The Plymouth Library Genealogy Blog pointed me to Everton Publishers Genealogy Blog examines “Which to Use? Ancestry.com or HeritageQuest for the Best Census Images” for researching genealogy census reports online.
…So to make a long story short - today we have two separate digital databases with two separate digitizations. As you know, sometimes you can read one - when you can’t read the other. Most active genealogists use both, if they are available. Sometimes we make a run to the Family History Library to read the microfilm itself.
HeritageQuest Online doesn’t have anywhere near the indexes available that Ancestry does. Many of us use the Ancestry indexes and the Ancestry digital images first. If the images aren’t legible, we move over to HeritageQuest Online…
Now don’t get the idea from my above illustration that it always works this way. Often it’s the other way around. The Ancestry image (especially of “light” handwriting) is sometimes better. And there are times, when neither image is any better than the other. However, there are enough times that they are, that I would be very unhappy if I didn’t have access to both.
I have to agree. I’ve found that HeritageQuest often has clearer images, though not always. But Ancestry.com has more census forms.
Article Information
Online Census Images: Ancestry.com or Heritage Quest - Which One is Better? is Issue Number 248 published November 9, 2006, by Lorelle VanFossen. This is just one of many articles found in the Genealogy Techniques, Genealogy Resources categories. Lorelle VanFossen writes for a variety of blogs, websites, ezines, and print publications. She also teaches and does a lot of public speaking internationally on photography, writing, blogging, web page design and development, and more. She and her husband and cat(s) travel full-time across North American and the rest of the world by RV, planes, trains, automobiles, and foot, writing and photographing their travels and nature, when they can find it. Lorelle VanFossen has written 231 articles for our our family history blog.
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November 21st, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Comparing Ancestry vs Heritage. My experience was remarkable. It showed that one must try everything in every way to do a thorough job of hunting down ancestors.
I had done everything on Ancestry to find my ancestor GGGGGrandfather. I could find him in the Revolutionary War, but just his name, no unit, length of service, nothing but his name. I even searched all the books at the N. J. State Library.
The source, itself of Revolutionary War data. I was very frustrated. Then came the breakthrough. I went on Heritagequestonline and my first inquiry of typing in a name got me 10 pages of documents which included 3 pages in my ancestor’s own words of his 5 years serving as a “Minuteman” signed by him and all of his children. Of course all these names then allowed me to go both forward and back to fill out my family tree. Do everything on every program you can.