Ancestry Wrapped: 70 Uploaded Items to Share

Ancestry.com has begun giving members a summary of their stats for the year, sort of similar to what Spotify Wrapped does for its listeners. 

Among the stats for me in 2025, this one jumped out: I uploaded 70 items to share with other researchers and relatives.

Most of these uploads were birth, marriage, and death certificates I downloaded from the New York City Municipal Archives Historical Vital Records databases. The vast majority of my ancestors came through Ellis Island and Castle Garden, often staying in the Big Apple to work, raise a family, and live out their lives.

My research was super-charged this year when the New York City Muni Archives finally introduced indexes to free (uncertified) digitized vital records. 

So when I'm looking at an ancestor who lived in New York City and I don't have all of their original vital records, I click over to the Muni site and try to locate a birth, marriage, or death record. Then I download the record and upload it to Ancestry, attaching it to the pertinent people on my family tree.

A great deal of info is on these documents: names of the ancestor, ancestor's parents, dates and places, and more. Scans of originals and in color too.

Importantly, these documents serve as proof of what I assert on my family tree. If, for example, someone wants to see why I named "X maiden name" as the mother of Y, they can look at the original birth record scan I uploaded. The Genealogical Proof Standard in action!

These uploads are also my way of showing appreciation for the kindness of relatives and family historians who added vital records scans to their family trees in the past.

Showing Lotsa Love for In-Law Ancestors

One of my older cousins began researching our family tree 45 years ago, cranking microfilm and laboriously noting names, dates, places, and events. She also contacted far-flung relatives to ask about our ancestors--and theirs. 

Back then, the families were fairly large and she was able to document many in-laws and their siblings/descendants. In-laws often attended or hosted family gatherings and she knew their names, if not their stories.

This special cousin painstakingly input all this info into a genealogy program, shared printouts with family. Eventually, she uploaded her family tree to a genealogy site, kindly making it public and allowing me to add to it on her behalf in the last few years.

Now I'm updating our joint research on in-laws (including her in-laws) to add documents and facts that have become available in recent years. It's a fun genealogical journey and I hope to turn up some paperwork that will help fill in a few blanks (maiden names, birth places, death places, etc.) Already I've corrected mistranscribed names and incorrect birth places, linking sources as evidence.*

I felt a bit sad that few of these in-laws (and their in-laws and FAN club) were already on public family trees--and when they were, they weren't shown accurately--so I'm fixing that to show my love for in-laws and to honor my cousin's research from back in the day 😃 By adding my cousin's in-laws as well as my own distant cousins and hubby's distant cousins plus their in-laws, I'm paying it forward in gratitude for those who began the research in the past.

*Linda, in her comment, notes that correcting inaccurate info online can be frustrating because folks can change things back or simply ignore evidence that is contrary to their trees. I totally agree--which is why I don't correct on FamilySearch but I do post accurate info and evidence on Ancestry, plus on Find a Grave, and I do share accurate info on WikiTree. Over the long term, I've seen some corrected info gradually percolating through the public family trees. 😀