The Generations Network Expands Ancestry Sites to France and Italy

The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, announced in a press release today, two new additions to the Ancestry network of sites in France and Italy -- Ancestry.fr and Ancestry.it. At launch, Ancestry.fr and Ancestry.it will offer access to Ancestry's unrivaled global collection of more than 5 billion names and 24,000 databases and titles. The new sites will also provide a networking platform for users to collaborate and connect with other site users globally, build an online family tree and upload irreplaceable content from personal archives such as photographs, stories and shoebox keepsakes.

The launch of Ancestry.fr and Ancestry.it brings the tally of the Ancestry suite of sites owned by The Generations Network to seven. Other international sites include:

• Ancestry.co.uk in the United Kingdom, which features the only complete online collection of England, Wales and Scotland census records (1841-1901); and England and Wales birth, marriage, and death records (1837-2005).
• Ancestry.ca in Canada, which recently announced a deal with the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to digitize Canadian passenger lists from 1865-1935, and hosts the complete Drouin collection of French-Canadian vital records (1621-1940s) and Canada census records from 1851, 1901, 1906 and 1911.
• Ancestry.de in Germany, which features Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934 and the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Census, 1867.
  
• Ancestry.com.au in Australia, which just launched New South Wales Sands Directories, 1861-1933 and The Anzac Memorial, 1914-1018.
  

The Generations Network has been working with archives in Italy and is looking forward to building similar relationships with archives in France to bring historical records from repositories in both countries online. Currently, the company is digitizing pre-1930's civil registration records from throughout Italy with the first of these records expected to be available online later this summer.