I’m delighted to share that we’ve just refreshed the data for the Theory of Family Relativity™!
This update has added millions of new and improved theories that explain how you and your DNA Matches might be related, and can enlighten you about family relationships that may have been complete mysteries until now. Please take a moment to share this exciting update with your audiences.
Since the last update, the number of theories on MyHeritage has grown by 64%, from 20,330,031 to 33,373,070! The number of MyHeritage users who now have at least one Theory of Family Relativity™ for their DNA Matches has increased by 28%. This time I even got a few theories of my own!
The Theory of Family Relativity™ harnesses the billions of family tree profiles and historical records on MyHeritage to suggest relationship paths between you and your DNA Matches, potentially saving you dozens of hours of research.
As our users create new family tree profiles and as we add new collections of historical records, we’ll be able to deliver more insights and suggest new theories to help our users further their genealogical research.
Read more about the update to the Theory of Family Relativity™ on our blog.
Keep safe and healthy,
Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
MyHeritage Ltd., P.O.Box 50, 3 Ariel Sharon Blvd., Or Yehuda 60250, Israel
Starting today we’re unlocking both our popular photo tools — MyHeritage Photo Enhancer and MyHeritage In Color™ — for a whole month, until September 10, 2020. Normally, these features can be used by non-subscribers on up to 10 photos each, while users with a Complete plan enjoy unlimited use. But now, for a whole month, anyone can enhance and colorize as many photos as they’d like for free!
This continues our tradition of giving back to the community. With so many people currently confined to their home and doing their best to stay safe and healthy — we’re giving everyone a fun way to pass the time and enjoy genealogy!
Using these tools, you can get to know your ancestors in a whole new way. Your old, faded, black and white family photos will come to life, in full color and sharp focus — making them look almost as though they were taken yesterday. We invite you and your followers to pull out your family photo albums today and join in the fun.
Please share this news on your social channels so your followers can make the most of this opportunity, and encourage them to share the results with their loved ones on social media. We know they’ll be blown away.
Keep safe and healthy,Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
This month I’m delighted to share some exciting new content we’ve added to the MyHeritage Knowledge Base. We understand that current times are challenging and are working hard to bring you posts, webinars, videos, and resources that can help you move forward in your research from home.
Below are 3 pieces of content from among those we published this month that we think you’ll enjoy. Feel free to share it with your society and other people that may be interested in genealogy:
How to Take a Heritage Tour Without Leaving Your House: It’s true that there’s nothing like the experience of standing on the same ground where your ancestors once stood. But this article will show you how modern technology can still help you explore and learn a great deal about the places your ancestors once lived from the comfort of your home.
Using City Directories on MyHeritage: This Facebook Live session with Thomas MacEntee will guide you through the 545 million aggregated records consolidated from 1.3 billion records in the huge collection of historical U.S. city directories published between 1860 and 1960.
Do you have something to contribute? We’d love to host a guest post from you about your discoveries and success stories with MyHeritage. If you’d like to pitch a guest post, hit “reply” to this email and let us know what you have in mind. We look forward to collaborating with you!
I’m excited to announce the release of the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer — an incredible new feature that brings blurry faces in any photo into sharp focus. Photos are enhanced using specialized technology that produces outstanding, high-definition results. Please share this news with your followers!
Perhaps you have old photos that look grainy or blurred, or photos of large family gatherings with many faces that are too small to recognize clearly. The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer aims to solve these age-old problems and produces phenomenal results that let you see your ancestors more clearly than ever before.
This feature uses deep learning technology that was licensed by MyHeritage and seamlessly integrated into the platform to enhance photos by upscaling them (increasing their resolution).
Watch the video to see this feature in action, and feel free to share the video or embed it with the following code:
You can enhance your photos and colorize them with MyHeritage In Color™, as these two features complement each other. Like colorized photos, enhanced photos are differentiated from the originals using a special embossed symbol, and enhancement does not modify your original photos. The addition of the Photo Enhancer makes MyHeritage the best platform for uploading, enhancing, and sharing historical photos, bar none.
To enhance your photos, visit the My Photos section of your family site, click on any photo in your albums, and then click Enhance. You can also use the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer page to upload photos to MyHeritage and enhance them, or scan your photos using the free MyHeritage mobile app.
Please find more information about the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer below:
Blog post (including great examples): https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/06/introducing-the-myheritage-photo-enhancer/
We hope that you enjoy enhancing your photos. Please spread the word about this amazing new feature and encourage your audience to try it too and share their enhanced photos with family and friends. Best regards, Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
I’m excited to share a one-of-a-kind offer from MyHeritage for the month of June, something I think your readers and followers will be very interested to hear!
Starting tomorrow, June 1, each day of the month a different and significant historical record collection will be available for free!
The collections we have chosen for this offer were handpicked for their value for family historians and include collections that are exclusive to MyHeritage. Among them are the Sweden Household Examination Books, 1840–1947, 1940 Denmark Census, and U.S. City Directories. Altogether, we’ll be providing free access to more than 2 billion historical records throughout June!
All the collections are available on www.myheritage.com/research, and you can find the full schedule for the free collections, including direct links, on our blog.
This just might be the chance your readers and followers have been waiting for, and we are pleased to offer this as part of our effort to provide people with more opportunities and resources to further their genealogy research while at home.
Enjoy and stay safe, Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
As a company dedicated to family history, we at MyHeritage greatly appreciate what you do. We believe that information about genealogy should be easily accessible to anyone who wants it.
That’s why we created the MyHeritage Knowledge Base: a dedicated educational website chock-full of quality articles, webinars, and how-to videos on a wide range of topics relating to genealogy and DNA. Available in 10 languages, the site is updated every week with new content. The Knowledge Base is completely free to access and no registration is required.
I believe your members will find the website helpful, and would like to suggest sharing the link with them alongside some examples of content they may enjoy. Here are a couple of suggestions:
How to Get the Most Out of Your Family Site: An article describing how to fully harness the potential of your free family site on MyHeritage. Learn to personalize the site, add photos, invite family members to collaborate, and more.
Integrating Old Photos Into Your Family History Research: A webinar on the importance of photos in genealogy research. Learn how to analyze photos, upload them to a personal MyHeritage website, and tag the people you’ll want to stay connected to on MyHeritage.
Feel free to share these links and descriptions with your members, or to peruse the site to find the content that’s perfect for them. Just remember to share only the link to the article and a short description — that way your members can click through and explore the content as well as the rest of the site if they wish. We’d also appreciate it if you could keep us posted when you share the content.
I hope you and your members find the Knowledge Base a helpful and enlightening resource.
Wishing you the best of health! Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
Many of us may have a relative or ancestor who served in the military. We invite you to pay tribute to these heroes and honor their legacy by learning more about them through military records.
The MyHeritage collection consists of 57 million records and includes draft, enlistment, and service records, pension records, and other military documents from North America and around the world, dating back to the American Revolutionary War in the late 18th century.
We’re also hosting 2 Facebook Live events about military records in the coming days:
Searching Military Records on MyHeritage
Tune in TODAY, May 20 at 1 P.M. EDT as Thomas MacEntee shares how to leverage MyHeritage’s vast collection of military records to learn more about your family history.
Breaking Through Brick Walls with Military Records
On May 24 at 1 P.M EDT, join Kate Eakman, senior researcher at Legacy Family Tree, who will show you how to use military records to break through brick walls in your genealogy research.
Please let your audiences know so they too can take advantage of these important genealogical resources. You can read more about the free military records on our blog. Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
The Greece Electoral Rolls (1863–1924) consist of 1,006,594 records and provide nationwide coverage of males ages 21 and up who were eligible to vote. The Corfu Vital Records (1841–1932) consist of 646,807 birth, marriage, and death records that were collected by the civil authorities in Corfu and document the life events of all residents of the island, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. The Sparta Marriages collection (1835–1935) consists of 179,411 records which include images of the couple’s marriage license and their listing in the marriage register.
In one of our pro bono initiatives, MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet personally traced the descendants of a Jewish family that was hidden during World War II on the small island of Erikoussa, north of Corfu. Gilad further utilized his hands-on experience in Greek research to develop the enhanced method by which MyHeritage now handles Greek surnames in the new collections.
In Greece, a woman’s last name is the genitive form of her father’s surname, or when she marries, of her husband’s surname. The new Greek collections on MyHeritage have been made gender-agnostic to facilitate enhanced searching and matching. For example, a search for the Jewish surname “Velleli” in the new collections on MyHeritage will also locate people named “Vellelis”. It is also possible to find these surnames by searching for “Belleli”, because the Greek letter beta is pronounced like the English letter V, but in some countries this distinction has been lost and Greek surnames are sometimes pronounced with the letter B, the way they are written in modern English.
MyHeritage’s Global Name Translation Technology further ensures that when searching on MyHeritage in other languages, such as Hebrew and Russian, the results will also include names in the new Greek collections. No other major genealogy company has these Greek record collections, nor such sophisticated algorithms customized for Greek genealogy research.
Wishing you good health and sending warm regards, Daniel Horowitz Genealogy Expert
MyHeritage Releases Three Major Collections of Greek Historical Records
TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, May 18, 2020 — MyHeritage, the leading global service for discovering your past and empowering your future, announced today the publication of three important Greek record collections: Greece, Electoral Rolls (1863–1924), Corfu Vital Records (1841–1932), and Sparta Marriages (1835–1935), comprising 1.8 million historical records.
This release constitutes the first substantial set of Greek record collections available on MyHeritage. All three collections have been indexed by MyHeritage and for the first time are now searchable in English, as well as in Greek. The total size of MyHeritage’s historical record database is now 12.2 billion records. This release positions MyHeritage as an invaluable genealogy resource for family history enthusiasts who have Greek roots.
“As the cradle of western civilization and a crossroads of continents and cultures, Greece is becoming a gem among MyHeritage’s historical record collections. The records in these collections are rich in detail and have pan-European, Balkan, and Mediterranean significance. The communities documented were shaped by Greek, Italian, French, and Russian influences, have been home to significant Catholic and Jewish communities, and represent some of the world’s most progressive systems of governance. These collections will prove valuable both to novice researchers and experienced genealogists,” said Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer of MyHeritage.
The publication of these collections furthers MyHeritage’s commitment to providing new avenues for Greek family history research. In one of the company’s pro bono initiatives, MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet personally traced the descendants of a Jewish family that was hidden during World War II on the small island of Erikoussa, north of Corfu. The entire population of the island collectively gave refuge to the family, and saved it from death. His genealogical detective work, combined with MyHeritage’s extensive global database of historical records, culminated in recognition for the courageous people of Erikoussa, who were presented with the House of Life award by the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. This was depicted in the books ‘When the Cypress Whispers’ and ‘Something Beautiful Happened’ by Yvette Manessis Corporon, whose grandmother was among those who saved the Jewish family on Erikoussa.
Japhet utilized his hands-on experience in Greek research to develop the enhanced method by which MyHeritage now handles Greek surnames in the new collections. In Greece, a woman’s last name is the genitive form of her father’s surname, or when she marries, of her husband’s surname. The new Greek collections on MyHeritage have been made gender-agnostic so that searches and matches will work to the fullest extent. For example, a search for the Jewish surname “Velleli” in the new collections on MyHeritage will also locate people named “Vellelis”. It is also possible to find these surnames by searching for “Belleli”, because the Greek letter beta is pronounced like the English letter V, but in some countries this distinction has been lost and Greek surnames are sometimes pronounced with the letter B, the way they are written in modern English. MyHeritage’s Global Name Translation Technology further ensures that when searching on MyHeritage in other languages, such as Hebrew and Russian, the results will also include names in the new Greek collections. No other major genealogy company has these Greek record collections, nor such sophisticated algorithms customized for Greek genealogy research.
The Greece Electoral Rolls (1863–1924) consist of 1,006,594 records and provide nationwide coverage of males ages 21 and up who were eligible to vote. They list the voter’s given name, surname, father’s name, age, and occupation. Each record includes the individual’s name in Greek, and a Latinized transliteration of the name that follows the standard adopted by the Greek government. MyHeritage translated many of the occupations from Greek to English and expanded many given names, which are often abbreviated in the original records. This new collection includes scans of the original documents and is the most extensive index of Greek electoral rolls currently available anywhere.
The Corfu Vital Records (1841–1932) consist of 646,807 birth, marriage, and death records. The records were collected by the civil authorities in Corfu and document the life events of all residents of the island regardless of their ethnicity or religion. Birth records from this collection may contain the child’s given name and surname, birthdate and place of birth, name and age of both parents, and the given names of the child’s grandfathers. A marriage record from this collection may include the date of marriage, groom’s given name and surname, age, place of birth, residence, and his father’s name. Similar information is recorded about the bride and her father. Death records in this collection may include the name of the deceased, date of death, age at death, place of birth, residence, and parents’ names. The indexed collection of Corfu Vital Records includes scans of the original documents and is available exclusively on MyHeritage.
The Sparta Marriages collection (1835–1935) consists of 179,411 records which include images of the couple’s marriage license and their listing in the marriage register. The records in this collection list the full names of the bride and groom, the date of marriage, their fathers’ names, the birthplace of the bride and groom, and occasionally the names of witnesses to the marriage. The images in this collection were photographed, digitized, and indexed by MyHeritage from the original paper documents, in cooperation with the Metropolis of Monemvasia and Sparta.
The new collections are available on SuperSearch™, MyHeritage’s search engine. Searching the Greek record collections is free. A subscription is required to view the full records and to access Record Matches.
MyHeritage is the leading global discovery platform for exploring family history and gaining valuable health insights. With billions of historical records and family tree profiles, and with sophisticated matching technologies that work across all its assets, MyHeritage allows users to discover their past and empower their future. Launched in 2016, MyHeritage DNA has become one of the world’s largest consumer DNA databases, with more than 4 million customers. As the world’s leading global service that combines family history and DNA testing for genealogy and health, MyHeritage is uniquely positioned to offer users a meaningful discovery experience that unites their past, present, and future. Available in 42 languages, MyHeritage is the most popular DNA test and family history service in Europe. www.myheritage.com
MyHeritage Rafi Mendelsohn Director of PR & Social Media Phone: 917-725-5018 Email: pr@myheritage.com
Following last week’s email announcing
free access to all U.S. census records on MyHeritage, I’m writing to let
you know that we’ve decided to extend this for another week. You can
now access the entire U.S. census collection for free through April 12.
I’m happy to share that My Heritage is giving everyone FREE and unlimited access to MyHeritage In Color™ from March 23 to April 23, so that people everywhere can join in the fun of colorizing their black and white photos. Ordinarily only 10 photos can be colorized by users who do not have a Complete plan, but now, you can colorize as many photos as you’d like for free.
Colorizing photos is the perfect activity
for anyone who is isolated at home. We invite everyone to pull out their
family photo albums, colorize their photos, and start reminiscing. Over
the coming month, anyone who shares their colorized photos on Twitter,
Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtag #ColorBeatsCoronavirusBlues and
tags @MyHeritage will enter a weekly draw. Each week we’ll select one
lucky winner who will receive a free MyHeritage Complete subscription!
Please share the news on your social
channels and with your audience so they can make the most of this
opportunity and colorize their photos.
You are free to copy articles to any non-commercial web site or message board or printed publication you wish. Don’t bother to ask permission, just do it.
