MyHeritage releases new collections with 325 million historical records

We’re delighted to announce the addition of 325 million important historical records to SuperSearch™, bringing the total number of global records available to 8.8 billion.

The collections added today include the 1939 Register of England & Wales, an innovative name index for the US yearbooks collection published in December 2017 and Canadian obituaries.

1939 Register of England & Wales

Prepared on the eve of World War II, with 33 million searchable records, the 1939 Register is the most complete census-like collection for the population of England and Wales between 1911 and 1951. This is because the 1921 census of England and Wales is time-protected by privacy laws and will be available online only in 2022, the entire 1931 Census was destroyed by a fire, and no census was conducted in 1941. For each household member, the 1939 Register records name, gender, address, birth date, marital status, place of residence, and occupation. This collection is an extremely important resource for family historians and people with ancestors in England and Wales. The 1939 Register collection is not exclusive, but other than MyHeritage, it is currently available on only one other website. The initial collection on MyHeritage includes an index, without images.

Of the 42 million records of individuals in this collection, 8.2 million records remain closed due to privacy protection requirements, and about 700,000 additional records appear without full names. Records are closed for those individuals who were born less than 100 years ago unless matched to a registered death record. These closed records will be made public and added to this online collection on a yearly basis going forward.

Winston Churchill, 1939 Register of England & Wales on MyHeritage

U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979

In December 2017, MyHeritage published an extensive collection of U.S. yearbooks with 36,207,173 pages in 253,429 yearbooks. This collection was a free-text collection allowing users to search by name or keyword. Not stopping there, MyHeritage engineers have been working for the past year to develop an unprecedented automated name index from this collection. The fruit of this work is now released as a separate collection named the U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890–1979. The new collection is one of the largest collections of digitized U.S. yearbooks in existence, containing 289 million structured records. In the new collection, the names of the students and faculty members have been automatically extracted using name extraction technology. The personal photos in the yearbooks have been automatically detected and extracted using picture detection technology, and in many cases the names and the photos have been associated with each other using a third proprietary technology developed by MyHeritage. Finally, technology has been developed to automatically differentiate between students and faculty members, to determine the graduation class of each student and to calculate birth years.
All occurrences of the same name in each yearbook were consolidated into one record with references to the pages where the person is mentioned. The end result is a one-of-a-kind structured U.S. yearbook collection in which names can be searched accurately (with synonyms and translations, which is often not possible in free-text collections), as well as matched automatically to the family trees on MyHeritage using the company’s Record Matching technology. This makes U.S. yearbooks one of the most valuable genealogical resources for family historians today, and this treasure trove of information is available in this unique and highly accessible form only on MyHeritage. The records list the person’s name, school’s name and location, and likely residence based on the location of the school. Where possible, a personal photo is provided. For each person, full access to all applicable yearbook pages is provided. Additional work is being carried out to complete the association of names with photos, and this will be released as an update to this collection in the future.

Sally Field, U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979 on MyHeritage

Canadian Obituaries

A collection of 2 million records documenting obituaries and memorials from the 10 Canadian provinces, spanning mostly 1997-2017. It includes the name of the deceased, the date of death, the publication source including locality information, and the text of the obituary or memorial — in English or French depending on the source. When available, a photograph of the deceased is also included.

John David Molson, Canadian Obituaries, 1997-2017 on MyHeritage

Summary

These three new collections spanning 325 million records are now available on MyHeritage SuperSearch™ which now contains 8.8 billion historical records. 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.