Have a library card? Get some free Ancestry.com records at home via HeritageQuest

Question

Do you have a U.S. library card?  If so, your library might provide access to you at home to HeritageQuest.  HeritageQuest is a service of ProQuest that provides a sub-set of Ancestry.com records.  My tiny town (pop. 17,000) library provides it; yours might as well.  What's included:

• Census collection contains over 700 million records from the U.S. Federal Census 1790-1940, and national censuses including Argentina, Netherlands, Czech Republic and several other countries.
• Books collection contains over 22,000 family and local histories, compiled genealogies, documentary collections, church records, military records, vital records, city and county histories, and more.
• City Directories with over 1.5 million records from various US city and county directories during 1821-1989.
• Military Records containing over 2 million records from selected state and country military records including the US Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files 1800-1900, US Records of Confederate Prisoners of War 1861-1865, and US Remarried Widows Index to Pension Applications 1887-1942.
• Wills and Probate Records has more than 170 million pages from the largest collection of wills and probate records in the United States, with searchable records included from all 50 states spread over 337 years (1668-2005).
• Freedman’s Bank contains an index and original images of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company's registers of Signatures of Depositors 1865-1871.
• US Serial Set (subset) contains more than 140,000 private relief actions, memorials, and petitions drawn from the records published "serial" fashion from the US Senate and House of Representatives 1769-1969.
• Maps & Photos includes US Indexed County Land Ownership Maps 1860-1910, US Enumeration District Maps and Descriptions 1940, US Indexed Early Land Ownership and Township Plats 1785-1898, and Library of Congress Photo Collection 1840-2000.

Searching is severely limited because there is no global search function.  You can only search each separate database.  Some non-U.S. records are provided.

I simply login using the lengthy number on the back of my library card.  The login URL is slightly different for each library, so you will need to check with your local library or go to their website for details.  You will find very familiar Ancestry.com pages awaiting you.

Comments

One helpful feature is that URL links to Ancestry.com records can be easily translated to a HeritageQuest URL.

For a document image, you'll first want to strip out the extraneous material.  For example, if the URL is

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7602/4119892_00103?backurl=https%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com%2fsearch%2fdb.aspx%3fdbid%3d7602%26path%3d&ssrc=&backlabel=ReturnBrowsing#?imageId=4119892_00115

remove everything from ?backurl=... on, so the URL becomes

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7602/4119892_00103

--- Correction: In the above example, when there is a imageId like imageId=4119892_00115, use that in place of the second numerical parameter, so the resultant link is actually https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/7602/4119892_00115  --- 8 Mar 2020

Now, simply change "ancestry.com" to "ancestryheritagequest.com", so it becomes

https://www.ancestryheritagequest.com/interactive/7602/4119892_00103

Similarly, for indexed pages like

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7602&h=65188888&tid=&pid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=ppM3602&_phstart=successSource

remove everything from &tid... on and change "ancestry.com" to "ancestryheritagequest.com" and it becomes

https://search.ancestryheritagequest.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=7602&h=65188888

If the page isn't available in HeritageQuest, you'll simply be directed to its home page.

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This is a great tip and also many libraries allow remote (home) access to online newspaper collections through the library’s web site via your library card number.

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I have an update on this statement:  "Searching is severely limited because there is no global search function.  You can only search each separate database."

There is a global search page but no way to browse to it.  The direct link is https://www.ancestryheritagequest.com/search/.  It might be a little confusing because it appears that there is access to collections that aren't actually available through HeritageQuest.  However, there will be many more records available than when searching through the individual repositories from the home page.

Answer 1

Sign in was easy. Went to library site. Found research services. Clicked on Heritage Quest and select State (Wisconsin in my case) and entered my zipcode. Easy.

Answer 2

super cool and thanks for sharing!!