African American Family History: Key Collections & Repositories

Ancestry.com is the commercial version of Ancestry, which is purchased by individual subscribers. 

Individual Subscriber Accounts

Ancestry.com  provides several different individual subscription packages , each providing access to a different range of collections. Each individual paid subscriber has their own account and member profile. A user must be logged in (authenticated) to view the collections that are restricted to paid subscribers.

Free & Limited Accounts

Ancestry allows individuals to create free accounts, even without a paid subscription. These free account members cannot access most of the historical records collections, but they can use and take advantage of the other services available to registered users, such as:

• creating and updating family trees,
• sharing and collaborating on trees,
• reading and posting to the message boards,
• watching the online video courses in Ancestry Academy,
• and buying a DNA test.

It is important to note that if someone was once a paid member and saved a bunch of records to their family tree, but later let the paid subscription lapse, the family tree and information in that tree remain in tact. However that free accountholder will no longer be able to access any of the subscription-based historical records that were previously attached to their tree. If they reactivate their paid subscription, the attached historical records become available again if those records fall within the current paid subscription package.

Free Record Collections

Ancestry.com allows free access to a number of their collections (not a lot, but a good selection). These free collections are made available through the World Archives Project (Links to an external site.), or selected partner institutions or projects whose terms require providing free access. A paid subscription is not required to access or view these collections, which include a mix of indexes and actual digitized records.

These free collections can be searched for free without authenticating, however one must register for and authenticate with a free account in order to view those free records. Someone with a free account can attach those free records to their family tree, and continue to view those free records from within their family tree. These free collections can be found here (Links to an external site.).

Ancestry Member Trees

Members can create as many online trees as they want. Unlike FamilySearch, Ancestry trees are not shared by default, and are not public to all authenticated members by default. An ancestry member can make any of their trees:

• totally private (viewable just to them),
• totally public with living people privatized (viewable to any authenticated Ancestry member), or
• viewable to just certain invited members (i.e., certain family members or collaborators).

Ancestry members can invite other Ancestry members to have edit access and work together on a tree.

Ancestry Library Edition (ALE) is licensed and offered through ProQuest, a library vendor that licenses many of the research databases to which the Pollak Library subscribes. The Pollak Library, however, does not have an ALE subscription.

• Access to Ancestry Library Edition

ALE is usually only available from inside libraries that subscribe to this service. Check with the libraries for which you have accounts and library cards to determine if they subscribe to ALE.

Covid Pandemic Update: Due to the Covid pandemic restricting in-person patron access to public libraries, ProQuest and Ancestry have been providing temporary remote access to Ancestry Library Edition for subscribing public libraries who have the necessary authentication measures in place. This agreement is currently in place through June 30, 2021, and ProQuest and Ancestry will continue to reevaluate this date. Check with any public libraries for which you have a library card to determine if they provide temporary remote access.

Differences with Ancestry.com

There are some differences between ALE and the regular Ancestry.com. 

• Personalization features like Ancestry Member Trees and DNA data are not available in ALE.
• Some collections are not available in ALE, which usually applies to collections like newspapers since ProQuest has other research database products for those, which ProQuest separately licenses.