ANCESTRY World Tree is still FREE: http://www.ancestry.com/trees/awt/

The information available for a fee through ONE World Tree is still available at ANCESTRY World Tree for FREE. One World Tree simply combines the multiple/duplicate submissions for one person into one record, thus narrowing the field to records that actually represent different individuals. For instance, let's say your Great-Grandmother Josie's vitals have been uploaded to the ANCESTRY World Tree by five different people, but all five give basically the same information, One World Tree combines ALL the information given about Great-Grandma Josie under one record. So, instead of you having to surf through all five, you are presented with one record containing all the pertinent data. BUT all five Great-Grandma Josie records are still available for FREE in AWT.

Next... Some of you also don't seem to realize that Ancestry.com financially supports ROOTSWEB.com, where WorldConnect http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ , containing many, if not all, of the same family trees, is also FREE. Not to mention, Rootsweb is no small project, folks, and it is our subscription fees that go to help keep Rootsweb, among others, free to the public at large. Can you imagine how empty the internet would feel without Rootsweb and its hosted projects?

How many of you have ever maintained an independent website? I have, since 2000, and it's not cheap, my friends. I pay about $100 per year for my personal domain name and 100mb of space. My website would hold, at most, 1000 census images, and that's not enough space to host the images for one state for just one census year, and I don't have to pay someone to answer phones or maintain bunches of servers or transcribe records or write informative articles for your perusal either. I also don't have to BUY the many different record sets in order to have content for you guys to browse through.

Now, I don't doubt Ancestry is making a profit. If they weren't, they wouldn't still be here, and neither would ROOTSWEB which is free to anyone with access to the internet, but when I consider that it costs me at least $5 in gas to get to my local library, and that when I get there, I will have to hunt through microfilm/fiche for hours for something that may or may not be there, and that's only if no one else is ahead of me or behind me in line for the machines...

OK... I surf through the census images here at least 3-5 times a week... at just 3 times per week, the gas alone to my local library would cost me at least $780 a year!!!, and that's a conservative estimate given the rising gas prices. No package here costs that much. So, my advice to you is appreciate the convenience of Ancestry or not, but don't expect me to jump on your bandwagon. I like saving money from the comfort of my own home.

And last but not least, HeritageQuest has census images available for all years (1790-1930), but not all are indexed.

Get your facts straight, folks, by taking time to read the information provided by each of these companies. You'll look less foolish that way.