The City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania maintained its vital records separate from the State until around 1915. In the news is a codified agreement with Ancestry to digitize these records.1 One benefit of this project is that potentially, any word on a document could be searched. You could, for example, find all the people buried at a particular cemetery whose records no longer survive. Or you could find all the babies delivered by a particular midwife.
I rarely have people in Philadelphia. My paternal grandfather was born there in 1915, even though the family lived in Newark, New Jersey.
I'm in favor of public and free access to all governmental records.
The issue is that these terms mean different things to different people.
In my home state of New Jersey, for example, births are available to the public if older than eighty years. Births through the year 1925 are on microfilm at the Archives in Trenton. Not through the year 1945. The Archives are not open around the clock every day. You need to physically and geographically access the collection, which makes it out of reach of most people. Alternatively, you can pay $10 for the birth certificate. This is a pay wall, as we say on the internet. Ordering thousands of records is cost-prohibitive for most people and would create a work-load unattainable by the staff. The result is that such access is not very public, in my opinion.
Before the internet and digitization, the above scenario in New Jersey was maybe the best that any State could offer.
It's 2026. We can do so much more.
The technology exists to electronically preserve minute details of paper records; however, the custodians of such records usually do not own this technology. Private companies would perform the digitization process. I'm not a technology expert, but from there, the images would be read and made searchable by a program- not a person. The images and index of words would then need hosting on a website. (Remember when we all came together in 2012 and typed the 1940 census? We didn't have to do this in 2022 for the 1950 census because technological advances enabled the reading and indexing of the handwriting, including script!)
All of this costs money. Who should pay?
Ancestry can digitize the records. Ancestry is a company that needs to realize a profit to stay in business. Ancestry either owns the equipment or leases it. They pay people to perform the service, either contractors or employees. Then there are the steps in between the recording and the appearance on Ancestry's website. Hosting costs money, too. You can read about this process on Ancestry's website.
Ancestry's customers pay a subscription to access such record collections, currently hundreds per year. Seems fair, except this is a pay wall, sort of like New Jersey's $10 per certificate.
Should the government pay for some or all of these services of preservation and access? People not interested in genealogy and history might say no. But our taxpayer dollars are already spent on government services we may not agree with or use. I pay a lot for public schools and Medicare, even though I use neither. I would like certain roads paved, but I have no say in which roads are repaired or when other roads are shut down for servicing.
Another complication is ownership and future use of the digitized records. Once an electronic copy is created, it can be promulgated worldwide quickly. Ancestry would understandably not want to spend money digitizing millions of records for release on its own site, only to have another company copy them. If Ancestry owns the digitized versions of government records, it can probably do as it wishes in terms of access- charging high fees or removing access entirely.
Asking a private entity to allow you access to its record is different from asking the government to allow you access to a government record.
If Ancestry is allowed to copy the records and sell them, why can't a private individual?
There would be a contract. We have no say in that contract and we may never see its wording. The situation with Philadelphia is that Ancestry would host, not own, the government records.
Someone please weigh in on this. My understanding is that Ancestry would own the images it created from these records. The original pieces of paper would be retained by Philadelphia. What happens to the digital images at the end of the contract?
When Ancestry hosts an image collection, you can see it if you have a subscription that covers that image collection. I'll use Newspapers dot com to demonstrate.
A hint was suggested for Gertrude Barsella (1898-1991). Some of the information is butchered because it was automatically created for fast indexing.
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Hint at Ancestry linking to a newspaper on the website Newspapers dot com.
The daughter's name was Georgene Zink, not Ueot Gene Zmk. |
I can view the image in the
Chicago Tribune because I pay for a subscription to
Newspapers dot com. After reviewing the obituary and determining that this is the same person in my tree, I can save the hint to Gertrude's profile in my tree.
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Result at Newspapers dot com from hint at Ancestry.
The link, not the actual image, will be saved to the tree. |
Here's the difference between hosting and owning. This image does not save to the tree. The link to the image saves to the tree. Ancestry does not own this newspaper. The obituary will not be in the Gallery under Gertrude's profile. If you have Family Tree Maker (owned by MacKiev, not Ancestry) on your computer, the obituary will not appear as an image.
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Images saved to Gertrude Lutter (wife of George Barsella 1899-1971)
in Family Tree Maker (2024 version).
Her obituary does not appear here because it is saved as a link. |
If you wish to retain this obituary for your files, you would need to copy it yourself as a download or a screen capture. Ancestry's contractual relationship with the owners of the Chicago Tribune may end at any time, thereby cutting off your access to this obituary.
Same idea with the records from Philadelphia. If they ever appear on or through Ancestry, you will probably want to download them to your own computer system separate from Ancestry.
We see a similar battle in New York State. The City of New York has digitized about three quarters of its older births, marriages, and deaths. You can view them and download them for free on the website of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services.
Vital records outside of New York City are in the custody of the New York State Department of Health, which will not fulfill genealogical orders. They cost $22 per certificate. (The State has staff to cash the checks but not to copy the record and mail it.) Unlike in New Jersey, you have no public access in any physical form. There is no repository to enter, view microfilm, and print your own copies.
I ordered three death certificates two years ago and another four years ago. These orders remain unfulfilled, though the checks for $22 were quickly cashed.
Last year, the governor of New York vetoed a bill that would have enabled a third party (Ancestry?) to digitize records. This year, the governor promised in her State of the State speech that she would facilitate making the records electronic.
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| Three neighboring states with different access to records vital to genealogical and historical research |
These three states, as well as other custodians of records, are weighing continued control over information along with costs. Reclaim the Records has had to sue entities to release public records. At this point in history, we have the ability to preserve these old records and make them available to everyone. We should do this now.
1. Chelsea R. Cox, "Philly's Deal with Ancestry Could Reshape Access to Public Records," Technical.ly (https://technical.ly/civics/what-philadelphias-ancestry-deal-means-public-records: published 6 April 2026).
