8 Civil War Era Records Coming Online in Feb. 2009

Here's a sneak peek at some of the collections that will be coming to Ancestry.com in February 2009:

1) Title: Slave Manifests Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807-1860
Names: 30,000 estimated
Images: 30,000 estimated
Brief description: This collection includes manifests of slaves who were transported from one place to another within the U.S. The images are being released first while indexing commences through the World Archives Project.

As I mentioned in Genealogy Gems Episode 58 Ancestry is focusing on Civil War & Lincoln records in honor of the 200th anniversary of his birth...

2) Title: Civil War Service Records Update w/Soldier Photos
Names: over 4 million
Images: 18,000 estimated soldier and officer photos
Brief description: This is a major enhancement to this priceless database of Civil War soldiers and officers. Actual photos will be linked to the service records, along with many bios and even some signatures

3) Title: Confederate Pension Applications, GA
Names: 60,000 estimated
Images: 567,000 estimated
Brief description: These Georgia Confederate Pension Applications contain an extraordinary amount of genealogical and historical information on Civil War veterans and their widows. Applications for pensions are often multiple pages long and answer numerous questions about the individuals involved.

4) Title: Abraham Lincoln Letters
Names: 50,000 estimated
Images: 60,000 estimated
Brief Description: Letters written to and by Abraham Lincoln, from the Library of Congress, include correspondence, speech drafts, notes and other printed material. Most of the items are from the 1850s through 1865.

5) Title: Confederate Applications for Presidential Pardons (Amnesty Papers) 1865-1867
Names: 15,000 estimated
Images: 73,000 estimated
Brief description: After the Civil War, former Confederates not covered by general amnesty were required to request a pardon. This collection includes the letters of application along with other related records.

6) Title: National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1866-1938
Names: 390,000 estimated
Images: 280,000 estimated
Brief description: The National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was instituted following the Civil War. This database contains records from twelve National Homes. The majority of the records consist of historical registers, but other records included in this database are indexes to the historical registers, applications, admissions, deaths, burials, and hospital records.

7) Title: Update to U.S. State Census Collection
Names: 5 million estimated
Images: 1 million estimated
Brief description: New state censuses for Kansas and South Dakota, including updates to existing databases.

8) Title: Update to Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000
Names: 1 million estimated
Images: 10,000 estimated
Brief description: Adding over 10,000 maps. This collection contains many maps of townships showing land plots with the owners' names listed.