Millions of Americans nationwide jumped on the 1940 census website to search their family history in its newly revealed records Monday — so many that servers were immediately overwhelmed, officials said.

“In the first three hours, we had 22.5 million hits on the site,” National Archives and Records Administration spokeswoman Susan Cooper said. “We’re a victim of our own success.”

Cooper said the archives had anticipated significant interest in the public release of the census, the first time such information has been available online, but not quite as much as materialized.

“It’s frustrating, and we share that frustration with the public,” Cooper said. She said some people are getting through to the website, but many are not. “We’re working as fast as we can to fix the problem.”

Read the rest of the story in the Chicago Tribune.