MyHeritage has just announced that they have two million 1940 US Census images online, and the first searchable index.

From their press release:

MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web today, announced the availability of the first indexed records from the 1940 US Census, searchable for free by names, facts, and other criteria, on http://www.myheritage.com/1940census. In addition, MyHeritage has published two million images of the 1940 US Federal Census out of the total 3.8 million, with complete availability of all images expected in less than 24 hours.

The highly anticipated searchable indexed records and images are amongst the very first to appear on the Internet as millions of people rush to satisfy their curiosity and access one of the most significant and meaningful sets of historical records ever to be released. The first indexed records come from Bristol County in Rhode Island, with a deluge of additional records to be added by MyHeritage each day. The images currently available … cover all of New York, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island, Missouri, Wyoming, and Nevada. Images for additional states are added every hour.

MyHeritage is the only provider to make the 1940 US census searchable in 38 languages. … The census images are also currently available on the additional historical content sites owned by MyHeritage on http://worldvitalrecords.com/1940census/ and http://familylink.com/1940census/ – with initial searchable indexes expected to be live soon on these web sites, and to grow throughout 2012.

While genealogists around the world are searching for their relatives by using addresses to look up enumeration districts, then scanning through pages of records, previous US censuses have been indexed by several genealogy sites, including MyHeritage and WorldVitalRecords. MyHeritage is the first site to provide an online searchable name index of any 1940 US census records.

What this particular press release didn’t mention is the search technology available at MyHeritage. As records are indexed, they will automatically match up the names to the people found in users’ trees on their web site, alerting users to the census listings even before they may know the location has been indexed. The first states that MyHeritage made available for browsing on April 2nd were New York and Rhode Island.

It is April 2nd and it’s Census Day!

At midnight, three companies picked up their copies of the census from NARA and are already busy uploading the files. As of 12:30am MDT, Ancestry.com has some images available for DC, Nevada, and it appears they have just begun to upload Maine. There will probably be more by the time you read this. No sightings yet on some of the other sites, but they will have some available later in the day.

At 8:30am Eastern Time (6:30am Mountain), there will be an opening event webcast from NARA on their 1940 census site. At 9am, all of the images for the entire country should be available at that site. NARA is not creating an index, so you will need ED numbers to find any records. Also keep in mind that their servers may not be able to handle the traffic, so have a little patience and check on the other major sites that are also hosting images to see if they have uploaded the locations you need: FamilySearch.org, Archives.com, findmypast.co.uk, Ancestry.com, and WorldVitalRecords.com. The images will be free on all of the sites.

In addition, Ancestry.com has made available one billion records from 1930-1950 on their web site until April 10th. Some of the records in this collection include the 1930 census, city directories, obituaries, birth indexes, marriage details, naturalization records, and more.

And don’t forget to sign up to index. Our group, UJGS, still has only one member.

Jewish Records Indexing -Poland (JRI-Poland) has introduced a new tool to their web site called the Surname Distribution Mapper.

[It is] designed to help genealogy researchers graphically understand where their family names first appeared in the 19th century records and visualize how the family spread throughout Poland into the first part of the 20th century.

Using modern mapping technology provided by Google Maps, the Surname Distribution Mapper allows users to graphically display their search results using a tree icon… By running the cursor over each tree icon, a user can view a popup window displaying the number of vital record entries found in various towns in the JRI-Poland database. Clicking on the balloon brings the user to the familiar JRI-Poland search results for detailed viewing of a town’s entries.

Additionally, and especially exciting for researchers, the Surname Distribution Mapper can display results for specific decades or in a “progressive mode,” where tree icons appear successively by decade to give the researcher an idea of the movement of their family around Poland and the Western Ukraine.

After reading the press release, I realized that there was more to this than I’d originally noticed. As before, from the JRI-Poland home page (link at the top of this post), you go to “Search the Database”. Near the top of that page, click on the text below “Surname Distribution Mapper”. Type in your surname and click on “Map”. Then be a little patient; it’s not instantaneous.

The results will be a map of Poland overlaid with trees, the sizes of the trees indicating the number of records for each location. It uses the Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching. For my own Mularzewicz family, this works great, as there are a few spelling variations in the records/transcriptions. Unfortunately, my Szleper name, while focused on Kalisz correctly, also focused on L’viv and the name Szlimper, which I consider a false match.

You can zoom into the map if the trees are too condensed. Moving your mouse over each tree will show a pop-up of the city/town name and the number of records with that name, including a link to see those hits in the usual table format of the site.

The feature I hadn’t noticed before is the “Time Period” menu just below where you enter the surname. You can choose one decade at a time to see where the name first appeared and then watch it spread out over time. It beings with “All” time as the default.

There are a couple of minor limitations. This is searching the JRI-Poland database, which anyone who has used it as much as I have knows that not every vital event was recorded. If an event was recorded in a different town from where it took place, it will show up where recorded, even if the JRI-Poland listing specifies the town name. For instance, many of those Lomza hits for Mularzewicz actually took place in Rutki, but because the two locations are relatively close, the mapping information is still useful.

The search includes all of the JRI-Poland data, including any census records, books of residents, or other material, along with the vital records of birth, marriage, and death.

The Surname Distribution Mapper is a useful addition to the JRI-Poland database. Instead of searching through the results for each gubernia, or trying to find the towns on the map to determine their proximity, this new tool shows where the surname can be found on the map for you. And the additional “progressive mode” helps you track the surname over time. Before now, I had no idea the first sighting of Mularzewicz in the records was in Sniadowo.

Stanley Diamond, the Executive Director of JRI-Poland, forwarded the press release to us. Any opinions expressed in this blog post are that of the author and not the society.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, also called “The Joint”) has announced the launch of the JDC Archives web site at http://archives.jdc.org/. It is the culmination of a five year digitization project. The digital collection contains searchable text from collections from 1914-1932, a names index of over 500,000 names, a detailed interactive timeline, historically-themed exhibitions, over 45,000 photographs, and more.

Some highlights of the site include a Family Researcher section, the Names Database, and Inventory of what is currently searchable, and Video Tutorials.

The New York Times has an article about the launch of the web site, along with a Slideshow with eight archival images.

The official press release is available from the JDC web site.

The JDC was founded in 1914 as a distribution channel for funds from American Jews to Palestine. It is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization, working in more than 70 countries and in Israel to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and provide immediate relief and long-term development support for victims of natural and man-made disasters.

Does the JDC have a piece of your family’s history? Visit their site today to find out.