Ancestry.com - You've seen TV adverts, now hear how it works

May 12, 2014

Ancestry.com - You've seen the TV adverts, now hear how it works

Family historian and Ancestry.com's New Zealand spokesperson Christine Clement will give two presentations in Hawke’s Bay next month. Her talk entitled The New Zealand records on Ancestry.com - lots of hidden secrets, will give users an insight into how to uncover information in ways they never expected.

Ancestry.com is a subscription-based service which provides library customers with free access to British, Australian and New Zealand records of births, deaths and marriages, as well as historic census data for a range of countries.

The presentations are to be held at the Hastings War Memorial Library on Monday 9 June at 5.30pm and at Napier Library (in the Council Chambers) on Tuesday 10 June at 12.30pm

Christine has been a genealogist for well over half her life starting in 1982 when in London on an OE.

"In those days we spent weeks and weeks just looking for one fact or clue to continue with but now with the internet and ancestry, research takes seconds" says Christine.

"People that I had lost in the United Kingdom census, held every ten years from 1841, just appear now. They were missed from the census, as they were often visiting family members in an adjoining county. They would have taken virtually years to find in the past, as the census was not indexed. Now you can just search by Christian name and place of birth if needed."

Ancestry.com has well over 20 million New Zealand record's dating from 1842 to 1981. "I have even found myself on there, much to my children's amusement" said Christine.

This makes it a hugely valuable research tool for everyone, from those just starting to find out about their family history, to research historians.

Hastings District Libraries and Napier Libraries provide in-library access to Ancestry Library Edition at all sites and completely free of charge.

For information on how to register for either session go to www.hastingslibrary.co.nz or www.napierlibrary.co.nz

Speaker bio
Christine Clement has been tracing her family history for over half her life, beginning in 1983 while on an OE (Overseas Experience) in London.

Her parents were migrants to New Zealand, both from England (though her mother’s parents were Scots), but in 1985 she was lucky enough to marry a man whose families had come to New Zealand under every major immigration scheme since the 1840s.

Their two children are half Scottish and half English with a little bit of Cornish, Welsh and Northern Irish for good measure.

Christine is the author of numerous family and local history books and is the New Zealand representative for ancestry.com.au for whom she gives a number of talks and presentations.

She has also been a member of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists for a number of years and is the author of numerous articles for their magazine, as well as other genealogical magazines worldwide.

The family cat, Sooty, has her own web page with over 1670 pages of genealogical data.

ENDS

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