Thursday, February 13, 2025

Added and Updated MyHeritage Record Collections - 7 to 13 February 2025

 The following Record Collections were ADDED to or updated in the MyHeritage Collections Catalog during the week of 7 to 13 February 2025:

=============================

There are 0 ADDED record collections this past week, and MyHeritage now has a total of  7,454 record collections (an increase of 1 collection from last week), with  33,306,278,370 entries (an increase of over 35.9 million entries).  The FamilySearch Family Tree added 5.4 million entries this past week.  

NOTE:  No new collections were added this week, but the number of collections went up by 1. 

==========================================

Disclosure: I receive a complimentary subscription to MyHeritage, and have received other material consideration in past years. I uploaded my autosomal DNA raw data to their DNA product. This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products. I am a paid subscriber to Family Tree Webinars and love it.

The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/02/added-and-updated-myheritage-record_0955746242.html

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Free Marriage Records For Valentine’s Day On MyHeritage

 I received this information from Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage today:

=======================================

Love is at the heart of family history, and what better time to celebrate it than Valentine’s Day? To mark the occasion, MyHeritage is offering free access to all 279 marriage record collections — over 881 million historical records — now from February 13 through February 16, 2025!

Search marriage records now 

Marriage records offer incredible insights, revealing details like names, birthplaces, residences, and even parents’ names. This limited-time offer lets your readers dive into these records for free — no subscription required.

By the way, for those looking for a meaningful Valentine’s gift, MyStories is a beautiful way to preserve the timeless love stories in your life or your family's past. This new MyHeritage service helps individuals capture their cherished memories through guided weekly prompts and compiles them into a beautifully printed keepsake book.

You can find all the details on our blog.

==========================================

Disclosure: I receive a complimentary subscription to MyHeritage, and have received other material consideration in past years. I received a complimentary MyStories subscription this year.  I received a complimentary autosomal DNA test ;ast year. I am a paid subscriber to Family Tree Webinars and love it.This does not affect my objective analysis of MyHeritage products. 

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/02/free-marriage-records-for-valentines.html

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Treasure Chest Thursday -- 1690 Death Record of John Metcalf (1622-1690) in Medfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony

 It's Treasure Chest Thursday - an opportunity to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history research and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1690 death record of John Metcalf in Medfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony:

The death entry for John Medcalfe  is the ninth entry from the bottom in right-hand column:


The transcription of the information on this record is:

"John Mercalf Sen'r died October 8't 1690"

The source citation for this marriage record is:

"Medfield, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States records," John Metcalf death entry, 8 October 1690; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G979-7GCF : Feb 13, 2025), image 173 of 601; original records in Medfield (Massachusetts) Town Clerk office.

This is certainly a Derivative Source record (because it appears to be a handwritten copy of an original town record done after 1800, or perhaps even after 1900) with Primary Information and Direct Evidence of the name, death date and place of death of John Metcalf in Medfield town.

John Metcalf (1622-1690) was baptized 5 September 1622 in Norwich, Norfolk, England, the sonf of Michael Metcalf and Sarah Elwyn; he died 8 October 1690 in Medfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He married Mary Chickering (1628-1698) on 23 March 1647 in Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Mary was born about 1628 in Ringsfield, Suffolk, England, the daughter of Francis Chickering and Anne Fiske; she died 15 March 1698 in Medfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

John and Mary (Chickering) Metcalf are my 9th great-grandparents, through their son Michael Metcalf (1650-1691) who married Elizabwth Bowers (1654-1724) in 1676 in Medfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
   
                                   ===========================================

Disclosure:  I have a paid All-Access subscription to Ancestry.com now.  Ancestry.com has provided a complimentary subscription and material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and has hosted events and meals that I have attended in Salt Lake City, in past years.


Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  All comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately after posting.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

FamilySearch Full-Text Search Update -- 12 February 2025

 I've always been a numbers guy, so when a database like FamilySearch's Full-Text Search comes along, I wonder if it is growing slowly or quickly.

The good news is -- It's still growing quickly, like every week it adds new record collections and millions of records.  But how quickly?  The last update on Genea-Musings was FamilySearch Full-Text Search Update -- 15 January 2025, four weeks ago. 

1)  Here is the Full-Text Search home page on 12 February 2025 (the last review was on 15 January 2025, four weeks ago):

The user can use the search fields to search for keywords, a name, a location (pick from a list), and a year range (e.g. 1776-2025).  

Or, the user can search for a specific collection using the "Find a Collection" search field.

There is a link to "Browse All Collections" which provides a list of the available collections.  When I click that, and select "Last Updated" I can see:

It says there are 3,453 collections today (down 31 (-0.89%) from four weeks ago). Clicking on "Collection Title" will provide an alphabetical collection list, and clicking on "Records" will provide the list by most records.   

I wanted to know which collection had the most images so I clicked the "Records" title.  This week it is "United States, New York, Migrations, from 1901 to 2013" with 55,642,357 images.  This is up 4 images from four weeks ago.

Note that the last collection updated was on 14 January 2025.  They have not added a collection for four weeks, and have removed 33 collections since late December; I assume that the removed collections have been added or merged to Library digital collections or to indexed digital collections.

2)  I also want to know how many records (images?) there are on Full-Text Search.  I added the year range "1500-1800" and saw:


I had to do this four times to get the full count of images using ranges from 1500 to 1800, 1801-1900, 1901-1960, and 1961-2024, and then adding them up.

That gave me a total of all Records (Images?) of 1,399,518,662  (up 1,088,968 - up 0.07% from four weeks ago).

3)  What about "Results" by Country?  When I added "United States" to the Place field, I had to break the year range into four groups to get answers and add them up.

It found 1,163,732,518 results (down 48,694,268 from last week - down 4.02% from 4 weeks ago) for "United States."  Since I used a "Place" search term, that probably mean the number of matches to the "Place" term on the available indexed images.  

Doing a similar test for different countries, I made this list today:

*  England = 20,437,424
*  Ireland = 15,027,649
*  Wales =  567,217
*  Scotland = 985,237
*  Canada = 46,230,908
*  Mexico = 10,446,691
*  Australia = 16,829,967
*  New Zealand = 6,750,140
*  France = 7,713,180
*  Germany = 12,886,802
*  Netherlands = 469,811
*  Belgium = 954,512
*  Poland = 3,918,834
*  Finland - 953,324
*  Sweden = 3,593,958
*  Norway = 2,891,639
*  Denmark = 1,855,188

Note that some of the "Results" numbers may not be for records in the stated Place (e.g., "France" might be a town in the USA).

4)  When I looked for these numbers last week on 15 January 2025, I found:

*  Number of collections:  3,484
*  Number of "Results" (with no search terms):   1,398,509,694

And now the numbers are:

*  Number of collections:  3,453
*  Number of "Results" (with no search terms):  1,399,518,662

The change over the last four weeks for Full-Text Search is:

*  Number of collections:  down 31 (down 0.89%)
*  Number of "Results" with no search terms: up 1,088,968 (up 0.07%)

It appears that they removed (or merged) some record collections, but added some records to existing collections.  Or they removed more than 31 collections and added some new collections - it's hard to tell.

5)  The FamilySearch Images collection has 5.602.8 billion images as I write this (an increase of 23.3 million, up 0.042% from four weeks ago).  

Lastly, we know that Full-Text Search is using the "Images" collection on FamilySearch to add them to Full-Text Search, to keyword index them, and to transcribe them.  So Full-Text Search has about 24.98% of the "Images" collection processed as of today.

This is a Benchmark for 12 February 2025.  Let's see how quickly the numbers grow over the next few months.  

=============================================

The URL for this post is:  https://www.geneamusings.com/2025/02/familysearch-full-text-search-update-12.html

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on X, Facebook, Bluesky, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Please note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. 

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Genealogy Education Bytes - Week of 6 to 12 February 2025

 Welcome to Genealogy Education Bytes, posted on Wednesday afternoon for the past week, where we try to highlight some of the most important genealogy and family history education items that came across my desktop since the last issue.


1) Upcoming Conferences and  Institutes 

* Conference Keeper Calendar - has many links to register for  and/or view conferences and institutes

*  RootsTech 2025 (Free/$$) - 6 to 8 March 2025 - Virtual (Free) and In-Person ($$) (Salt Lake City, Utah)

*  Australasian Conference 2025 - Connections: Past, Present, Future ($$) - 21 to 24 March 2025 - In-Person (Brisbane, Australia)

*   OGS 2025 Conference "Light Up Your Genealogy" ($$) - 30 April to 3 May 2025 - In-Person (Sandusky, Ohio)

*  NGS 2025 Family History Conference "Tales & Trails" ($$) - 23 to 25 May 2025 - In-Person (Louisville, Ky.)

2 ) Upcoming Seminars, Webinars and Online Classes (times are US Pacific):

* Conference Keeper Calendar - has many links to register for and/or view webinars and classes.

*  FamilySearch Library Classes and Webinars (Free)

*  GenWebinars ($$)

*  THE Family History Show ($$) - 8 February 2025 - Online


*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Wednesday, 12 February, 11 a.m.:  Finding Your Elusive Female Ancestors in Local Archives by Melissa Barker

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Friday, 14 February, 9 a.m.:  Creating Children’s Stories from Ancestral Lives by Michael John Neill

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Friday, 14 February, 11 a.m.:  Introducing 10 Million Names by Cynthia Evans

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Tuesday, 18 February, 5 p.m.:  Applying Research Standards to the Census by Diane MacLean Boumenot

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Wednesday, 19 February, 11 a.m.:  Navigating the Mayflower Families Silver Books: A Guide for Genealogists by Bonnie Wade Mucia

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Friday, 21 February, 9 a.m.:  Research Your Roots in Alsace Lorraine by Gail Blankenau

*  Family Tree Webinars (free for a week) - Friday, 21 February, 11 a.m.:  Soldiers, Squatters and Settlers by Christine Woodcock

3) Recent Podcasts:






4) Recent YouTube Videos:

*  Aimee Cross - Genealogy Hints:  When They Divorced - Finding the Record






*  Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist:  I Had Come Home | Stories That Live In Us | Episode 28



*  Family History on the AI Fast Track:  FIVE Surprising Clues About Your Ancestor’s Immigration Journey








*  Journey Through the Generations:  RootsTech 2025! Get Ready!!!


*  MyHeritage:  Introducing MyStories





5) Did you miss the last post in this series - Genealogy Education Bytes -  30 January to 5 February 2025?  Read past Genealogy Education Bytes here.

==============================================

NOTE:  If  I missed something important in this time period, please let me know in a comment or an email. 

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share your comment on X, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at   randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. 

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Austin Carringer's Machine in the 1890s -- (Not So) Wordless Wednesday #857

This is one of the most interesting family photographs I have:

The front:

The back:


The back of the photograph says:

"Interior Russ mill and machine where Austin worked for many years - Ed"

"this was my Lathe Sticker and saw"

"Austin" is my great-grandfather, Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946) worked at the Russ Planing Mill in National City, California (at the corner of 9th Avenue and 18th Street in 1889) during the 1890s and in the 1900s he worked in the Russ Lumber and Mill in downtown San Diego.  

"Ed" is probably Austin's brother, Harvey Edgar Carringer (1852-1946), but it may be someone who worked with Austin in the mill.  

I think that Austin wrote the second line on the back of the photograph.

This photograph was in the family photograph collection I inherited from my mother, who got it from her father, Lyle Carringer, the only son of Aust and Della Carringer.

This photograph is a part of my family history.  

=============================================


Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.    I moderate all comments and they may not appear immediately - please write only one comment.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Genealogy News Bytes - Week of 5 to 11 February 2025

  Welcome to Genealogy News Bytes, posted on Tuesday afternoon for the past week, where we try to highlight the most important genealogy and family history news  items that came across our desktop since the last issue.    


1)  Genealogy and Family History News Articles:







2)  DNA-Related News Articles





4)  Genealogy Software/App News



5)  New or Updated Genealogy Digital Record Collections:











6)  Did you miss the last post in this series?  See Genealogy News Bytes - 29 January to 4 February 2025.

                          =========================================


Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.  Note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately.

Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com. 

Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)