The Kansas Historical Society has partnered with Ancestry.com to make thousands of pages of records available for free to Kansans with a valid driver’s license. While Ancestry’s primary interest is genealogical, the records that have been added to date can be used to study local communities, farming, and military service in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I as well as numerous other topics.
Through this partnership, Ancestry has digitized the Kansas State Census records taken every ten years from 1865-1925 in years ending in 5. This state census provides coverage for the entire state by listing all members of families, their ages, sex, and often other information about where they were born, where they lived before coming to Kansas, and if they served in the military during the Civil War. Because this census was taken by the Kansas Board of Agriculture, there is also a section that provides information on agricultural production farm by farm.
Ancestry has also digitized these records series and other record series will be added as they are available:
Civil War Enlistment Papers of Kansas Volunteer Regiments, 1862, 1863, 1868
Russell County Vital and Probate Records (J. C. Ruppenthal Collection)
World War I, Kansas Veterans, Manuscript Collection no. 49
United Spanish-American War Veterans, Reports of Deaths, 1945-1970 (TAPS)
If you are a Kansan with a valid driver’s license, check out the Kansas Historical Society records now available through our Ancestry partnership. This page also lists additional records series the Ancestry plans to digitize and make available via this portal.
This partnership allows us to make significantly more records available to Kansas via the internet than what we could accomplish with in-house digitization. The Kansas Historical Society is committed to providing easy access to as many of our research holdings as possible. The partnership with Ancestry, Kansas Memory, and Chronicling America are the three ways Kansans can access thousands of documents from their homes or anyplace where they have internet access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Comments on "Historical Society partnership with Ancestry"
Comment written by: NortonKid on Feb 5, 2012 -- Permalink | Suggest Removal
I hope you're not paying Ancestry.com because I tried this connection and couldn't get anything except......them wanting me to join Ancestry.com for the privilege to see the information. Do we have to have a membership to view the State Census documents?
Comment written by: natemc on Feb 24, 2012 -- Permalink | Suggest Removal
My students and I found the ancestry materials very useful and fun. We used the partnership to aid us in our investigation of Civil War veterans living within our county. I hope this partnership continues and expands in the future. Thank you to the dedicated staff at the Kansas State Historical Society.
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