Recent Updates: Online Genealogy Records at MyHeritage, Ancestry and Findmypast

by Lisa Cooke | Apr 13, 2020 | 01 What's New, Records & databases

At this time of sheltering at home, we’re fortunate that we can continue to pursue our favorite past time at home. Here are some of the latest genealogy records to come online this month. From my family to yours , stay safe and well friends.

The latest genealogy records from Genealogy Gems.

Ancestry

The first two items in this list of new and updated records is important for everyone who is researching their family history. If you had difficulty finding an ancestor in the 1850 or 1860 in the past, now is the time to search. Ancestry has updated portions of these two important census records.

UPDATED – 1860 United States Federal Census

UPDATED – 1850 United States Federal Census

Example of the 1850 US Federal Census.

Speaking of the census, all genealogists are looking forward to the release of the 1950 US census. We don’t have that long to wait now. The 1950 US Census is due to be released to the public in April of 2022. Until then, be sure to read our article answering the most important questions about this census. Read 1950 Census Substitute: What To Use Until its Release Date.

Listen to Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 181 for more about finding your family history in the 1950s.

Let’s continue on looking through the newest records on Ancestry:

UPDATED – South Carolina, Death Records, 1821-1968

NEW – New York, Episcopal Diocese of Central New York Church Records, 1800-1970

NEW – New York State, Extradition Requisition and Mandate Registers, 1857-1938

NEW – South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732-1964

NEW – South Carolina, Chesterfield County, Original Marriage licenses, 1911-1951

UPDATED Berlin, Germany, Births, 1874-1906

UPDATED – Montana, Divorce Records, 1943-1988

UPDATED – Montana, Birth Records, 1897-1988

UPDATED – Montana, Marriage Records, 1943-1988

UPDATED –U.S., Northern Pacific Railway Company Personnel Files, 1890-1963

One of the important aspects of this update according to Ancestry is that “changes were made to improve the performance of this collection. Family relationships such as parents and spouses are enabled to attach to your tree.

Note: This database does not yet include the entire collection of personnel files. Currently, only the file numbers listed in the browse are included. The remaining files will be added to this database at a later date.”

UPDATED – Ohio, Death Records, 1908-1932, 1938-2018

UPDATED – Ohio, Birth Index, 1908-1998

NEW – Irish Emigrants in North America, 1775-1825

According to Ancestry, “This present work is a consolidated reprint of two pamphlets by Mr. David Dobson that shed light on more than 1,100 Irish men and women and their families who emigrated to North America between roughly 1775 and 1825. As such, this volume adds to the list of 1,000 men and women compiled by Mr. Dobson in three earlier pamphlets in this series, which were published by Clearfield Company as Irish Emigrants in North America. Unlike the earlier collection, which was derived from a variety of Scottish and North American source records, the persons named in Irish Emigrants in North America, Parts Four and Five, were found primarily in contemporary newspapers in Canada and the United States. Each of the two lists of Irish persons is arranged alphabetically by the emigrant’s surname and, in the majority of cases, provides us with most of the following particulars: name, date of birth, name of ship, occupation in Ireland, reason for emigration, sometimes place of origin in Ireland, place of disembarkation in the New World, date of arrival, number of persons in the household, and the source of the information.”

NEW – Web: U.S., Congressional Medal of Honor Society Recipients, 1839 – 2012

UPDATED – Massachusetts, Boston Archdiocese Roman Catholic Sacramental Records, 1789-1900

NEW – Maine, Piscataquis County, Deed Books, 1838-1902

UPDATED – New York, New York, Index to Birth Certificates, 1866-1909

NEW – Maine, Veterans Cemetery Records, 1676-1918

NEW – Maine, Nathan Hale Cemetery Collection, 1780-1980

NEW – Maine, J. Gary Nichols Cemetery Collection, ca. 1780-1999

NEW – Maine, Faylene Hutton Cemetery Collection, 1780-1990

NEW – Maine, Tombstone Inscriptions, Surname Index, 1718-2014

NEW – Maine, York County, Probate Estate Files, 1690-1917

Findmypast

Here are the latest new and updated records from Findmypast, the home of the largest collection of UK parish records online.

Middlesex Baptisms

Unique to Findmypast, these records can reveal details about the start of your relatives’ lives in Middlesex. The collection has been enhanced with over 17,000 new records from the following parishes:

Hampton
Hayes
Hornsey
Stanwell

Click here to search.

“Our thanks go to Cliff Webb and West Middlesex Family History Society for providing these latest additions.”

Cambridgeshire Burials

Over 6,000 burials from Mt Pleasant Cemetery, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire have joined the largest collection of British parish records online at Findmypast.

These latest additions join the largest collection of UK parish records online at Findmypast.

Click here to search the Cambridgeshire burial records.

“The burial records date from 1881 to 1925 and have been provided by Fenland Family History Society. You won’t find them anywhere else online.”

Jamaica, Civil Death Registrations

Discover your Caribbean roots with over 1.5 million new civil death registration records from Jamaica. Brought to you in partnership with FamilySearch, these death records can tell you more about your relative’s life and death in Jamaica.

As you trace your Jamaican past, be sure to also delve into these other useful resources:

Dating as far back as the 1500s, our Jamaican family history records are essential for finding out more about your Caribbean ancestors. What’s more, they’ll provide hints for any Jamaican ancestors already on your Findmypast family tree.”

Newspapers

“The Caribbean-themed releases continue in our newspaper collection this week. We’ve added new papers from Jamaica and Ireland and updated a range of others. Brand new to the site are:

Royal Gazette of Jamaica covering the years 1779-1781, 1793-1794, 1809, 1811-1819, 1824-1828, 1834-1836 and 1838-1840
Carlow Sentinel covering the years 1832-1920

While the following newspapers have been supplemented with more issues:

Merthyr Express has been updated with editions from 1871-1897, 1899-1910 and 1912-1945
Truth has been updated with editions from 1900-1902, 1906-1907 and 1910
Burton Chronicle has been updated with editions from 1896 and 1899-1900
Newtownards Chronicle & Co. Down Observer has been updated with editions from 1875-1879 and 1881-1900
Bradford Weekly Telegraph has been updated with editions from 1869-1878
South Wales Gazette has been updated with editions from 1894
Welshman has been updated with editions from 1836-1841, 1847, 1852, 1866, 1878
Nuneaton Observer has been updated with editions from 1877-1896, 1898-1903
Sligo Independent has been updated with editions from 1885

We’ve added almost a century’s worth of pages from one new newspaper along with substantial updates to 10 titles from England and Ireland this week. Brand new to the site is:

Crewe Chronicle covering the years 1874-1887 and 1889-1972

As well as that, here is the list of papers that have had more pages added and the years covered:

Halifax Evening Courier has been updated with editions from 1893-1896
Midland Counties Advertiser has been updated with editions from 1854-1875, 1881, 1885, 1892-1896, 1941, 1943 and 1946
Scarborough Gazette has been updated with editions from 1850, 1855 and 1868
Newcastle Journal has been updated with editions from 1936-1937
Huddersfield Daily Examiner has been updated with editions from 1874
Torbay Express and South Devon Echo has been updated with editions from 1958-1967 and 1969-1972
Leicester Daily Mercury has been updated with editions from 1926 and 1931
Harrow Observer has been updated with editions from 1980
Kensington Post has been updated with editions from 1986
Newcastle Evening Chronicle has been updated with editions from 1893

Newspapers are a goldmine of information on your family’s past. Not only could you find your ancestors making headlines, but you’ll also get insight into the world they lived in, the kind you won’t find in other records.”

MyHeritage

MyHeritage photos

Thanks to the amazing new colorization tool at MyHeritage, their collection of old family history photos is larger than ever before. (Learn more this new tool in our article Myheritage Launches Colorized Photos!)

As of Mar 26 2020, the updated collection of old photos reached a total of 141,129,707! This is a great time to check your smart matches

Now through April 23, 2020, you can enjoy Free and Unlimited Access to MyHeritage In Color™. Read more about that here.

Click to read the Genealogy Gems article.

What’s So Special about US Special Census Schedules?

by | Feb 17, 2016 | 01 What's New, Census, Records & databases, RootsTech, United States

Who should pay attention to the US special census schedules? Anyone whose relatives appear in the US census between 1850-1880 (and some whose relatives show up in 1810-1820 and 1890-1910).

Many records about our ancestors point to even more records. Such is the case with the US Census. For many decades, the census records we most commonly consult are actually just “Schedule 1” of several census forms in which your ancestors may appear. Better yet, many of the surviving special census schedules are now online at Ancestry.com and other genealogy websites.

So who should be paying attention to surviving US special census schedules? Everyone whose ancestors:

Appear in U.S. censuses between 1850-1880;
Worked in industrial occupations in 1810-1820;
Were veterans of the U.S. Civil War and still alive in 1890;
Were Native Americans in 1900-1910.

Here’s a quick table showing the years for which the following schedules survive (for at least some locations): Agricultural; Defective, Dependent and Delinquent; Indian, Industry/Manufacturing; Mortality; Slave; Social and Veterans Schedules.

What’s in the US special census schedules and where can I find them?

Depending on the year and the schedule type, you may discover information about recently-deceased ancestors (in the mortality buy medicine online kolkata schedules, 1850-1880); disabled or institutionalized ancestors (in the 1880 DDD schedule); enslaved or slave-holding ancestors (in the 1850-1860 censuses); Civil War veterans (1890 only); farmers (1850-1880) and more. Some of what you’ll find may be uniquely revealed in the US special census schedules.

Many of the special schedules have been digitized and indexed and are available online. Especially for 1850-1880, when so many schedules were created and so many different people were included, it’s worth searching for your ancestors in each one.

The syllabus for my RootsTech lecture, “Whats Special about US Special Census Schedules?” includes a detailed summary of what’s in each special schedule, where to find them (online and offline), and additional tips that may help you get the most out of them.

Remember: for many years, the US census population schedule is just the beginning of the census. Dig into those special censuses and see what you find!

I wish more people knew about the U.S. Special Census Schedules. Will you help me spread the word? Please share this link on your favorite social media site and with fellow genealogists and your society members.

The 1910 Census in Puerto Rico: A Surprising Lesson on Using Census Records for Genealogy

by Lisa Cooke | Jun 11, 2015 | 01 What's New, African-American, Ancestry, Beginner, Census, FamilySearch, History, images, Records & databases, Research Skills, United States

Sample census detail image from Ancestry.com.

Imagine taking a standard U.S. census form, translating it into Spanish, administering it to a newly-American population whose racial identity is highly politicized, translating the results back into English and trying to make sense of them 100 years later.

That’s what happens when you’re looking at 1910 census in Puerto Rico.

I stumbled on this story when my dad, a FamilySearch indexer, called my attention to a current project to index previously-missed parts of the 1910 census. A lot of the missing data was for Puerto Rico. The forms are in Spanish. My dad asked my help translating some of what he was reading, since I speak some Spanish. He was concerned that the computer was interpreting some of the abbreviations in English when they were likely Spanish abbreviations. I looked into it and what I found reminded me of these lessons:

Puerto Rico 1910 1920 census instructions

From “The US Census and the Contested Rules of Racial Classification in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico,” by Mara Loveman, in Caribbean Studies, 35:2 (July-Dec 2007), 3-36. Click image to go to the paper.

Always read the record itself and seek to understand it. Don’t just rely on the index! The published images of this census on Ancestry interpret “B” in the race column as “Black,” but a little research (thank you, Google Scholar!) reveals that the census takers entered the race in Spanish–so “B” was for “blanco” (read about it in this academic paper).

When you see someone’s race change over the course of a lifetime, consider the historical context. Puerto Rican census data from the early 1900s “show a population becoming significantly whiter from one census to the next” because of “changes in how race was classified on census returns,” says the same paper. Not only were there changes in the official instructions, but the enumerators increasingly didn’t follow them. In fact, on several thousand census entries in 1910 and even more in 1920, “individuals’ racial classifications were manually crossed out, and a different ‘race’ was written in. These post-enumeration edits, it turns out, were done by a select group of Puerto Ricans hired to supervise and ‘correct’ the work of fellow Puerto Rican enumerators.”

This little historical trivia is not so trivial if you’re wondering why your ancestor may be identified by a different race than you expected. Learn more about finding academic papers like the one quoted here in The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke. Her book shows you how to search Google Scholar for gems like this that make your family history more clear!

Female Census Enumerators? Check Out These Backstories!

by Lisa Cooke | Apr 6, 2015 | 01 What's New, Blogs, Census, Family History Podcast, images, Listeners & Readers, United States, Writing Family History

A female census taker interviews a mother and child for the 1950 US Census. Image courtesy of the US Census Bureau, found at Flickr Creative Commons, https://www.flickr.com/photos/uscensusbureau/5020542240/in/photostream/.

There’s a story behind every census record. In fact, there are as many stories as there are names on each census page. This is true not just for people being enumerated, but also for the census-takers themselves.

I was reminded of this by Joanne, author of the Researching Relatives blog. She wrote in response to a blog post I wrote about a census taker a few months ago:

“Thank you for inspiring me with one of your posts from October. I never paid attention to the census takers until I read your post, and then I went back and looked at some random pages and found two female census enumerators.”

Of course I went right to her blog. She says she looked through random census entries about her relatives without finding anything special. Then, “In the 1930 census, the enumerator was Anna M. Allen and, in 1940, it was Bessie Dorgan. I’m guessing that female census takers weren’t that unusual, but it still caught me by surprise. So like Lisa, I wanted to find out more.” She put her research skills to work and learned more about these women and their roles as providers for their family. Click here to read more about her discovery.

Do you blog about your family history? Have you ever blogged about a discovery made in response to a tip you got from Genealogy Gems? I’d love to hear about it! Learn more about blogging your family history in my FREE Family History Made Easy podcast, episodes 38-42. Learn how-tos and get inspired by the stories of others who are sharing their family history discoveries online!