Three Horse Race

MyHeritage announced last week that they had entered the 1940 Census race. They will generate their own index of the 132 million records. They will offer both the index and the 3.8 million images for free. MyHeritage has developed a new search engine to power their foray into historical records.

MyHeritage is primarily known for its extensive collection of user contributed trees. More than 62 million users have contributed  22 million family trees which altogether have 1 billion names. It made its entry into the historical records space with the acquisition of FamilyLink Inc. and its website WorldVitalRecords.com last November. They further advanced their plans last week with the hiring of two former Footnote.com executives, Russ Wilding and Roger Bell as Chief Content Officer and VP Product, respectively.

Images for the 1940 Census will be available from MyHeritage on 2 April 2012, according to the company. They plan to have some of the index searchable on 3 April 2012, with the majority completed within 2012. They claim they will have many states available before other sites, although I don’t know how they would know the order that other sites will use.

Access MyHeritage’s 1940 offering at

• www.myheritage.com/1940census
• www.worldvitalrecords.com/1940census
• www.familylink.com/1940census

 

Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com is producing an index also. Information about Ancestry.com’s offering can be found at

• www.ancestry.com/1940census

The website will ask what states you want indexed first. Actually, it asks where your ancestors were living, but one can only hope that Ancestry.com will index first the states in which its users express an interest.

The FamilySearch Consortium

FamilySearch is producing an index with the assistance of its partners in the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project. Find information at

• The1940Census.com – project home
• FamilySearch.org/1940census
• www.archives.com/1940census
• www.censusrecords.com

Let the horse race begin!