Ancestry.com announces major changes

Members or subscribers to these services will be contacted directly. Those in the DNA programs have the option, for a small fee, to transfer their tests to another company, which is recommended in order to preserve the DNA.

There are more details in a June 4 press release posted on blogs.ancestry.com. For each area, there is a series of questions with a drop-down discussion of how to transfer (if applicable), get a refund, etc. Don't delay, because all changes will take effect Sept. 5.

Rights of genealogists

The Records Preservation and Access Committee, a joint effort of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Genealogical Society and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, has created a Declaration of the Rights of Genealogists, which can be signed at fgs.org/rpac.

In essence, it calls upon government representatives to recognize genealogists’ rights of access to public records — asking them to refrain from legislation aimed at making access difficult — and promotes principles related to freedom of access. This arose because of recent efforts in Congress to limit access to the Social Security Death Index, and from states trying to limit reasonable access to death certificates and other vital records.

Virginia sources

Many Virginia records can be found online.

Binns Genealogy at binnsgenealogy.com has Virginia county tax records for two missing census years, 1790 and 1800. These will whet your appetite to look further into Virginia tax records, complete after 1782.

Dinwiddie County has land tax records from 1782 until 1875 at dinwiddieva.us/index.aspx?NID=978. Tax records survived at the state level, no matter what happened to county records; in Dinwiddie's case, most burned prior to the 1830s.