Press Release: FindMyPast Family Tree Challenges

FINDMYPAST CHALLENGES FAMILY HISTORIANS TO FIND THE ANCESTORS THEY’VE NEVER MET IN THEIR TREE CHALLENGES

· From 23rd May until 30th May 2016 all records hinted against in Findmypast trees will be completely free

· This includes over 116 million United States Marriages and over 10 million Irish Catholic parish registers

· Findmypast challenges you to find at least one new ancestor through an FMP family tree

· Family historians will be supported with expert insights, help videos, how to guides and a dedicated “tree building” webinar at 11am EST on Wednesday 25^th May.

London, UK. 23 May, 2016.

Is your family history leaving you stumped? Findmypast is here to help with their “Tree Challenge”, a seven day event to encourage people to branch out and discover ancestors they’ve never met. From 9am, 23rd May until 12pm 30th May 2016, all hints on Findmypast Family trees will be completely free to view and explore.

Findmypast is challenging family historians around the world to discover at least one new ancestor by building their family tree on the site, or uploading an existing GedCom file. Researchers will be provided with daily getting started guides, expert insights, useful how to videos and a special webinar hosted by expert genealogist, Debra Chatfield, dedicated to helping you get the most out of your Findmypast family tree.

#TreeChallenge week will have something for everyone, from seasoned experts to complete beginners. Keeping a tree on Findmypast is the first step towards exploring our archive of more than 8 billion records from around the world, more than 1 billion of which aren’t available anywhere else online. That’s over 1 billion family connections you won’t find anywhere else, so explore our collections today to ensure you don’t miss out.

Findmypast trees currently provide matches from birth, baptism, marriage, death, burial and census records across the UK, US, Ireland, and Australia. This includes Findmypast’s vast collections of more than 116 million United States marriages and over 10 million Irish Catholic baptisms, marriages and burials. Findmypast’s entire collection of 570 million UK BMDs - the largest available online - will also be free for the duration of #TreeChallenge, including over 78 million exclusive parish records you won’t find anywhere else. All UK and Irish parish records are hinted against.

Uploading a tree to Findmypast is quick, easy and secure. As you add information, Findmypast does all the hard work for you by sifting through millions of records to instantly identify potential matches. Once potential matches have been made, you can quickly and easily review possible leads before adding the relevant information to your tree.

To encourage you to make the most of this feature, we are running a special tree themed competition. Share any discoveries you make on your tree via social media with the hashtag - #TreeChallenge and you could be in with the chance of winning an expert bundle worth $1000. This includes a 64 GB Ipad mini4, a three TB hard drive and a 12 month subscription to Family Tree magazine. We will also be giving away a 12 month world sub on our social media channels daily. You can find out more here.

Hinting allows you uncover records for multiple ancestors at once with virtually zero effort. The larger your tree, the more potential matches you’ll be presented with so it’s well worth your while to add as many ancestors as possible.

As we release new records, our hinting system will continue to grow, providing you with even more opportunities to find unknown ancestors.

Remembering the whole family

Young woman kissing baby in bassinet. 

c1912. Library of Congress

Yesterday I taught a workshop on beginning genealogy research.  It was a wonderful time and there was really only one question that threw me for a loop. Someone asked if they should put miscarriages or still births in a family tree.  Usually, I can give a matter of fact answer to these types of questions but yesterday was different.  You see I was already thinking about the post I wanted to write for today so the subject of pregnancy and infant loss was already churning in my head.

Not only is October National Family History month but it is also National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month with October 15th being the day that those who have lost children light a candle at 7pm to remember their babies.  If you have read my blog for the last several years you know that I tend to write very openly about my story and those of my ancestors who lost also children.  

To be frank, I am very happy that I live now, in the 21st century where the discussion of these subjects are no longer a taboo affair.  Plus that fact that I am here to tell my story because even a decade before neither I or my son would have survived. 1 in 4 women will lose a child in their lifetime to miscarriage, stillbirth, or before the child's 1st birthday due to unknown causes (SIDS).  It is a statistic that seems unreal with medical advances, and many couples never believe something that this could happen to them.  That is until it does.

Recently I had lunch with a couple of friends who are also genealogists and we turned to this subject.  The three of us had struggled with our pregnancies and periodically talk about medical advances, or to just lean on each other when we need it.  That day we talked about the unnamed and unknown children in our family trees.  The uncles, aunts, and cousins whose lives were cut short.  All the stories that we were uncovering in our own family histories with the cycles of pregnancy loss and childhood death.

As I talked yesterday about including these unknown children in family trees I noticed how quiet the room became.  I have this wonderful ability that when I am "performing" I can stay on task and on target with what I am doing.  Even though the subject of losing my own daughter is usually hard to discuss I did not stumble and I gave my own thoughts on the matter with ease.  Then I noticed the glistening eyes in the room and exactly how silent everyone was.  The 1 in 4 came back to me; someone in that room had experienced what I was speaking about.

At that point I also went a bit off topic and started to talk about finding patterns in our research to help with our family health histories.  A topic that not many American genealogists talk about or do but I know is a very popular topic in other countries.  Due to my work in genealogy I was able to trace several diseases in my family as well as other patterns which have helped doctors with my own health problems.  Not only because of the number of early births and pregnancy losses in my family but also with cancers, diabetes, and other disorders. 

My answer to the question yesterday was yes, you should include pregnancy losses and childhood deaths in your charts, or at least place them in the family notes.  I especially do this is there is any type of record available with the thought that future generations are going to find it so why keep it a secret.  Most importantly though, I do it so they will not be forgotten.  Our ancestors never forgot their children who died even if they never spoke, aloud, about them again.  It may be a simple thing to put a name and a date in a family tree, one that may seem to some ridiculous since they were unable to lead a full life, but I am here to remember and honor my family.  What better way to remember and honor the memory of a family member than to make sure future generations know they were here, even if it was not for a very long time.

Discovery! is almost as good as Eureka!

For the last year I have been playing around once a month with the MyHeritage website.  I would do more, but OMG this year has been so hectic and way to fast pace. Really, it’s June already?!

Moving on.  One of the features I am growing to love more and more is the instant discovery icon.  While I am not brave enough to merge people straight into my tree from another member’s tree it is a great way to get hints on other lines.  The hints I have found have really been worthwhile, and helped to fill in details I didn’t have.

Oh, and yes, you read that right I don’t (anymore) merge people’s trees into mine.  No matter how good the tree looks I am leery, and cautious. One too many bad apples upset the apple cart you could say.  That, however, is another post.

But back to MyHeritage. 

This discovery feature can be accessed two ways: from your family tree or the main page under discoveries.  Simply click the “Discovery!” icon and it will take you to a series of pages to confirm this is your ancestor.  From there you can choose to add those people into your tree.

The new people are actually marked “new” so if you disagree with anyone added from the merge you can go delete them.  That is my one complaint, I wish there was a way to only add the people you want to from those discoveries into your tree.  From what I read and saw there is no way to do that.  It is all or nothing. 

Lucky for me, I have a more complete tree (remember from earlier posts, I am adding people as I find through the record matches only on this site) on my desktop.  From my home tree I can compare the data before I merge it, but you may not have that ability.  It’s a neat feature, so I encourage you to explore it.  You may love it!  I know I have found it interesting so I encourage you to go and explore a little!