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Archive for March, 2012
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It was a teary episode of “Who
Do You Think You Are?” with Rita Wilson tonight, as she visited Greece and Bulgaria
in search of information about her father Allan’s mysterious past.
This is a more-recent search than in most episodes, which made it closer to home for
the celebrity.
Wilson’s father, who passed away a few years ago, was born in 1920 in Oraion, Xanthi,
Greece.
There was a lot to be sad about in this episode. Bulgaria occupied Xanthi dring World
War II. Required to serve in the military, Allan was imprisoned for a petty crime.
After he was paroled and settled in Bulgaria, he married and had a son, Emil—news
to Wilson. His wife died when the baby was three days old, and Emil died at four months.
After attempting to leave the country, Allan was detained by the occupying Communists
and sent to a labor camp. This information was in a file in the “Secret Files Commission.”
A guard’s report detailed his escape.
When Wilson traveled to Greece to meet her father’s brother for the first time, he
gives her a letter Allen wrote from America. He was making good money, going to school
and having fun. It was the perfect hopeful ending for a tearful show.
If you missed it, you’ll be able to watch it on NBC’s
website.
Got Greek roots? Here’s our free online Greek
Genealogy Toolkit. You’ll find more Greek research advice in the May/June 2012 Family
Tree Magazine, which starts mailing to subscribers in April.
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PRI’s The World, a weekday radio news magazine, has a new piece by producer Carol Zall entitled “Roots 2.0: Using DNA to Trace My Ancestry.” The piece makes for a great introduction to genetic genealogy. I especially like the 35-year-old interview between the young Carol and her grandmother, as well as Carol’s interpretation of her results.
I spoke with Carol a few months about this piece, and she included a few quotes from the interview in the article. Also included is a 2-minute soundbite of our conversation:
Also featured in the main article are the always-fantastic Daniel MacArthur and Joe Pickrell (you can find both of them at Genomes Unzipped).
Both Daniel and I also contributed short companion pieces:
- “Genetic Genealogy: A Powerful Tool for the Family Historian” by me; and
- “Ready to Test Your DNA: How To Choose A Genetic Testing Company” by Daniel.
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You’ve been hearing about the 1940 census from several organizations that’ll be hosting
the records, and all that information coming at you from various sources might seem
confusing.
To help you digest all those details, I’m summarizing and simplifying them here into
what you really need to know about where the 1940 census records and indexes will
be. Here it is:
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.
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
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Looks like I’ll be parked in front of the TV for a fair portion of the weekend. Tonight
on “Who Do You Think You Are?”
watch actress Helen Hunt explore her roots. Here’s a video preview:
-
And Sunday, March 25 at 8 p.m. ET, “Finding
Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” premieres. Watch
a video preview here.
-
The International Society of Family History Writers
and Editors Excellence in Writing competition is accepting entries now through
June 3, with a discount on the entry fee if you submit before April 15. You can enter
published or unpublished genealogical works in one of five categories. Winners receive
a cash prize and a certificate. The awards presentation will take place during the Federation
of Genealogical Societies Conference in Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 29-Sept. 1. Get
more information on the ISFHWE
website.
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Archives.com
has
hired genealogist Megan Smolenyak as its Family History Advisor. She’ll start immediately,
talking about the 1940 census. Smolenyak was formerly chief genealogist at Archives.com
competitor Ancestry.com.
-
FamilySearch added more than 6.3 million
new, free records online this week for Australia, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean, Czech
Republic, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands,
Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United States. See
the list of updated collections and link to each one here.
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Hosting
the 1940 US census is the start of big changes at genealogy site and family network MyHeritage.
Those changes will include more records and more-sophisticated searching.
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,” Gaphet 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 Gaphet. 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.
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In an exclusive interview today (about 12 minutes ago, actually), MyHeritage Founder
and CEO Gilad Japhet told me that genealogy site and family network MyHeritage.com will
offer the 1940 US census for free after the National Archives releases the records
April 2.
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.
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Part two in our series on
getting ready for the release of the 1940 census is a guest post from census preparedness
expert Ida Searcher:
I was inspired to become a census preparedness expert 10 years ago, after seeing woefully
underprepared genealogists try to use the 1930 census.
Why, so many of them were waiting in line at the library without basics like tents,
Bunsen burners or crossword puzzles. And watching them scroll microfilm without Dramamine—well,
it was downright painful.
You’ll need different supplies for the 1940 census, as this
release is entirely digital and you’ll be examining the records on a computer.
Under no circumstances should you start your 1940 census research without these nine
absolute must-haves:
1. An atomic clock to precisely signal the 9
a.m. ET release of the 1940 census records.
2. Extra batteries for your mouse. Be sure to practice changing them fast,
the way they change the tires on race cars. You don’t want to lose census time on
silly things like dead batteries.3. A Netflix account for the kids. You can get 99 episodes of Sponge Bob on
Netflix. That’s 99 half-hours of uninterrupted census work. You can always smarten
them back up later with some books or something.4. A cardboard cutout of yourself to keep your spouse company while you’re
spending quality time with your computer. This is the kind thing to do.5. A hands-free
helmet hydration system. No need to pause in your scrolling to pick up a glass
of water.
6. Peanut m&ms for sustenance (peanuts = protein).
7. An alarm clock to remind you to eat the m&ms.8. No-Doze (it’s not just for college students anymore). Stock up now before
your local drugstore is overrun with census-checking grannies. You don’t want to have
to knock over those grannies.9. Vitamin D pills. Let’s face it: You’re not going to be seeing the sun anytime
soon. That’s okay, though. Vampires are very “in” these days. You’re like a census
vampire.
Um, thank you, Ida. I’m sure readers are rushing to the store right now.
Next up, we offer phrases you’ll want to memorize in case your boss catches you searching
the 1940 census at work.
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We’re hosting a free
webinar next Tuesday about one of the most talked-about photo-preservation tools
in genealogy: the Flip-Pal mobile scanner.
Presenters Thomas MacEntee and Diane Miller will show you:
- tips for using Flip-Pal in your genealogy work
- hints for archiving family photos with Flip-Pal
- how Flip-Pal can help you share photos with your family
- how to download the webinar presentation and slides for your future reference
Registered attendees will get access to the webinar to view again as many times as
they like (we’ll e-mail instructions after the webinar).
Plus, all registrants will receive a special product offer!
The free
Flip-Pal webinar is Tuesday, March 27, at 2 p.m. Eastern (1 p.m. Central,
noon Mountain, 11 a.m. Pacific).
The presentation is about 45 minutes, plus 10 minutes for Q&A.
Click
here to register for our free webinar Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner for Fabulous Family
Photos.
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The new genealogy series Finding
Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. premieres on PBS March 25.
Gates, a Harvard history professor who’s hosted previous genealogy shows for PBS including African-American
Lives and Faces
of America, will explore the roots of 24 well-known Americans including Harry
Connick Jr., Barbara Walters, Kevin Bacon, Condoleezza Rice, Sanjay Gupta and Martha
Stewart.
Here’s the twist that makes this show different: Each episode will feature a pair
of celebrities “bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden link.” DNA testing
takes over where paper trails leave off.
The staff of the New England
Historic Genealogical Society and Johni Cerny, co-author of The Source: Guidebook
for American Genealogy, contributed research to the series.
You can watch
several clips on the show’s website, including this extended preview:
Watch Extended
Preview on PBS. See more from Finding
Your Roots.