Ancestry.com.au Opens Its Records to Auckland Museum Visitors to Celebrate Family History Month This August

Ancestry.com.au is providing Auckland War Memorial Museum visitors with free, unlimited access to online historical records to mark the launch of Family History Month

• Free access to all seven billion records online, including 20 million New Zealand records, during the month of August and exclusively at the Museum
• Family History Month will run from 1st to 31st August

August 1, 2011 – Today, Australasia’s leading family history website, Ancestry.com.au has announced it will provide all Auckland War Memorial Museum visitors with free access to exclusive online records in celebration of Family History Month this August.

Content Director for Ancestry.com.au, Brad Argent says, “This ever-growing collection currently has over seven billion records from all over the world, including more than 20 million New Zealand records.”

Included in the vast online collection are 500,000 military records from both World Wars. The WW2 records are particularly unique, as these are only available online at Ancestry.com.au.

Auckland Museum historian Gabrielle Fortune says access to the database is a great addition to the tools the museum’s armoury team shares with visitors looking to find out more about their family history.

“Searching your family history can be a wonderfully rewarding experience. We always tell people to keep hold of all the bits of oral history they can find from relatives and friends and then come to us and we can guide you to find more. We have our Cenotaph records, we use cemetery records and now we have Ancestry which is a great way to simply search service records and electoral roles.”

Kiwis who visit the Museum to explore its historical collections, will now have the opportunity to delve deeper into their search using Ancestry.com.au’s comprehensive online collection.

In addition to the launch of Family History Month, Ancestry.com.au will also be attending New Zealand’s Family History Fair at Claudelands Events Centre in Hamilton on 26th and 27th August. Last year more than 1,000 people attended the event. This year, organisers say it will be bigger and better than ever before, with exhibitors, seminars, and interest groups, all focusing on how to research your family tree.

To find out more about your family’s heritage, please visit www.ancestry.com.au

ENDS

ABOUT ANCESTRY.COM.AU

Ancestry.com.au contains more than 965 million records in its Australian, New Zealand and UK collections, including New Zealand Naturalisations, 1843-1981, New Zealand City & Area Directories, 1866-1955, New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853-1981, New Zealand Maori Voter and Electoral Rolls, 1908 & 1919, New Zealand Canterbury Provincial Rolls, 1868-1874, New Zealand Jury Lists, 1842-1862, New Zealand, Maori Land Claims, 1858-1980, the Australia Birth, Marriage and Death Index, Australian Convict Transportation Registers, Australian Free Settlers, Australian Electoral Rolls, New South Wales SANDS Directories, as well as the most complete online collection of England, Wales and Scotland Censuses and the England and Wales Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes.

Ancestry.com.au was launched in May 2006 and belongs to the global network of Ancestry websites (wholly owned by Ancestry.com Operations Inc.), which hosts seven billion records. To date, more than 26 million family trees have been created and 2.6 billion profiles and 65 million photographs and stories uploaded. (July 29, 2011)

The Ancestry global network of family history websites: www.ancestry.com in the US, www.ancestry.co.uk in the UK, www.ancestry.ca in Canada, www.ancestry.com.au in Australia and NZ, www.ancestry.de in Germany, www.ancestry.it in Italy, www.ancestry.fr in France, www.ancestry.se in Sweden and www.jiapu.com in China.

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