New Historical Records Added in January 2018
Here’s an update on the new record collections that we’ve recently added:
| Exclusive to | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 U.S. Yearbooks, 1890-1979 | Search collection now | |||
 Indiana Newspapers, 1847-2009 | Search collection now | |||
 Pennsylvania Newspapers, 1795-2009 | Search collection now | |||
 Ohio Newspapers, 1793-2009 | Search collection now | |||
 Sweden Household Examination Books, 1920-1930, 1860-1880 | Search collection now | |||
 German Minority Census, 1939 | Search collection now | |||
 Mandatory Palestine Naturalization Applications, 1937-1947 | A unique compilation of records documenting the efforts of individuals, to establish citizenship in Mandatory Palestine, which was under British administration at the time. | Search collection now |
At MyHeritage, we offer a treasure trove of historical records from around the world to discover on SuperSearch™, which currently holds about 8.5 billion records. These include newspapers, census records, birth, marriage and death records, immigration records, and more. We continuously add new collections so our users can find records that shine light on their ancestors.
“Exclusive to MyHeritage” in the above table means you won’t find the collection in any other competing genealogy service, but some may be found on other specific websites.
Here’s a more detailed description of the new collections added. Click the title of each collection below to search it.
We’ve recently added one of the largest collections of digitized U.S. yearbooks in existence with over 36 million pages in more than 253,000 yearbooks, and it’s partially exclusive to MyHeritage. These records are valuable to anyone who wants to learn more about their relatives’ teenage experiences in high school. The collection provides extraordinary genealogical coverage of high school students and teachers over a period of 90 years. Yearbooks are excellent sources for genealogy research — you can find personal portraits and group photographs of your relative, as well as a list of sports, clubs and other extracurricular activities they may have been involved in. If you’re lucky, you may even find a biography written by or about them.
You can also explore celebrity yearbook photos in this collection. Ever wonder what Meryl Streep or Neil Armstrong looked like in high school? Take a look:
Bernards High School, 1966, U.S. Yearbooks, 1890-1979 on MyHeritage
Blume High School, 1947, U.S. Yearbooks, 1890-1979 on MyHeritage
Yearbooks can also help you learn which city, town or county your relative lived in. Knowing where a person attended school is an important clue to finding other records about them and their families. This collection includes primarily high school yearbooks, as well as those from middle schools, junior high schools, and some elementary schools.
Stay tuned — we’re working on some amazing new technologies that will allow the extraction of even more value from the yearbooks and will be releasing those separately in the next few months.
Newspapers are an important resource for genealogy and family history research. They contain obituaries, birth, marriage, and death announcements, and other vital records. They also provide society pages and local stories filled with rich information about community events and people who lived there.
At MyHeritage, we set up an OCR (optical character recognition) lab in Utah to process historical newspapers and books at high capacity. The new newspaper collections listed here are among the first outputs of our OCR lab.
This exclusive collection includes 1,014,820 pages in 44 newspaper titles from Indiana and it spans the years from 1847 to 2009.
Below is an article published in The News-Sentinel – on January 6, 1939, about the declaration of Amelia Earhart’s death after years of searching for her missing plane.
Indiana Newspapers, 1847-2009 on MyHeritage
Pennsylvania Newspapers, 1795-2009
This exclusive collection includes 7,514,388 pages in 70 newspaper titles and it spans the years from 1795 to 2009.
Below is the front page of The Gettysburg Times, featuring a telegram sent by John F. Kennedy to the Editor, Paul L. Roy, honoring the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Pennsylvania Newspapers, 1795-2009 on MyHeritage
The telegram reads:
Today, as we honor Lincoln’s immortal eulogy to the dead on Cemetery Ridge,let us remember as well those thousands of American patriots whos egraves at home, beneath beneath the sea and in distant lands are silent sentries of our heritage…
This exclusive collection includes 4,604,759 pages in 88 newspaper titles and it spans the years from 1793 to 2009.
Below is an article from 1984 in The Vindicator, featuring a photo of a couple’s 10 children visiting their new twin siblings at a local hospital soon-after they were born.
Ohio Newspapers, 1793-2009 on MyHeritage
Sweden Household Examination books 1920-1930, 1860-1880
We’ve recently updated the Sweden Household Examination books collection by adding more than 38 million records from additional years that we didn’t have before! The new records cover 1860-1880 and 1920-1930 and these additions are exclusive to MyHeritage. We’ve produced an every-name index to nearly 8 million images. With over 86 million records, The Household Examination Books on MyHeritage are the primary source for researching the lives of individuals and families throughout the Parishes of Sweden, from the late 1600’s to modern times.
See the sample record below of famous inventor and founder of the Ericsson company, Lars Magnus Ericsson.
Sweden Household Examination Books, 1860-1930 on MyHeritage
The record states that Ericsson lived in Stockholms county in Botkkyrka parish of Sweden from 1903 to 1909. He married Hilda Karolina Simonsson on April 6, 1878 and they had two children: Gustaf and Lars Magnus. The record also contains information about when and where he was born.
The books were created and kept by the Swedish Lutheran Church which was tasked with keeping the official records of the Swedish population until 1991. Each book or series of books represents a three to 10 year within a parish. Each year until 1894, the parish priest would visit each home and test everyone’s knowledge of the catechism and would collect information about birth dates, marriages, deaths, where people had moved to or from, etc.
If your relatives lived in Sweden, this exclusive collection can provide crucial details about your family that you may not already know.
An exclusive collection containing the names of all individuals listed in the German 1939 census who lived in a household where at least one person in the household had a Jewish grandparent. Many of these people were killed in the Holocaust and this census is the last written trace of them. These approximately 410,000 individuals are from the supplement census cards recording each person’s Jewish background.
See the record below of Else Ury, a famous German writer and children’s book author, who was tragically murdered in the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust.
German Minority Census, 1939 on MyHeritage
The record shows that she lived in Berlin at the time of her deportation and was killed on January 13, 1943 when she was 65.
Information listed may include: name, maiden name, birth date, birthplace, residence, death date, death place, place of imprisonment, deportation or emigration, and whether they were a Holocaust victim. Some of the information comes from the original census cards, and some was researched and annotated much later. This collection is provided under license from Tracing the Past.
If you had Jewish relatives living in Germany in 1939, this collection can provide you with information about their lives at the start of WWII and could be the last documented trace of them.
Mandatory Palestine Naturalization Applications, 1937-1947
This collection of Mandatory Palestine Naturalization applications is a unique compilation of over 206,000 records documenting the efforts of individuals, mostly Jews, and sometimes their entire families, to establish citizenship in Mandatory Palestine, which was under British administration at the time. The exclusive collection contains photos, histories, passports, and other various forms providing details for each applicant. The naturalization applications were handled by the British Immigration Department. We hired a group of more than 50 people in Israel to transcribe this special collection, and have made an exceptional effort to transcribe both the English and the Hebrew names in every record.
Israel’s ninth President, Shimon Peres (originally Szymel Perski), is among the applicants included in this collection. His photo from 1943 appears in the record as do his age, birth date, nationality, naturalization date and supporters:
Mandatory Palestine Naturalization Applications, 1937-1947 on MyHeritage
The 60,000-plus naturalization applications, housed at the Israel State Archives (ISA), include immigrant and tourist registrations, visas, photographs, passports, and letters of citizenship. They are organized by the head of the family.
This collection can provide insightful information for anyone who had relatives in Mandatory Palestine from 1937 to 1947.
Summary
All of these newly digitized and updated collections spanning 88 million records are now available on MyHeritage SuperSearch. Most of this content is exclusive to MyHeritage and cannot be found on any other major genealogy service. Searching is free. A Data or Complete subscription is required to view the records. Keep an eye out for Record Matches! Our Record Matching technology will automatically find relevant historical records for people in your tree.
We hope you enjoy searching through these collections and gain new insights into your family history.
Kathleen Louise Adams
February 13, 2018
Birth name Painter. There was a name change when family entered into US.