• Smart Matching automatically searches for matches to your Geni.com tree in other trees on MyHeritage.com (note that MyHeritage.com trees don't yet get matches in Geni.com trees).

• Record Matching compares the profiles in your Geni.com tree to the historical records at MyHeritage, and alerts you when a relevant document is found. It also automatically creates a citation when you confirm a record and add it to Geni.com's World Family Tree.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013 10:58:51 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• At the new, free website from Herthstone Legacy Publications called My Genealogy Hound, you can access thousands of biographies extracted from pre-1900 county history books. Biographies from Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee are available now, with more states to come. Search the site or browse biographies by surname or state and county. The site also has a selection of free, old county maps from Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kanasas, Missouri, Oklahoma (including Indian nations) and Tennessee, with more to be added.

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has implemented student discounts for registration to its 2013 Family History Conference, May 8-11 in Las Vegas. Students can register for the full conference for $50 (NGS members) or $60 (nonmembers), nearly 75 percent off regular rates. To qualify, students must submit a letter on college or university letterhead from the dean or department chair. See the NGS blog for additional details and qualifications.

• FamilySearch has added 8.5 million new records to its free FamilySearch.org. The new records come from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy,  the Netherlands and the United States. You can find the full list of updated collections and click through to each collection here. Note that some of the collections aren't yet indexed; for these, you'll need to browse records by place, date or however they're arranged.

• MyHeritage.com has added millions of records including military records, yearbooks, mugshots and wanted posters from partnerships with Interment.net, Genealogy Today, CanadianHeadstones.net and others. The new records are available to subscribers through the site's SuperSearch engine. Find out more about the additions on the MyHeritage blog.

Friday, February 15, 2013 2:49:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• PBS has gathered its African-American history content into one place to help you celebrate Black History Month. Watch programs including Freedom Riders and Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr., take a quiz about miletones in African-American history, get ideas for celebrating the month with kids and more.

• Know a young genealogist who could use $500 toward genealogy education, plus a free registration to attend the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree? Applications are being accepted for the 2013 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant, created to honor the mother of The Family Curator blogger Denise Levenick. It's open to any genealogist who is between the ages of 18 and 25 and has attended school in the last 12 months. The recipient must attend the 2013 Jamboree in Burbank, Calif., to receive the award. Application deadline is March 18, 2013, at midnight PST. Learn more here.

• MyHeritage offering deep discounts on genetic genealogy tests, provided in partnership with Family Tree DNA. The Family Finder autosomal test, for example, is $169 (instead of $289) for a limited period on MyHeritage.com and its websites World Vital Records and Geni.com. Subscribers can get an additional discount. See all the details and available tests on the MyHeritage blog. (And learn more about how autosomal DNA testing can advance your research in the December 2011 Family Tree Magazine) 

• Findmypast.com is giving its registered users the opportunity to watch the BBC show Find My Past, which reveals how ordinary individuals are related to people from significant historical events.  With a free findmypast.com registration, you can watch episodes that first aired during the past 30 days. Thereafter, episodes will be available to the sites subscribing members. Learn more on findmypast.com.

Also new in findmypast.com's World subscription is a collection of 200 British newspapers from England, Scotland and Wales from 1700 to 1950.

Friday, February 08, 2013 3:04:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• This week MyHeritage.com announced the launch of its automatic Record Matching premium service. The service automatically searches the 4 billion records on MyHeritage.com websites (which now include World Vital Records and FamilyLink) for matches to people in your MyHeritage family tree. MyHeritage users will receive weekly email updates of new Record Matches and can visit MyHeritage.com to review, filter, sort, confirm and reject matches.

On his Genea-Musings blog, Randy Seaver has some detailed posts about using Record Matching to find information.

• Genealogy search engine Mocavo has acquired ReadyMicro, a company that develops document digitization technology. On its blog, Mocavo says it's planning several exciting announcements in the coming weeks about offering searchable records and forming partnerships to digitize organizations' records "at a very low cost and even, in many cases, at no cost." Stay tuned ...
  
  
• British burial records site DeceasedOnline has added records from London's Charlton Cemetery, opened in 1855. Records include scans of burial registers and some photographs. You can see a list of all the cemeteries included on the site here. You can search the site and get basic search results free; purchase credits to view additional details and records.
  

• Don't forget to enter our giveaway for a year's subscription to our Family Tree eBooks website—it's a digital library of dozens of ebooks on genealogy, history, heirloom identification, sharing and preserving your family history, and more, plus many issues of Family Tree Magazine. Click here to enter by September 30!

Friday, September 21, 2012 2:27:33 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Alaska
• Arkansas
• Idaho
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• New Mexico
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Utah

Thursday, July 26, 2012 12:17:54 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• MyHeritage announced that it has reached the milestone of one billion MyHeritage.com profiles. The billion profiles are in nearly 23 million family trees. MyHeritage.com has more than 63 million registered users who add about a million new profiles every day. About half of the billion profiles belong to living people.

• Elyse Doerflinger of Los Angeles and A.C. Ivory of Salt Lake City, both college students, have received the Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant.
  
  Each received a $500 award. Family Tree Magazine interviewed both in an article highlighting young genealogists. Freeman's family and friends established the grant program after her death in 2010 to assist young students in advancing their genealogical education.

• Virtual pin map website Uencounter.me, which lets you "pin" residences, vacation spots and other places to a map you can share with others, has created a Genealogy pin. You can use it to pin ancestral hometowns and migrations on an Ancestry map, and see others' nearby pins. Read the full announcement from Uencounter.me here.
  
  
• The Michigan Department of Education and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources have agreed to move selected Family Heritage Collections currently housed in the Library of Michigan into the reading room of the Archives of Michigan. The move will take place this summer.
  
  The Library of Michigan was dissolved in 2009 along with the rest of the state's Department of History, Arts and Libraries. The library's functions became part of the Department of Education, and the Archives of Michigan is now part of the Department of Natural Resources. You can read more about the move in the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' announcement.
  

Friday, June 15, 2012 10:08:24 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
  
• Oregon
• South Dakota
  
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Thursday, June 14, 2012 8:51:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Oregon
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Thursday, June 07, 2012 12:33:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• Ancestry.com: You can search name indexes for Delaware, Maine, Nevada and Washington, DC. A chart on the 1940 census page lets you see indexing progress.

• FamilySearch.org: FamilySearch's volunteer indexers so far appear to be outpacing the paid contractors Ancestry.com and MyHeritage are using. You can search 14 states/territories by your ancestor's name: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming.

FamilySearch.org's indexing progress map colors searchable states orange. To search, click the state on the map.

• Archives.com: At this 1940 Census Community Project partner site, you can search name indexes to the same states available at FamilySearch. To access the unindexed portion of the census, this site sends you to the National Archives' 1940 census site (which Archives.com designed and hosts).

• FindMyPast.com: As a 1940 Census Community Project partner, FindMyPast.com has the same states indexed as FamilySearch (though Alaska, a territory in 1940, is missing from the color-coded map on the home page). Update 6/1: FindMyPast also now shows Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana as searchable, though these states are not yet searchable on FamilySearch.org. Look for that to change soon.
  

• MyHeritage: Here, you can search a name index for Rhode Island, and a partial name index for New York.

The 1940 census records also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012 3:07:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• WWII Army Enlistment records contain enlistee names, enlistment dates and other data taken from punch cards (so there's no original record to view). If you miss the WorldVitalRecords free period, you also can search these records free on the National Archives website and in Fold3's Memorial Pages.  

• WWII Prisoner of War records name US military and civilian prisoners of war and internees, as well as some from other Allies. These records also are free on the National Archives website.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 10:45:01 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Ancestry.com: Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is "in process." A chart on the 1940 census page lets you see indexing progress.

• FamilySearch: Digitized records are available here for all US states and territories.

The name index for the state of Delaware is now completed and available to researchers. Search Delaware here.

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island. MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 4:35:12 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Ancestry.com: Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is coming soon.

• FamilySearch: Available record images are Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island.
  
  MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 4:39:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

FamilySearch: Available record images are:

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Virginia

MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now, as is an index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available.

Check ShopFamilyTree.com for books, article downloads, online classes and CDs on how to research your genealogy in census records. Enjoy looking for your 1940 ancestors this weekend!

Friday, April 06, 2012 3:26:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

The site has almost finished uploading records for the states, predicting completion this morning. At this time, Ancestry.com has record images for all states and US territories except Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and South Carolina.

FamilySearch:

FamilySearch has added a color-coded map showing its progress. Hovering over a state highlights the records-posting and indexing progress for each state (if nothing happens when you hover, try a different browser). On the map, Texas shows as "records unavailable," but they are online at FamilySearch, at least for the counties I tried.

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• Virginia

MyHeritage:

Records for all states are available here, as is an index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives:

All states are available.

Friday, April 06, 2012 8:41:41 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• Complete: Alabama, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
  
  
• Almost complete: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota
  
  
• Next up: Maryland, Minnesota, Puerto Rico, South Carolina

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia

National Archives: all states available

Thursday, April 05, 2012 4:24:31 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Complete: Alabama, American Samoa, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Guam, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missuori, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming
  
  
• Almost complete: Illinois, West Virginia
  
  
• Next up: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Virginia

FamilySearch also reported that 1940 Census Community Project volunteer indexers have finished indexing records for Delaware; the index is being processed (it's not yet on the site).

MyHeritage: Records for all states are available now, as is a name index to Bristol County, RI

National Archives: Records for all states are available

Wednesday, April 04, 2012 4:45:36 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Visit findmypast.com, submit the name and state of the person you plan to search for, plus other details you might know, and you'll get an email from findmypast.com when the person’s indexed record becomes available on the site.

This will start working as name indexes are made available for 1940 census records.

MyHeritage.com is promoting something along similar lines include —if you have a family tree there, you'll get a notification when a 1940 census record matches anyone on your tree.

On Ancestry.com, you'll presumably get a "shaky leaf" hint if an indexed 1940 census record matches someone in your Ancestry Member tree.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012 3:45:05 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

I checked out the MyHeritage 1940 census collection while searching for my grandfather in Bellevue, Campbell County, Kentucky. My mom has taken me to see the house, so I was able to use the One-Step Ed finder to determine the enumeration district.

Then on the MyHeritage site, I chose a state and plugged in the ED number. (If I didn't have the ED, I could use the keyword field to type terms that might appear in an ED description, such as a street name or institution name.)

This pulled up census records matching that ED.

Clicking on the title brought a page with the ED description and a small view of the first page. I clicked the Full Screen button.

Here's the first page of the records in the Myheritage image viewer:

It's pretty straightforward: Zoom in or out with the buttons on the left, use the arrows to page forward and back, and use the X in the top right to close the viewer and return to the record description. The only thing that bugs me is that you can't type in a page number. If you're on page 20 of the records and you want to go back to page 2, you have to click the back arrow 18 times. 

I easily found my great-grandmother and her family, including my grandfather, on Covert Run Pike.

A "suppl quest" label to the left of Great-grandma Mamie's name indicates she answered the extra questions at the bottom of the schedule.

She was 20 when she married and this was her only marriage, and she had four children (the schedule states stillbirths aren't to be included in this total, but unless we have a big family secret, she did count her stillborn baby boy).

Click the download icon at the top right of the image viewer to save the record image. On my computer, this opened the file in a new browser tab—just right-click or control-click to save it to your computer.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012 2:17:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Complete: American Samoa, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington
• Almost complete: Kansas, Nebraska
• Next up: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oregon, Vermont

FamilySearch:

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage: all states available

National Archives: all states available

Wednesday, April 04, 2012 9:58:04 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

1940 census record images for the entire United States are at 1940Census.Archives.gov. Here's where else to look for records from your ancestral states:

Ancestry.com:

• Complete: American Samoa, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, Panama Canal Zone, Rhode Island, Virgin Islands
• Almost complete: California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington
• Next up: Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon & Vermont.

FamilySearch:

• Alabama
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kansas
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage:

• California
• Illinois
• Massachusetts
• Maine
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island (an index for Bristol County, RI, is available)
• Texas
• Virginia
• Wyoming

Tuesday, April 03, 2012 5:02:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Ancestry.com:

• American Samoa
• California
• Delaware
• DC
• Guam
• Indiana
• Maine
• Nevada
• New York
• Ohio
• Panama Canal
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Virgin Islands
• Virginia
• Washington

FamilySearch:

• Colorado
• Delaware
• Kansas
• Oregon
• Virginia

MyHeritage.com: I can't find an at-a-glance list here. You'll see all states in the search dropdown menu, and when you search on one that's not yet available, you'll get results but with a "coming soon" message. Update: The folks at MyHeritage sent me this list of available records, with more coming soon:

• California
• Illinois
  
• Massachusetts
• Maine
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• New York
• Nevada
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Texas
• Virginia

Tuesday, April 03, 2012 9:51:37 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

So far this morning, we're hearing from a lot of disappointed folks on Facebook and Twitter who aren't able to get record images to load for the 1940 census.

I'm in the same boat, but I took some screen shots from the site to show you how 1940Census.Archives.gov works:

The home page looks like this:

Click Get Started, then scroll down a little and you get three choices:

Search by location; search by enumeration district (ED), which also lets you convert the 1930 ED to the 1940 one; or access Help features (FAQs, etc.)

Search by ED

If you know the ED, look at the middle option, choose the state and type in the ED.

You could click the maps tab to see the ED on a map, or click the Census Schedule tab to see the available schedules for that district.

Click on the census schedule thumbnail to see the pages for that district (theoretically—they never loaded for me) and browse through them for your family. 

If you hover over the thumbnail image, you get an option to download images, which some say works better, but the images never downloaded for me.

Search by location

If you know your family's location, but not the ED, look under "Do you know where the person lived?" and click Start Your Search.

On the left side of the next page, choose the state, county, city and street, if you know it. 

Your results will show descriptions of EDs covering that area.

You can view the descriptions and choose the one you think has your ancestor's household (use the Maps tab to see them on a map), or click the Census Schedules tab to start going through the schedules. 

It's pretty frustrating to wait and wait for census images to load, espcially after all the hype, but honestly I'm not surprised.

I'm going to try again in another couple of hours (or maybe tomorrow, depending how the day goes). While you're waiting, visit Family Tree Magazine's 1940 census page to formulate your research game plan and learn how to find those enumeration districts.

Also check whether Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, FindMyPast.com or MyHeritage has uploaded records for your ancestor's state.

Monday, April 02, 2012 11:05:48 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Available (though I'm not sure whether all records have been uploaded for these states): Colorado, Delaware, Virginia, Kansas, Virginia, Oregon
  

• Completed: Nevada, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, Indiana, Maine, Panama Canal Zone, Rhode Island, and the Virgin Islands
• In process: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia

Monday, April 02, 2012 8:21:09 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• This Monday at 9 a.m. ET, the 1940 census will be released to the public at 1940census.archives.gov. Archives.com, which designed 1940.census.gov, has put together a cute infographic with information on the census and tips for finding your family. Check it out on the Archives.com blog.

• The founders of Footnote—the site Ancestry.com acquired in 2010 and renamed Fold3—are now working for MyHeritage. Footnote founders Russ Wilding and Roger Bell are serving as chief content officer and VP of product, respectively, at MyHeritage. They'll be instrumental in the Israel-based company's recently announced initiative to develop its US historical records content. Read more about the hire here.

• More than a million Westminster Parish baptism, marriage and burial records dating back to 1538 now available on subscription and pay-as-you-go site findmypast.co.uk. The records come from 50-plus Westminster churches. More Westminster records will go live over the coming months, along with cemetery registers, wills, rate books, settlement examinations, workhouse admission and discharge books, bastardy, orphan and apprentice records, charity documents, and militia and watch records.

• The 2012 Houston, Texas, Family History Expo takes place Friday and Saturday, April 6 and 7. The keynote speaker is Family Tree Magazine's own podcast host Lisa Louise Cooke, and instructors include frequent contributor Lisa A. Alzo. You can register online or at the door, for the whole conference or just one day, or even a single class. Learn more on the Family History Expos website.

Friday, March 30, 2012 11:49:57 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

1. On April 2 at 9 a.m., the only place you'll be able to find online 1940 census records for the entire country is 1940census.archives.gov. This website was made possible through the National Archives' contract with genealogy company Archives.com.

2. Shortly after the initial release, other websites will begin adding the records as fast as they can. Those include:

• Ancestry.com
• Archives.com
• censusrecords.com
• FamilySearch.org
• MyHeritage websites myheritage.com/1940census, worldvitalrecords.com/1940census and familylink.com/1940census

3. For the first week to several weeks after April 2, the only way to find your ancestor's 1940 census record will be to browse by enumeration district.

You can find out what an enumeration district is and how to pinpoint the right one by watching our free video on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.

4. Three separate projects to index these census records by name will begin ASAP after the records are released:

• the 1940 Census Community Project, organized by FamilySearch, Archives.com and brightsolid (owner of censusrecords.com)
  
• Ancestry.com
  
• MyHeritage

The 1940 Census Community Project is recruiting volunteers to do the indexing; Ancestry.com and MyHeritage are using paid contractors to do their indexing work.

5. Each site will add its index one state at a time, as states are completed. No site has specified the order in which states will be indexed, so at this time there's no telling when a particular site will add your ancestor's state. It could be weeks or months before a given site posts the index you need (so you'll want to check all the above sites periodically).

6. Ancestry.com is completing its index in two phases: a basic name index to be released first on a state-by-state basis, then a more-detailed index with additional information to follow. This means you may have access to a searchable basic name index for your ancestral state earlier on Ancestry.com than on another site.

7. Watch out for sites that try to charge for access to 1940 census records. There is no need to pay for 1940 census records. They'll be available online, free, at the sites mentioned in No. 2.

Get help finding your ancestors in the US census with these resources from Family Tree Magazine:

• Family Tree University course Finding Ancestors in the US Census: Online and Offline Strategies. This course is just $39.99 for the April 30 session only—a $60 savings off the regular price!
  
  
• The Genealogist's Census Pocket Reference
  
  
• Online Census Secrets On-Demand Webinar

Friday, March 23, 2012 3:07:17 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

In an interview yesterday, MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet called the 1940 census announcement “the first serious signal from MyHeritage that it is strongly entering the historical records market."

"MyHeritage has always been about family trees and photos.”

For at least a year, plans have been underway to change that.

MyHeritage.com has invested half a million dollars into new hardware and a data center to build its new SuperSearch system, which will be released with the site’s 1940 census collection in April. It also will be available on FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords.com, which MyHeritage acquired in November 2011.

The company also made a personnel acquisition I’m not free to go into detail about, but you’ll hear more soon.

MyHeritage has used SmartMatching, which Japhet says is a good way to search trees for matches, but less effective when it comes to searching on a last name "in any direction the user wants to go."

The new search system will do a better job of matching trees to records by employing data in approximately 1 billion profiles in MyHeritage.com family trees from around the world.

The SuperSearch will first compare your tree to other trees, find matches and “imply” information from those trees—but not add it to your tree, Japhet emphasized. But the search will include that implied information to find historical records that match your ancestors.

For example, if your ancestor’s profile lacks a death date, SuperSearch could find the same ancestor in someone else’s tree—using other details such as children’s names to make the match—and use the death date from the other person’s tree to locate the ancestor’s will in MyHeritage collections.

“This has a low false positive rate. It’s a match Ancestry never could have done. Their technology doesn't use the knowledge of all its trees,” Japhet said. He described the Ancestry.com “shaky leaf” technology as “a bit naïve” because it requires more similar information, such as name spellings or birth and death dates—information the tree owner might not know—to find matches.

“Whenever new data are added, we compare them to all the MyHeritage trees, so you can sit back and do nothing,” Japhet says. “If you have a person’s family tree, you can do a lot of research on behalf of the person.”

Due to the resource investment, using the new SuperSearch engine will require a subscription, says Japhet. But current MyHeritage Premium and PremiumPlus subscribers, who’ve purchased subscriptions to build enhanced trees on the site, won’t need to purchase an additional subscription to use the search engine for finding trees, photos and free collections (including the 1940 census and the SSDI). Pay-as-you credits also will be available for those who want to view only a few records or just dip a toe into genealogy research.

The 1940 census index also will be free to search via SuperSearch.

Trees will remain an important part of MyHeritage.

“We think family trees are the most important thing. They’re the core of family history. We would love for users to grow their trees on MyHeritage, so we have invested many resources in building tools and services that work with the trees.” Those include the MyHeritage mobile app, printable family trees, family calendars and more.

“Other sites focus on research,” Japhet says, but added that users might give it up when it becomes too time-consuming. “Users discontinue [a subscription] when they can’t use it,” he says, “but they’ll maintain a tree for life.”

Trees also have been helpful in making MyHeritage a site that supports multiple languages—38, to be exact. Because trees can be bilingual, developers have been able to build a store of information about name equivalents in a range of languages.

“You can type in a Russian name and get an English match,” Japhet says. “Or you could type in Alex and the site ‘knows’ Sascha is the translated Russian nickname, and it pulls up a newspaper article in Russian,” he says.

The site translates between alphabets, too, such as the Latin alphabet English uses and the Cyrillic alphabet Russian uses.

To encourage the site’s internationalism, MyHeritage focuses on hiring bilingual individuals. They maintain blogs and provide customer service in several languages.

The 1940 census is just the beginning of new content for MyHeritage. Japhet didn’t name any specific collections coming to the site, but he emphasized the global nature of records to be added and said the site would employ crowdsourcing to acquire content. Those who assist with crowdsourcing efforts will gain SuperSearch privileges.

Friday, March 23, 2012 7:54:52 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

MyHeritage, a company based in Israel and with a US office in Provo, Utah, will provide the 1940 census free at myheritage.com/1940census, www.worldvitalrecords.com/1940census and www.familylink.com/1940census.

(MyHeritage acquired FamilyLink and its WorldVitalRecords site last November.)

As on other websites planning to offer the 1940 census, you'll be able to browse the record images by place as soon as they're added to the site.

A searchable index will be added throughout the year, as data from each state are transcribed. The MyHeritage 1940 census index will be created separately from both the FamilySearch/Archives.com/brightsolid 1940 Census Community Project and the Ancestry.com index. A company that specializes in historical transcription will develop the index, which Japhet says will be highly accurate. 

Once MyHeritage has launched the index for a given state, you'll be able to search it by multiple criteria using the MyHeritage SuperSearch, a fast and sophisticated new search engine to be released in April. All searches will take less than half a second, Japhet told me.

The search engine will support 38 languages, the only 1940 census site to offer this feature. You'll also be able to search the records using the MyHeritage mobile app.

If you have a family tree on MyHeritage.com, the site will automatically match it to 1940 census data as indexes are added and notify you about relevant results. This reduces the need to constantly repeat your searches to see if the index for your ancestor's state has been added.

The 1940 census is the first of additional historical content to come on MyHeritage. "This is the first serious signal from MyHeritage that it is strongly entering the historical records market," Japhet says.

Japhet shared a lot of detail with me, so I'll write another post about MyHeritage's plans for introducing new, global content and a sophisticated way to search it.

For more 1940 census information, including a free video on using Stephen Morse's One-Step tool for determining your ancestor's 1940 enumeration district, see FamilyTreeMagazine.com/info/1940census.

Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:30:51 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [5]

• Genealogy and family network website MyHeritage now has a feature that lets members easily create family calendars. You can choose from 15 designs and 28 languages, and create a calendar in one click. It's automatically decorated with your family photos and populated with birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and other events from your MyHeritage.com family site. You can add or change events and photos, too, and purchase your calendar for as low as $19.95 plus shipping.

• For anyone researching WWII servicemembers, subscription site Fold3 has added the WWII European Theater Army Records, a collection—currently 57 percent complete—of administrative documents dating from 1941 through 1946. They include personal accounts and reports, phone books for US Forces in Paris, troop provisions recorded by the Army Exchange Service and more. Search the collection here with a Fold3 subscription.

• Family tree wiki site WikiTree.com has started a Genealogist-to-Genealogist Sharing Network (aka G2G). It'll allow researchers (whether or not they're WikiTree members) to ask other genealogists for help on topics such as general genealogy, research brick walls, or how to use WikiTree.

• FamilySearch added 20 million new, free records to FamilySearch.org this week for Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, and 13 US states. The release includes 9 million California death records and 5 million Nevada marriage records. See the list of updated databases and link to each one here.

• Florida International University (FIU) has acquired Felix Enrique Hurtado de Mendoza's collection of thousands of books, handwritten and typed letters, photos and other primary documents relating to Cuba and Cuban genealogy. They include rare 17th- and 18th-century books, out-of-print publications, and thousands of unpublished genealogies and family manuscripts. FIU is now raising funds to create a Cuban center for genealogy centered around this collection. Read more about the Felix Enrique Hurtado de Mendoza collection here.

Friday, March 16, 2012 9:54:45 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Archives.com has added new records including FamilySearch community trees dating back to around 1500, and 1930 census images (the majority of the 1930 census images are now available, with more images from this plus the 1920 and 1920 censuses coming online over the next several weeks).
  

The additions bring the count of records available on Archives.com to more than 2 billion.

• The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) is still gathering signatures for its "Stop ID Theft Now!" campaign petition, which advocates using tools already in place to prevent tax-related identity theft, instead of eliminating the Social Security Death Index. See the SSDI Call to Action Kit for FAQs, educational videos, a sample letter to representatives and more. You also can read our past posts about RPAC and threats to the SSDI.

• MyHeritage.com is now offering genetic genealogy testing as part of its partnership with FamilyTreeDNA. Offerings include Y-DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and the Family Finder autosomal DNA tests. Prices start at $99 for the 12-marker Y-DNA test, with discounted prices for MyHeritage subscribers starting around $84. Customers will be notified of DNA matches in the FamilyTreeDNA database. For more information, see the MyHeritage DNA FAQs.

• "Who Do You Think You Are?" is on hiatus for tonight. Next week's episode features Blair Underwood, and the following week we'll see Reba McEntire. You can get your WDYTYA? fix, though, with the books Who Do You Think You Are?: The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History and Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing, both by Megan Smolenyak.

• FamilySearch has released its "Are You in It?" video promoting its 1940 Community Census project. I thought it was really well-done—see what you think.
  
  

Friday, February 17, 2012 12:43:32 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

In general, updates include automatic research in historical records and new features for viewing and sharing family information:

• Following MyHeritage's recent acquisition of genealogy data site World Vital Records, Family Tree Builder 6.0 adds the site's historical content to its features. The software automatically searches for historical records relevant to the people in your family tree whenever you add or edit information. A separate World Vital Records subscription is required to view records.
  
  
• Family Builder 6.0 also improves integration with your MyHeritage.com family websit e. You can produce charts of Family Statistics (such as most commonly used first names or average lifespan), view profile pages and family timelines, and more. You also can view Family Events such as gatherings and birthdays on a monthly or yearly calendar.

The new Family Tree Builder 6.0 is available for Windows in 37 languages. Download it for free from MyHeritage.com.

Friday, January 06, 2012 2:14:55 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

The app attractively displays up to seven generations with photos, and shows individual profiles. It takes advantage of the devices' touchscreen capabilities with panning and "pinch zooming." It also syncs all data, including photos, to your family site on MyHeritage.

The app's communication and photo features make it handy to have at family gatherings:

• It highlights upcoming birthdays and anniversaries in your tree.
• You can call or email relatives in one tap.
• When you take a photo with the device, the app uses face recognition to automatically identify family members taken in the photo.
• You also can share the photo with them in one easy tap.
• It even includes the fun celebrity look-alike feature that got MyHeritage noticed way back when.

The app is available in the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace.

Friday, December 16, 2011 1:07:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

The acquisition doesn't include FamilyLink's We're Related Facebook app, MyHeritage spokesperson Schelly Talalay Dardahsti tells me. FamilyLink CEO Paul Allen won't be joining the MyHeritage team.

MyHeritage will add its first U.S.-based office in Utah, the home of FamilyLink.

The acquisition adds something MyHeritage lacked: the historical records genealogists use. FamilyLink's records will complement the family trees on MyHeritage.com. “We’ll be able to find your mother’s yearbook, your great-grandfather’s will and your ancestor’s immigration record. We’ll do that on a massive, global scale," says MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet.

This is MyHeritage’s seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. Read the full press release here.

Monday, November 21, 2011 4:56:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]