you check out Deseret Management Corp, you'll find the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Management_Corporation The Deseret Management Corporation is a for-profit management company of assets for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Kathryn Parson wrote: >Ancestry.com is not owned by the LDS church. There are some LDS members >that work there and run the site. >The LDS genealogy archives in Salt Lake City do contain many records >submitted by members as well as non-members of the LDS church. Many errors >are found there because of lack of knowledge in research and piggy-backing >of the records. >Unfortunately those records were seldom documented as they were submitted >as their own family lines. The church is in the process of a huge clean-up >of the records which is costing an incredible amount of money and man hours >and will be ready soon to begin to accept documented lines to be submitted >by anyone who wishes to do so. And of course Salt Lake Family History >Library is the repository of massive amounts of actual documents and >records that have been photo copied from all over the world, from churches >to court houses. It is a wonderful place to research and they even have >copies of records that only exist there when old churches have finally >burned or had floods or such things. The church was in the process of >filming the records in New Orleans just before it was flooded and those >records were saved and now the church will give the city copies of the >records that they would have lost forever. I am a member of the LDS church >and have been involved in research for! ! > many years and YES, I do document my records. Unfortunately I didn't in > the early days, as many of you have learned to do. >Kathryn > > >==== PALEBANO Mailing List ==== >Lebanon County Gen Web Home Page: ><http://www.chm.davidson.edu/PAGenWeb/> > > > > > ==== PALEBANO Mailing List ==== Always cite your sources when posting information!