MyFamily.com Inc. in Orem has announced the addition of the Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI) to the more than 550 million fully searchable records available on Ancestry.com. The index lists references to notable people whose biographies have been published in various books and periodicals.
The biographies in the index were gathered from a diverse collection of publications. In addition to various local histories, the index includes references to biographies in books like Who's Who in America, Men and Women of Science, American Black Writers, Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, and the Directory of American Scholars.For each biography referenced in the BGMI, the index lists the name of the person the biography is about, years of birth and death (if known) and abbreviation for the source of the biography.
The BGMI is an ongoing indexing project, and supplemental volumes have been issued since the index was first published in 1980. Because the BGMI focuses on the late 19th centurya dn earlieth 20th century, it containes references about significant numbers of early Americans. To protect the privacy of individuals, the index will not include the names of persons born after 1920.