Ancestry.com regularly posts items on their website that are “in the clear.” In other words, you don’t have to have a subscription to access them. However, these free databases are often difficult to locate, as they are scattered amongst many other databases that are not free. These databases typically don’t stay free, but change as Ancestry’s promotions change.

Now Clear Digital Media, Inc., best known for their http://www.interment.net/ site, has posted a new site entitled FreeOnAncestry.com. It’s a portal to Ancestry’s free databases. Basically it’s goal is to organize all of ancestry.com free stuff in one place.

When the portal comes up, you will be provided with a list of different countries. You click on the country you are interested in and there is a list of free resources available from ancestry.com. When you click on or select the resource you are interested in, you are taken to another page that gives you the status of the collection, subject of the collection, and a description of the collection. There is a link at the top of the page that invites you to click on it to enter the collection you are interested in. When you click on this link, it takes you to the search page for the collection at ancestry.com.

All the records and resources linked from the portal are free however, ancestry.com will still require you to create an account on their website. This account is free and doesn’t ask for any credit cards or billing addresses. The free account may generate some email solicitation from ancestroy.com but it might be a reasonable trade off for what you can obtain for free.

Clear Digital Media Inc. actually publishes several websites focused on genealogy and family history. Like I mentioned above www.interment.net is one of the most popular and they publish thousands of cemetery transcriptions which you can reference for free.