Ancestry.com boosts database with census

By Paul Foy

updated 2:32 p.m. ET June 22, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY - Ancestry.com is adding historic U.S. Census records to boost its archive of searchable names to 5 billion, making it what the company calls the most comprehensive genealogical database ever compiled.

The Provo company was set to announce Thursday that it copied complete U.S. Census records from 1790 to 1930 — a Herculean effort that took a team of experts and workers a combined 6.6 million hours of labor.

The U.S. government waits 72 years before releasing original census documents containing such personal information as an individual's occupation — actor Tom Hanks' grandfather, Clarence Frager, made a living as a rodent exterminator, a 1930 census record reveals.

Hours of legwork
Workers for Ancestry.com spent so much time compiling these records because they had to decipher the handwriting on millions of census forms. They had to index and catalog every name, and scan images of the census documents, which will be shown on the Web site starting Thursday.

In all, workers made 22 billion keystrokes to organize all the information, the company said.

Ancestry.com, which claims more than 725,000 paid subscribers, says it now has the only online repository of historic U.S. Census records.

To do it, the company had to make a "vast investment in technology, people, research and tools," Tim Sullivan, Ancestry.com's chief executive, said in a statement.

"We are just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of the amount of content we can offer and the millions of people all over the globe we can connect," he said.

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