Follow Friday ~ Fab Finds for April 8, 2016

My Fab Finds for this week are (in no particular order)

1. Family History Magic & Involving Your Family! AND Relish those Thank Yous by Amberly, author of The Genealogy Girl
2. Genealogy & Food: Beware the bugaboo of cutting-edge technology. A recipe for disaster? by Scott Phillips, author of Onward To Our Past
3. Friend of Friends Friday~Finding Their Names by Cheri Hudson Passey, author of Carolina Girl Genealogy
4. NGS 2016: Presentation Composition by Jill Morelli, author of Genealogy Certification: My Personal Journal
5. Getting The Facts Right: Ancestors Who Amended the Records by Jake Fletcher, author of Travelogues of a Genealogist
6. Genealogy Tip of the Day App – FREE! by Thomas MacEntee, author of GeneaBloggers
7. Tuesday's Tip: How to Index Your Family's Documents by Marian Burk Wood, author of Climbing My Family Tree
8. 3 Reasons Why You Should Know Your Local History by Tyler S. Stahle for FamilySearch Blog
9. Wait! What?!! What To Do When An Unexpected DNA Match Happens by Melyssa, author of The Golden Age of Genealogy
10. The Family History Guide is Now Available Online by Dick Eastman, author of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter
11. Oh, the advantages of having my family tree online at my blog! by Heather Wilkinson Rojo, author of Nutfield Genealogy
12. My latest Excel spreadsheet by Michele Simmons Lewis, author of Ancestoring
13. ALL Databases on American Ancestors FREE, April 6-13, 2016 by Julie Cahill Tarr, author of Julie’s Genealogy & History Hub
14. Don't Overlook Alternate Genealogy Records by Lorine McGinnis Schulze, author of Olive Tree Genealogy
15. 5 Ways to Prepare for Your Courthouse Research Trip by Amy Johnson Crow, author of the Amy Johnson Crow Blog
16. The name game by Judy G. Russell, author of The Legal Genealogist
17. The Wonderful World of Webinars by Diana Elder for Family Locket
18. The Family History Guide now in all 4800+ Family History Centers by James Tanner, author of Genealogy’s Star
19. Letters offer Front Row Seat to Behind-the-Scenes Adventures in Life on the Road with Chautauqua, c. 1911 by Patricia Desmond Biallas, author of GeneaJourneys

RootsTech 2016 ~

• RootsTech 2016 Conference Blog Compendium - UPDATED! by Randy Seaver, author of Genea-Musings

This week's "May I Introduce To You" Interview on GeneaBloggers.com

• May I Introduce to You . . . Debby Warner Anderson

New Blog Discoveries

• Finding Folk
• The Genealogy Search
• Time Wanderer: Stories of those who came before...
• Discovering Family Roots
• Heritage Hunter 411
• The KinSeeker
• The Pioneer/Honeymoon Trail
• Claiming Kin

In Case You Missed Them….My Contribution to the Blogosphere Last Week

Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog

• Little Frans Gustaf Carlsson Has Been Found
• Celebrating My 4th Blogiversary ~ What An Amazing Four Years It's Been!
• MyHeritage Releases Exclusive Book Matching Technology for Family History

Jana’s Place

• Protecting Her Nest

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2016 Copyright by Jana Iverson Last, All Rights Reserved

MyHeritage Releases Exclusive Book Matching Technology for Family History

The following is a press release from MyHeritage ~

MyHeritage Releases Exclusive Book Matching Technology for Family History

MyHeritage users to automatically receive relevant excerpts from digitized books that reveal information about their ancestors and relatives

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, April 7, 2016 — MyHeritage, the fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history, has launched today a revolutionary addition to its suite of technologies: Book Matching. This innovation automatically researches users' family trees in historical books with high precision.

In April 2012 MyHeritage launched SuperSearch™, a search engine for historical records, which has since then grown to include 6.6 billion historical records, including birth, marriage, death and census records. By implementing its vision of enhancing genealogy with technology, MyHeritage then developed a line of unique and sophisticated technologies that automatically match the records from the search engine to the 32 million family trees uploaded by its users.

In December 2015, MyHeritage expanded its data collections to include digitized historical books, with an initial corpus of 150,000 books of high genealogical value. This collection was tripled last week to 450,000 books with 91 million pages. With a team of more than 50 dedicated curators, MyHeritage aims to add hundreds of millions of pages of digitized books to the collection each year.

As of today, MyHeritage users will receive matches between profiles in their family trees and the books from this collection. The Book Matching technology analyzes the book texts semantically, understanding complex narrative that describes people, and matches it to the 2 billion individuals in MyHeritage family trees with extremely high accuracy. This breakthrough technology is the first of its kind, and is exclusive to MyHeritage.

Book Matching has produced more than 80 million matches, and this number will continue to grow as the collection grows and as the family trees on MyHeritage continue to expand. Book Matching is currently available for English books, and the technology is being enhanced to cover additional languages. In addition, de-duplication technology is being added in the next few weeks to remove duplicate books that have been scanned and OCRed more than once by different sources.

“No one has ever done this before," said MyHeritage Chief Technology Officer, Sagi Bashari. “Our Book Matching technology reads hundreds of thousands of books for you, every hour, comparing them to your family tree and pointing you to relevant excerpts about your ancestors with almost no false positives. MyHeritage is the first to offer full semantic text analysis in this way, and the genealogical breakthroughs speak for themselves. You will be amazed at the value of books for your research."

“I've personally seen what this new technology can do, using my own family tree,” said blogger and lifelong genealogist Leland Meitzler. “It found well over 500 books with information on my family, most of which I'd never seen before. All kinds of ancestors and relatives can now be added to my tree! To say that this new search technology changes everything would be an overstatement, but not by much.”

Genealogist James Tanner said: “This advanced technology from MyHeritage opens up a whole new world of research possibilities that were almost completely unavailable in the past. I have always valued the content of the older genealogy books because the people who wrote them were contemporaries with my ancestors. Being able to search these books on a large scale will change the way most of us have been doing genealogy and our attitude towards the books that have been there all along but were not searchable.”

Dick Eastman, of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, summed up MyHeritage’s latest innovation: "MyHeritage Book Matching is like having a huge library at your fingertips, with a twist; there is a magical librarian who tells you exactly which books have information about your ancestors."

Book Matches are available at www.myheritage.com and are generated automatically for any family tree built on the website or imported into it. A Data subscription is required to view Book Matches.

 About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is the world's fastest-growing destination for discovering, preserving and sharing family history. As technology thought leaders, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s accessible and instantly rewarding. Its global user community enjoys access to a massive library of historical records, the most internationally diverse collection of family trees and ground­breaking search and matching technologies. Trusted by millions of families, MyHeritage provides an easy way to share family stories, past and present, and treasure them for generations to come. MyHeritage is available in 42 languages. www.myheritage.com

Celebrating My 4th Blogiversary ~ What An Amazing Four Years It's Been!

Wow! It's already been four years since I started this blog. Seriously, time has just flown by. So many amazing things have happened since I pushed the publish button on my first blog post four years ago.

Blogging has enriched my life in so many ways and has provided me with many wonderful and exciting opportunities.

Here are some highlights from last year.

Blog Book

I created my first blog book using Blurb.com and on April 14, 2015 I shared my excitement about receiving my blog book in the mail in my post My Blog Book is Here!

New Website

I decided to create a website using Weebly.com. It's basically a site to share the many places I can be found online. I wrote about it in my post My New Website.

Presenter

On Saturday, May 16, 2015, I taught a class at our local "Discover Your Family Day." I wrote about that in my post My "Family History Blogs and Social Media" Class. I've also taught that class at two other Family Discovery Day events and I'm scheduled to teach it at the Fresno Genealogical Society monthly meeting in June.

Official Blogger

In May of 2015 I received an email inviting me to be an official blogger for the BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy, which was held July 28-31, 2015. That was such a delightful surprise. What an honor to be invited to this event. I wrote about it in my post Official Conference Blogger ~ 2015 BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy.

RootsTech 2016 Ambassador

In the fall of last year, I received another exciting email. This time it was congratulating me on the fact that I was selected to be a RootsTech 2016 Ambassador. What an honor! On September 17, 2015, I wrote about it in this post RootsTech 2016, Here I Come...As an Ambassador!

Meeting Fellow Genealogy Bloggers

I've met so many wonderful people in the genealogy community both online and in person. Attending the BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy and RootsTech 2016 gave me the opportunity to finally meet genealogy friends that I had only known online.

Photo Above: Official GeneaBloggers at RootsTech 2016 Photo, photo courtesy of Michelle Goodrum.

Photo Above: From the BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy

Photo on Left (Left to Right): Me, Janet Hovorka, Peggy Lauritzen. Middle Photo (Left to Right): Renee Zamora, Me. Photo on Right (Left to Right): Lynn Broderick, Me.

Photos Above: From the BYU Conference on Family History & Genealogy

Photo on Left (Left to Right): Janet Hovorka, Valerie Elkins Me. Middle Photo (Left to Right): Sue Maxwell, Me. Photo on Right (Left to Right): Me, Ancestry Insider, Lynn Broderick

Tweets by RootsTech and FamilySearch

I was thrilled and honored that RootsTech and FamilySearch shared a couple of my blog posts on Twitter. So cool!

I was especially flattered by the very nice compliment by RootsTech at the bottom of the tweet above.

FamilySearch Blog Included My Tweet

I was flattered and excited that one of my RootsTech tweets was included in the article RootsTech 2016 Recap: Tweets Tell the Story of this Amazing Family History Event. This article appeared on the FamilySearch Blog on February 12, 2016.

Brief Appearance in the April 2016 LDS World Report Segment About RootsTech

The other day my husband got a text from a friend telling him that he saw me in the World Report between General Conference sessions. We were watching General Conference on BYUtv and missed the April 2016 World Report. Thank you Eric for the heads up! In the World Report, there was a segment about RootsTech beginning at the 38:30 mark in the video. I can be seen sitting in the Media Hub inside the Expo Hall.

Thank You!

Thank you to my husband and family for supporting me as I share my family history through blogging.

Thank you to my wonderful readers, for taking the time to read my posts, liking and sharing my posts on various social media platforms, and for leaving comments. I appreciate all of you!

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2016 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Little Frans Gustaf Carlsson Has Been Found

Sweden Household Examination Book - Lista AI 18, 1881 - 1885

I received an email from MyHeritage telling me that there were new record matches waiting for me to review. One of them caught my eye. It was a record match for my 1st cousin 3 times removed. Her name is Hulda Sofia Carlsson and she was born in Lista, Sodermanland, Sweden on 18 May 1883.

There were actually several record matches for me to review about Hulda. One of them was this Sweden Household Examination record at the top of this post. It lists her as a child in the household of her parents Carl Gustaf Carlsson and Anna Katarina Persdotter (my paternal 2nd great-granduncle and aunt). This specific record is for the time period between 1881-1885. ¹

I noticed in this record that a son named Frans Gustaf was listed in the family as well. He's listed on line 8 and his name is crossed out. His death date is at the end of line 8 in the red box below.

Sweden Household Examination Book - Lista AI 18, 1881 - 1885

Frans was previously unknown to me. I didn't have him in my Legacy database. It turned out that FamilySearch did have him in their database, but didn't have any parents listed for him. I was able to attach him to his parents in FamilySearch and I added him to my database as well.

Little Frans Gustaf has been waiting a very long time to be found. He was only 5 months old when he passed away on 19 February 1885. He was born on 9 September 1884 in Gillberga, Sodermanland, Sweden. I'm so grateful I was able to find him.

Through further searching in the Sweden Household Examination Books for the family of my 2nd great-granduncle and aunt, Carl Gustaf Carlsson and Anna Katarina Persdotter, I was able to find another previously unknown to me daughter. I will share information about her in a future post.

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2016 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

---

1 "Sweden Household Examination Books, 1880 - 1920," database, MyHeritage.com, (www.myheritage.com : accessed 2 April 2016), Huda Sofia Carlsson, Lista, Sodermanlands, Sweden, page 95; citing Book Lista AI 18, 1881 - 1885, image provide by ArkivDigital.^↩

Follow Friday ~ Fab Finds for April 1, 2016

My Fab Finds for this week are (in no particular order)

1. #MyColorfulAncestry for Kids by Emily Kowalski Schroeder, author of Growing Little Leaves: Genealogy for Children
2. Why You Don’t Want to Toss Grandma’s Buttons in the Trash by Denise Levenick, author of The Family Curator
3. A Little Thing That Went Viral... #MyColorfulAncestry by J. Paul Hawthorne, author of GeneaSpy
4. In Your Easter Bonnet AND Picture This! by Michelle Ganus Taggart, author of A Southern Sleuth
5. Viewing Our Ancestors By Location, A Good Visual Exercise by Jenna Mills, author of Desperately Seeking Surnames
6. 5 Hidden Treasures for Ohio Genealogy AND Breaking Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone by Amy Johnson Crow, author of the Amy Johnson Crow Blog
7. How to Color Code Your Genealogy for Places by Dan Bodenheimer, author of The Cousin Detective
8. Crippin & Co Photographer – photo reunited! by Simon Last, author of Charnwood Genealogy
9. MY FIVE GENERATIONS ANCESTRAL OCCUPATIONS CHART by Bill West, author of West in New England
10. To watermark or not to watermark? This is the question! by Heather Wylie, author of The Unexpected Discovery
11. Mystery Monday: Hiding in Plain Sight by Wendy Mathias, author of Jollett, Etc.
12. Sometimes you just have to scratch your head by Debi Austen, author of Who Knew?
13. Patience, Grasshopper by Michele Simmons Lewis, author of Ancestoring
14. Seven Tips for Writing a Family History by Yvette Hoitink, author of Dutch Genealogy
15. Looking at Locations by Linda McCauley, author of Documenting the Details
16. Reigniting the spark AND 12 Golden Rules of Genealogy by Janine Adams, author of Organize Your Family History
17. 8 Steps for Protecting Water-Damaged Photos by Maggie Mora for Ancestry Blog
18. My FamilySearch Service Mission - Month One: The Call by Melyssa, author of The Golden Age of Genealogy
19. Why Do We Do Genealogy? AND How Mobile Were Our Ancestors? by Lorine McGinnis Schulze for Legacy News
20. My Haplogroup Tree by Lara Diamond, author of Lara’s Jewnealogy

RootsTech 2016 ~

• RootsTech 2016 Conference Blog Compendium - UPDATED! by Randy Seaver, author of Genea-Musings
• Strengthening Children Through Family History: Bruce Feiler’s Tips from RootsTech 2016

This week's "May I Introduce To You" Interview on GeneaBloggers.com

• May I Introduce To You . . . On Spring Break 2016

New Blog Discoveries

• ANCESTOR INTRODUCTIONS
• Stray Leaves
• Then and Now
• Eggleston Roots
• Creative Gene
• Food.Family.Ephemera
• Onward To Our Past
• From Helen V Smith's Keyboard

In Case You Missed Them….My Contribution to the Blogosphere Last Week

Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog

• Happy Easter! He Lives! Hallelujah!
• Favorite Family Recipes ~ Texas Tater Casserole
• Who Do You Think You Are? Live Returns To The NEC
• RootsTech 2016 Swag

Jana’s Place

• Happy Easter!
• Home Improvements ~ Choosing New Flooring for Our Home

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2016 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved