Citing Ancestry.com Databases

 

Citing Ancestry.com Databases — What Most People Get Wrong

Ancestry.com is the most widely used genealogy platform in the world. It is also the most frequently miscited. The mistake almost everyone makes is citing "Ancestry.com" as though it were a single source. It is not. Ancestry hosts thousands of separate databases, each based on different original records — and your citation needs to identify the specific database you used, not just the platform.

Ancestry Is a Platform, Not a Source

Citing "Ancestry.com" in your research is like citing "the library." It tells a future researcher you went somewhere, but not what you looked at when you got there. Ancestry hosts over 40,000 databases covering census records, vital records, military records, immigration records, church records, newspapers, city directories, family trees, and compiled indexes. Each database is a separate source based on separate original records.

When you cite an Ancestry record, you need to identify the specific database — its full title as it appears on the database page — and the original records it is based on. The database "U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918" is based on NARA Record Group 163. The database "New York, New York, Marriage License Indexes, 1907–2018" is based on New York City Municipal Archives records. These are very different sources, and lumping them together as "Ancestry.com" strips your citation of all useful information.

Never cite just "Ancestry.com." Always cite the specific database title and the original records it is based on. Ancestry helpfully provides this information on every database page under "Source Information" — copy it into your citation.

The Source Information Box

Every database on Ancestry has a "Source Information" section that tells you the database title, the original data source, and often the NARA publication number or archive where the original records are held. This is the information your citation needs. When you find a record, scroll down to the source information and copy the database title and the original source citation. Do this every single time.

If you viewed the actual image of the record (the photograph of the census page, the draft card, the passenger list), your citation should say "digital image" and reference the Ancestry database. If you only viewed the index entry (the typed transcription), say "database" — because you did not look at the original record, only at a volunteer's transcription of it.

The Image vs. the Index (Again)

This distinction is just as important on Ancestry as it is on FamilySearch. When you search Ancestry and find your ancestor in the results, you are looking at an index. Someone — often an automated system, sometimes a human volunteer — read the original document and transcribed what they thought they saw. The index is a finding aid. It gets you to the right record. It is not the record.

Click through to the image. Read the original handwriting. You will often find information the index missed — additional family members on the same page, neighbours, notes in the margins, and details that the transcriber did not capture. Then cite the image, not just the index.

What a proper Ancestry citation looks like"U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918," database with images, Ancestry.com (ancestry.com), entry for [name], [draft board]; citing NARA microfilm publication M1509, roll [number]; accessed [date]. This identifies: the database, whether you viewed images, the platform, the person, the original source, and when you looked at it.

Family Trees on Ancestry Are Not Sources

Ancestry also hosts millions of user-submitted family trees. These are not sources — they are other people's conclusions, most of which are unsourced and unverified. Citing an Ancestry family tree as evidence for a date, relationship, or event is citing someone else's homework without knowing whether they did any. If a family tree cites a source, go find that source yourself and cite it directly. If the tree cites nothing, the information is unverified and should be treated as a lead to investigate, not a fact to accept.

Hints Are Not Evidence

Ancestry's hint system suggests records that might match the people in your tree. These hints are algorithmically generated — they are a computer's guess that two records might refer to the same person. Sometimes the hints are right. Sometimes they are spectacularly wrong. A hint is a suggestion, not a confirmation. Every hint needs to be evaluated by a human before it becomes part of your research.