Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Does the MyHeritage Record Detective Find My Isaac Seaver Search Results?

One of the ways I test out every online U.S. record collection is to search for my second great-grandfather, Isaac Seaver (1823-1901).  There are a lot of records for him available online, and it's a good measure of the breadth of the different record collections.

Last week, I posted SuperSearch Matches on MyHeritage.com and it found 11 records:

*  The 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 and 1900 census records
*  The WikiTree entry (mine)
*  The Find A Grave entry
*  4 MyHeritage Family Tree entries


With the release of the Record Detective technology, I wondered if all of those records would be found if I click on one of them.  I used the 1900 U.S. Census record to investigate this:

1)  Here is the bottom of the 1900 U.S. Census record for Isaac Seaver (1823-1901):



As you can see, there are no entries in the Record Detective section of the page.  I clicked on the other four census records on the results list, and none of them had any results in the Record Detective area.

2)  I clicked on the Find A Grave entry in the results list, and here is the bottom of the page:


This result shows three other entries in the Record Detective section.  The other two records found by the Record Detective were for the WikiTree entree for Isaac Seaver and a Fitchburg [Mass.] Sentinel newspaper article about Isaac's death.  There was also the match to my MyHeritage family tree.

3)  What about Record Detective results for the MyHeritage trees on the Result list.  Here are two of them:



That's interesting.  My tree and these two trees have exactly the same Facts about Isaac Seaver (1823-1901), including his parents and children's names.

For the Record Detective list on the first tree, it found the three Find A Grave records for Isaac, his wife Lucretia, and his son Benjamin Seaver.  On the second tree, it found the WikiTree entry for Isaac and his son, Frank Walton Seaver.  I wonder why they are different?  And why didn't it find the Find A Grave records for Frank Walton Seaver, and for Isaac's daughter, Juliette (Seaver) Bryant, in the same cemetery.

4)  I clicked on the link for Isaac Seaver for my family tree, and saw his Info tab on his Profile page:


There are green check marks on the Find A Grave match and the newspaper article match, presumably because I Confirmed them when I found them in the Record Matches over the past 8 months.  I have not confirmed the WikiTree item yet.  I did not have to go back and attach them to Isaac Seaver.

 It appears that the Confirms done prior to the Record Detective release have been attached to people in my MyHeritage family tree. That is great - I was dreading having to do that manually for the over 2,000 Record Matches I've already confirmed.

Note that the icons used for the Record Detective (and SuperSearch) matches are generic - they are not thumbnails of the actual images.

So why did the Record Detective not find the census records for Isaac Seaver?  My guess is that the U.S. Census collections are "too new" - perhaps the Record Detective algorithm does not search them yet.  I will take a "wait and see" attitude here, hoping that more Record detective matches will appear later.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/05/does-record-detective-find-my-isaac.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

Disclosure:  I have a complimentary HyHeritage PremiumPlus subscription for my family tree site, and a complimentary Data subscription for access to the MyHeritage record collections.  The subscriptions do not affect my objectivity, and permit me to investigate and evaluate the MyHeritage capabilities.

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