Ancestry adds five databases

In honor of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, Ancestry.com has added more than 4 million new records in five new databases focused on the Civil War period.

If your Jewish families came to the Southern states early on, these resources mayhelp you find information on those ancestors who served in the Confederate Army.

The most useful:

• Confederate Pension Applications from Georgia offers more than 60,000 records documenting pension applications filed in Georgia from Confederate soldiers and their widows. As part of the application process, applicants answered a series of questions about themselves and signed the document, resulting in a wealth of personal information.
• Confederate Applications for Presidential Pardons has more than 15,000 records of former Confederate soldiers and government officials requesting Presidential pardons.
• U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles contains more than 4.2 million records and profiles about nearly every officer and soldier who fought in the Civil War. Many of the records include actual photographs of the individuals.

The remaining two sets include the letters of President Abraham Lincoln, with some 20,000 documents,and New Orleans Slave Manifests 1807-1860 with images of ship manifests transporting some 30,000 slaves to New Orleans from upper Southern states.