In honor of this special day, we are proud to provide free access - through May 28 -  to our most popular collections of US military records.

Search now

Journey back in time to some of the most important conflicts in world history that not only  impacted families in the US, but millions of families worldwide.

Formerly known as Decoration Day - later changed to Memorial Day and observed on the last Monday of May - traditions include placing flowers on graves of fallen soldiers, flying flags at half-mast from dawn until noon, parades, picnics, fireworks and more..

The observance originated following the Civil War, but was extended after World War I to honor all those who died in battle while serving in the US military.

Memorial Day celebrates family heritage, as we remember our ancestors and look forward to a good future.

Families get together to share stories of military ancestors, to remember the lives of those who fought for the nation, and to visit the graves of ancestors, whether or not they were casualties of war. Many of us can claim at least one relative who has served in the military, or been impacted by war.

Interested in digging deeper into the lives of your ancestors and their military stories?

Discover the wartime roles your relatives played  in our online record database of US military records. This free offer ends May 28, so hurry and start your search today!

MyHeritage wishes a meaningful and enjoyable celebration to you and your family .

How will you observe this special day?

Let us know in the comments below, or on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Here's a short video which explains how it works:

Record Detective™ essentially turns historical records into smart objects that determine which people they are about, and it automatically conducts additional research about those people. Historical records are invaluable to everyone interested in their family history. With over 4 billion records available, MyHeritage provides a wealth of documents enabling you to make exciting discoveries.

Here's an example of how Record Detective™ starts from a California Deaths record about Frederick Thomas Blanchard, and is able to locate a newspaper article that is more than 100 years old, describing how he met and married his sweetheart:

A death record provides insight into an individual with this newspaper article record mentioning his marriage. (Click to zoom)

Discovered someone in MyHeritage's U.S. Census collection? MyHeritage will provide census entries of that same person in earlier or later years of the census and go further to do it for the entire household!

For example, gravestones of the person’s spouse, newspaper articles about the person’s son or a parent's immigration papers, will be displayed right on the census page. This is all done using highly accurate technology with almost no false positives.

A 1940 US Census Record pulls up a list of related records and people for those also listed in the original record, leading to new discoveries. (Click to zoom)

As you can see in the above screenshot, records about any one individual may also refer to other people, such as a marriage or census document which often lists household members. If the people connected to the record are in family trees on MyHeritage, Record Detective™ will display links to the profiles of these people.

"Related people" are MyHeritage family tree profiles that are connected to the person or people in the record being viewed.

You can learn more about any record or profile provided by the Record Detective™ by hovering over its thumbnail. The summary will show a confidence score, ranging from a half star to five stars, indicating the likelihood that the historical record correctly belongs to the associated individual. Click the name of the record or person, which are links, to view them in more detail.

Hover the mouse on the record's thumbnail to reveal a tooltip with a detailed summary of the record and the confidence score of this find according to the Record Detective™.

Record Detective™ can be accessed in two main ways, through Record Matches and from MyHeritage’s online digital archive, SuperSearch.

Record Matches
A Record Match is a document considered relevant to your family’s history, such as a birth record of your ancestors, a relative's gravestone photo or a newspaper article. Record Matches are calculated automatically for all MyHeritage family trees.

1) When logged into your family site, visit the Record Matches page in the Family Tree menu. You can view Record Matches by people or by historical record collections.

Record Matches (Click to zoom)

2) If you are viewing matches by collection, click on the View Matches button next to any collection to view the Record Matches found in it.

(Click to zoom)

3) Click the blue button labeled "Review match" to view any match in detail, through the record page. The census document shown above lists other household members when the census was conducted. Here, the head of the household was Charles Yutze, married to Alice, and their children, Charles, Dorothy and William.

Record Detective™ shows all records found for all members of a household in the census (Click to zoom)

In this example, we started with a Record Match of Alice Yutze in the census, and the Record Detective™ located 7 more records for Alice and her family, including census records from 1930, a tombstone record, and more.

SuperSearch
Record Detective™ is also very useful when you find a relevant historical record by searching SuperSearch, the search engine of historical records on MyHeritage which is your gateway to billions of historical records.

1) Go to SuperSearch on www.myheritage.com/research and search for any individual you are interested in.

2) Get a list of all records and family tree profiles matching your search. Click any of them.

Results of a search in SuperSearch (Click to zoom)

3) In every record page, Record Detective™ will try to find more records about the people in the record you found, and family tree profiles of these people.

A 1940 US Census Record pulls up records for the individual searched for and other members of his household. (Click to zoom)

Finding new relatives is exciting! If you found a family tree profile that is relevant to your search, please note that you can contact the MyHeritage user who submitted that profile. That user is usually related to that person, and therefore potentially related to you too.

Found a relative through Record Detective™? Contact the tree owner to exchange more information and photos, and expand your knowledge.

Privacy
Our strict privacy policy ensures that no profile of any living person will ever be listed as "Related people" unless they are from your own family site. That means strangers will never see living people from your tree as "Related people".

At the moment, if you've found a good record or profile through Record Detective™ - and the likelihood is that almost every record or profile it shows will be correct and relevant - there is no way to automatically associate that record with your tree. But we will be adding this soon. So for now, view the record or profile and extract relevant information manually into your family tree.

Summary
Record Detective™ is a new game-changing technology from MyHeritage, which will provide you with many records, other records and tree profiles about the very same people. It is highly accurate and will not waste your time with false positives. It is original and there is nothing quite like it in the industry. It doesn't replace manual research, but it can often help you save time and find relevant information you may never have found on your own. A summary of any record may be viewed for free. For full access to all historical records, choose between affordable pay-as-you-go credits or a Data subscription.

At MyHeritage, we are committed to continue to innovate and develop new technologies that will make family history more exciting and rewarding for you.

We invite you to try out Record Detective™, at the bottom of every record page, to see what you may discover!

Enjoy,
The MyHeritage Team

MyHeritage Record Matches were released last year and won acclaim for their power and accuracy. However, until now users were on their own when it came to extracting valuable information from each Record Match, into their family trees. This had to be done manually for each Record Match. Many users simply confirmed correct Record Matches without improving their family trees based on new information learned from each match. Some have taken the information, but without adding a citation to allow other genealogists to trace the source of its piece of information taken -- because of the manual efforts involved.

The new feature, Extract Info from Records is a much-needed solution to the above problems. It lets you easily extract details found in any confirmed Record Match, and copy them - in just one click - into the relevant profile in your family tree. This new feature conveniently displays the information found in the historical record and compares it to the information in your tree, side-by-side. It highlights for you information in the record that is new or better than the corresponding information in your tree. Now you can easily enjoy the full power of Record Matches and add new and useful sourced information straight to your tree, helping you learn more about your ancestors and enrich your family history.

Got a Record Match in our Canadian Headstones collection? The new Extract Info page lets you take the new and improved information directly to your family tree (click to zoom)

Each field of information in the record that is new or better than in your tree, can be copied into your tree by clicking the corresponding [>>] button. This puts YOU in charge of selectively taking the information you want. Or click the [>>>] button at the very bottom if you wish to take all the available information into your tree. Finally click OK to save it. By "better information" we refer to cases where the historical record contains more elaborate information than in your tree. For example, a full day/month/year birthdate, vs. only a year that you had in your tree, or a full address vs. only the name of the country that you had for a birthplace, or a first name and middle name, vs. missing middle name for that person in your family tree.

By default, a source and citation will be created every time you use the Extract Info feature, in line with genealogy best practices. You will find that this will quickly allow your family tree to become sourced like a professional at no effort, but you are in control and can turn this off if you don't want to create a citation. You can also edit the full details of the default citation that is suggested for you.

The Extract Info page automatically adapts itself to each historical record, showing you only the information that it brings and displaying the equivalent information about the same person in your family tree. There are dozens of different types of historical records on MyHeritage, and hence the Extract Info page comes in many different variations.

A US Census record provides improved and different information than in the family tree. You choose which details to bring into your family tree (click to zoom)

Found a relevant newspaper article through Record Matches? Save that information to the family tree profile. The citation will include the transcript from the article and a link to the full record. You can edit the citation and improve it. This is often needed, because the OCR (optical character recognition) technology applied on scanned newspaper articles to convert them to text is often riddled with errors that you may wish to correct.

Extract Info from a newspaper Record Match (click to zoom)

Extract Info comes with an advanced mode (via link "Show more options" in top right corner) which you can use to associate a citation with specific events in the person's life (e.g. birth, marriage, death or others) and not just with the overall individual. This approach is favored by many professional genealogists. In advanced mode you can also edit biography notes for the person in your tree, and for some facts you can create an alternate version instead of modifying your current version (e.g. create two different birth events according to two different theories). For example, this marriage record for Nanette Bronfman shows a wedding date and location, which you can save to her family tree profile and create a citation specifically for the Marriage event, in the advanced mode.

Extract Info: advanced mode (click to zoom)

Note that for any information that you decide to take into your tree, you can change your mind and click the [>>] button again to undo it. You can also hover over any field in your tree (right hand side of the page) and click the Pencil icons to edit each field and enter additional details by hand if you wish.

Walkthrough: How to Extract Info from Record Matches

1. Review your Record Matches, and click the checkmark button to confirm a correct match. Wrong matches should be rejected using the X button. You can confirm a Record Match in the page that lists several matches, or in the Review page that shows it in more detail (the latter is better because it shows the full record).

2. Once you confirm a Record Match, a new one-time pop-up box will inform you that the match has been successfully confirmed. Click Continue to proceed to Extract Info. We recommend that you click the "Don't show me this again" box so that this pop-up box will be skipped in the future. You can also view Record Matches you have already confirmed in the past, and click "Extract info to your tree" to invoke the Extract Info page. See this marked in red below.

Moving from record page to extract information (click to zoom)

3. In the Extract Info page, click the [>>] arrow buttons to extract the information you want into your family tree, or the [>>>] button at the bottom to take ALL the new and improved information in one go.

Click to zoom

4. If needed, you can add notes, edit any field, edit the citation, and more.

Click to zoom

5. When you are done, click the green OK button to save the information into your family tree.

Click to zoom

New record strip on profile pages

On the profile page of any individual in your family tree for whom there are Record Matches, you will now see a strip showing the  records, with an indication if they are confirmed (green checkmark) or pending your confirmation (a question mark). Hover over any record to view more details. The tooltip will also allow you to confirm correct Record Matches from here and extract their information, to extract information again from records you have already confirmed in the past, and even to undo a confirmation if you change your mind.

New Record strip in profile pages (click to zoom)

Evolution (roadmap)

As the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day. The new Extract Info feature is a great addition, but it still doesn't cover all needs, and we intend to improve it in the months ahead. The following aspects are still missing and we plan to add them:

1. Allow Extract Info for any record you find in SuperSearch or provided by Record Detective, not just for Record Matches that you confirm. You will first be prompted to select which person to extract to.

2. Extend this to relatives. E.g. in census records, Extract Info not only for the main person but also for the other relatives in the household; add missing people to your tree from the same page.

3. Extract Info also for Smart Matches (matches in other trees) , and not just for Record Matches (historical records).

Further tips and suggestions

If you have already confirmed some Record Matches in the past, go over them again and use Extract Info on them. You can set the filtering options in the Record Matches page to show only confirmed matches, and go over them systematically. Then you can change the filtering back to show only pending matches.

If you are primarily using the MyHeritage Family Tree Builder software for growing your tree, be sure to upgrade to the latest version 7.0. This will allow you to use the new Extract Info feature to glean value from all your Record Matches, using the published family tree on your online family site, and then use Family Tree Builder 7.0's new sync feature to synchronize all the information you've extracted back to your computer.

Summary

Extract Info helps make the powerful Record Matches on MyHeritage even more useful, by letting you take new and improved information from any historical record directly into your tree, with great ease and in a few clicks. Be sure to confirm your Record Matches and use this great new feature to enhance your family history.

Enjoy!

Each day we walk by our local store, our neighbor's place or the park, without realizing the stories from the past that existed in those same places many years before.

While we often think of history as antique, irrelevant and something out of the past, it  can just as easily be intertwined with the present.

Imagine what it would look like if the ghosts of World War II came back to the streets today. That’s what Dutch historian Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse shows through her Ghosts of War photo series.

Ghosts of war - France; taken prisoner (Courtesy of Jo Hedwig Teeuwise)

The photos depict historic images of WWII soldiers in the streets as they might look in the present. Using modern scenes, she documents past and present through images superimposed on those from the war-torn 1930s and 1940s.

Ghosts of war - Germany; out of action (Courtesy of Jo Hedwig Teeuwise)

Teeuwisse began her project after finding 300 old negatives at a local flea market in Amsterdam. During her research to discover more behind the photos, she decided to create the photos with a different context.

To get the precise photos, she traveled to the sites in the war photos and took a replica image. Using Photoshop, she superimposed ghost-like images of soldiers from old war photos with images taken in the same places across Europe.

Ghosts of War - Corner covered (Courtesy of Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse)

Since she a little girl, Teeuwisse has been fascinated by history and old photos. After studying film, she created the Historical Consultancy 30-45 to help museums, schools and film companies make their productions more historically authentic.

Ghosts of War - France; The other side. (Courtesy of Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse)

By combining historical pictures with photos made on the exact same spot today, I try to make people realise that history is all around us. That where you live, work or go to school, once people fought, died or simply experienced a different kind of life. We are history, history is us. Originally made as part of my research, I now make these combination photos because of my interest for the subject and to try and make people think about the past, remember and respect the sacrifices the generations before us made. - Jo Hedwig Teuwisse

How do you preserve legacies of the past in the present? What do you think of Teeuwisee’s journey back to the days of WWII combined with the present?

To see more photos and learn about her other projects, view her Flickr account and her Facebook page.

Share your comments below and on Facebook, Google + and Twitter.

Mother’s Day is nearly here. What better way to thank our mothers for everything they've done for us than by reflecting on all the wonderful mothers out there.

Mothers have a strong impact on our lives. Many even say that “mother knows best.”

Whether they are, in fact, our grandmothers, our aunts or our own mothers, all leave us with lasting impressions of the advice and wisdom they share.

Growing up, I remember listening to my grandmother recall her childhood, and learning about my own history. On my first day of school, I remember my mother's hug and her words of encouragement, reassuring me that everything would be OK. I know that - even today - I can always count on these great women in my family.

Mothers around the world have a huge influence on our lives. It's always important to show our appreciation for all they do.

This Sunday, May 12, is their special day in the US, but at MyHeritage we recognize that all mothers deserve the best.

To celebrate Mother's Day, we have a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates and a MyHeritage Premium Plus subscription to give to one lucky mother.

All you need to do is nominate a mother who has had a big impact on your life, and tell us in 10 or fewer words, why they deserve to win the prize.

Leave a comment below, on Facebook, Google+ or tweet us with your answer. We'll share the best stories - and the winner - in our special Mother’s Day post.

All mothers around the world are important, so even if you are in another country, feel free to join in.

To sweeten the celebration, we’re offering a 36% discount for MyHeritage Mother’s Day gifts to all mothers for a limited time. Do you want to learn about the family legacy of your mother, grandmother or great-grandmother, or about the lives of women generations before you?

Take a trip down memory lane and discover your family history, share your family memories and build your family tree together with your mother.

We look forward to reading your nominations. Good luck!

What would happen if there were a knock on the door, you opened it and a box was delivered into your hands. Inside, you would find documents, photographs (labeled!), journals and other records.

What would you like to see in that box?

For me, that's an easy answer. One of the last family members to arrive in the US from Belarus brought with him a 300-year-old family history. The few people who saw it described it as a sort of book, compiled of different kinds of papers, different calligraphies, many different languages, all bound together.

When the family member died in Florida in the 1950s, his daughters were already living far away in different states. Everything in the house was thrown out, including the priceless family tree, compiled by many generations. As far as we know this was the only copy; very few people had seen it.

I've spent more than 25 years trying to reproduce some of what might have been in those documents. We'll never be able to complete it all. Well, not until someone invents a viable time travel machine.

Those papers would reveal when, why and how the family moved to different countries; where they settled, their occupations, the names of generations and - I hope - much more about our ancestors.

That's what I'd like to see in that box.

I would hope that information on my maternal great-grandmother's mother would be in there, as well. What was her first name? Why did no one ever speak about her? What was her maiden name? What is the truth about her disappearance, for that's what happened. Her daughters never spoke about her, or at least never told their own children. When I started asking questions, the answers were always the same, "We don't know."

That's what I'd like to see in that box.

I'd like to see the unraveled information on my mother's paternal grandmother. What's her connection to Bialystok, Poland, where everyone claimed she was from, and how did she wind up in Suchastow, Galicia (today, Ukraine). What about her likely two marriages, and her last husband's three marriages? Would the box reveal which of the children were hers, his or theirs? Even with some amazing resources online for then-Austria-Hungary in the mid to late 1800s, the records are still murky.

That's what I'd hope to see in the box.

Going back to Catalunya, Spain, I'd hope the notarial land records were in the box for our probable ancestor, listed in a 1358 document. He was a wine-maker, so where was his vineyard? What else is there about his family? I'd hope that we'd be able to add to the handful of index and document appearances of our rare surname in a very small geographic area.

That's what I'd really like to find in that box.

What would you like to see in the box that you might receive?

Let us know in the comments below, or on Facebook, Twitter or Google+

With your help, we've narrowed the vote down to the top winner, who will receive a one-year PremiumPlus and one-year data subscription to MyHeritage’s SuperSearch, our online database with access to billions of records.

With over 30% of the votes, photo 8 is the winner!

Antonie Peeters (1885-1968) and Pieternella Adriana François (1884-1966); Rotterdam, Netherlands; October 25, 1910.

Congratulations to Rob Hoogenbos who sent in the photo from his maternal grandparents from their wedding in Rotterdam in 1910.

Here's the story behind the photo, writes Rob:

The wedding picture is of my grandparents on my mother's side of the family: Antonie Peeters (b. September 22, 1885, d. May 5, 1968) and Pieternella Adriana François (b. October 26, 1884, d. January 2, 1966), taken on their wedding day October 25, 1910, in their hometown of Rotterdam. The marriage went against the grain of their mutual families for religious reasons. He was a Catholic, she was a Protestant. His mother told him to leave the girl or leave this home. As the oldest son, he was to follow in the footsteps of his father running their very successful family business (a pub), so basically he was set for life. Nevertheless, he chose "the girl," and never set foot in his parents' home afterwards. The couple happily lived together for some 55 years. He was a maître de at a local restaurant, she was a housewife raising two daughters.

It was difficult to choose a winner from so many great photos that were submitted. See the slideshow below for all the entries provided. Enjoy!

These censuses span every decade from 1790-1930 and complement the existing 1940 U.S. Census, which you can search for free on MyHeritage.

The collection is the nation’s largest and most important set of records including a huge searchable index and all scanned images of the original census documents, covering some 520 million names.

Start searching the censuses now

A page from the 1790 U.S. Census (click to zoom)

Historical records are invaluable to everyone interested in his or her family history. Census records are among the best records available as they document almost everyone in a given country during that year. They are a source of rich information about those individuals recorded, offering name, age, address, birthplace, members of household, occupation and education.

The US Federal census is conducted every 10 years. The censuses are released to the public after 72 years, which is why 1940 is the most recent census available for viewing. Finding a person in a census record often opens the door to additional discoveries. This collection helps people to step back in time as it provides a snapshot into the lives of our ancestors from 1790 to 1930. Here's an infographic depicting life in America during this time:

Life in the USA 1790-1930 (click to zoom)

These indexed records are now available for you to search on SuperSearch - MyHeritage's online digital archive. SuperSearch contains over 4 billion records, including birth, marriage, death, burial, military, immigration, yearbooks and the world's largest collection of newspapers.

Elvis Presley in the 1940 census (click to zoom)

Our Record Matching technology has been unleashed on the new US census records, so you'll automatically receive notifications about census records which match profiles in your family tree. Stay tuned for many exciting discoveries!

The new records include the remaining fragments of the 1890 US Federal Census which was mostly destroyed in a fire.

A page from the 1890 U.S. Census (click to zoom)

Translated into 40 languages, MyHeritage is the only company to deliver discoveries from the US censuses to a global audience. We're focused on bringing worldwide content to our international audiences, so expect to see significant record collections from many countries being added in the near future and beyond.

New information revealed in the censuses automatically triggers a domino effect of new discoveries within the MyHeritage global network of family trees and records. A summary of the record can be viewed for free, and users can choose between affordable pay-as-you-go credits or a data subscription for full, unlimited access to all historical content.

A page from the 1910 U.S. Census (click to zoom)

If your family includes people who lived in the US during these years - and this holds true for many of our users - you will be able to find them here, learn more about them, and perhaps discover additional family members you didn't know about previously.

We invite you to search our database to find new discoveries which will add character and personality to your family legacy.

If you make any interesting discoveries, please share your success story with us, by emailing it to stories@myheritage.com.

Enjoy,
MyHeritage team

NGS was established 110 years ago in Washington, DC, to serve and grow the genealogical community through education, training, promoting access to and preserving genealogical records.

The conference is a great opportunity for genealogists and those interested in family history research to meet and share ideas on how to advance family research.

Will you be at NGS? Come visit MyHeritage at booth #431, and meet our team.

Here's what we have planned:

• Register and build a free family tree and receive a special gift.
• Upload your family tree with a GEDCOM, and we’ll help you find your relatives in less than five minutes.
• Meet our team of experts who will answer your genealogy questions.
• Come try out MyHeritage’s Super Search, our online database with access to billions of records, to find out more about your family history.
• Already enjoying the MyHeritage app on your iPhone, iPad or Android? Visit the booth, show us the app, tell us why you like it and receive a gift! Don’t have the app yet? Download it for free from App Store or Google Play and start making smart discoveries.
• We'll also be offering a 20% discount on all subscription purchases at our booth.

Come learn more about MyHeritage with our chief genealogist Daniel Horowitz at three programs:

• 11am, Wednesday, May 8: “The Ultimate Genealogy Super Search Engine.” Learn about MyHeritage’s Super Search, our online database, with billions of records to enhance your family history research.
• 11am, Thursday, May 9: "How to Find Your Relative on the Internet Without Really Searching." He'll discuss Smart Matching and other tools to help genealogists find relatives worldwide.
• 4pm, Saturday, May 11: “Face Recognition and Photo Tagging for Genealogy.” Learn how to recover lost family connections and discover related people.

Our NGS 2013 team looks forward to greeting you at booth #431:

• Daniel Horowitz, Chief Genealogist
• Ori Soen, Chief Marketing Officer
• Mark Olsen, Business Development Manager, MyHeritage USA and WorldVitalRecords
• Amanda Tantisalidchai, Social Media Coordinator at Geni

Will you be at NGS 2013? Let us know in the comments below. We look forward to seeing you there!

Michael Pugh and Rebecca Griffin, who married nearly three years ago, are an example of this latest trend in the UK called "meshing,” where married couples fuse their surnames.

The couple took part of Michael’s surname “Pu” with part of Rebecca’s surname “Ffin.” Now they are the Puffins.

According to a BBC article, the couple had heard of the trend and wanted to experiment  to come up with something unique and new to bring into their marriage.

In 2012, over 800 British newlyweds had already meshed their surnames, and the numbers are rising.

According to the UK Deed Poll Service, a name change authority in the UK, it is also possible to adopt a common surname as a couple, even without a marriage certificate.

Instead of taking one surname and giving up the other, “meshing” allows a choice to keep a name similar to your own, yet share your partner’s surname and provides a new name with a twist.

“Meshing” originated in the US. One of the trend's pioneers is Antonio Villaraigosa - mayor of Los Angeles, California - who combined his surname “Villar” with his wife’s name “Raigosa.”

What does this mean for family history and genealogy? Will be harder to trace the lineage of families with this new trend, or will it make discovering relatives more exciting?

What would be your “meshed” surname? Let us know in the comments below.