Many Americans want to learn more about their family histories. Genealogy research has become one of the most popular hobbies across the country.

Websites like Ancestry.com have become the "go to" resource for tracing family trees.

In 2008, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission contracted with Ancestry to digitize the state’s historic records. It’s free to access for Pennsylvanians, but not for out-of-staters. It’s become an issue for some and has actually gone to court.

Spotlight PA investigative reporter Angela Couloumbus reported on this story and joined us on The Spark Thursday, where she provided background on the controversy,"In 2008, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission signed a contract with Ancestry.com to digitize certain of its physical documents. So you had things like birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, veteran burial cards, slave records. I mean, there was a whole host of documents that it wanted to digitize and have in that form, because that is how people are researching. They're going online and that's instead of coming physically to the state archives building. So the contract was signed, and over the years there were addendums to it, adding more and more documents into the digital form. Then fast forward to last September and well, actually, now in September of 2022, there was a right to know request by a professional genealogist based in New York City asking for copies of those digital records. And thus the fight begins."

Couloumbus was asked if Ancestry.com claimed ownership of the records,"Yes. That is the fundamental question. Go back to the Right-to-Know request in September of 2022 by the professional genealogist. PHMC denied the request on various grounds, but fundamentally it says it does not have those records. And the genealogist appealed. It went to the Office of Open Records, the Office of Open Records sided in the genealogist favor. There's a lot of legal arguments, but fundamentally it said that Ancestry should be able to provide these documents. There are many. It's a huge amount of data."

The genealogist countered that the records belong to the state.

Couloumbus described where the case is now,"It was appealed to Commonwealth Court. Commonwealth Court took a look at it. And in the interim, Ancestry got involved and said, hey, we weren't really aware of this appeal at the Office of Open Records. And as a result, we didn't really have an opportunity to weigh in. And so we're weighing in now with these arguments. And Commonwealth Court saw that and kicked it back down to the Office of Open Records and said, okay, take another look at this case. Take Ancestry.com or legal arguments into consideration and come up with a new decision. And that's where we're at now. The Office of Open Records has a deadline sometime this month to rule on the case, but pretty much everybody involved in this case has said, whatever they decide, there's going to be an appeal back up to Commonwealth court, and they're prepared to take it all the way up to the state Supreme Court."

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