By Carolyn Dorsey
With social distancing policies in place around the world, why not use this at-home time to research your family history using free databases from the Morristown & Morris Township Library? A benefit of having a Morristown & Morris Township library card is access to our online genealogy subscription databases, MyHeritage Library Edition and HeritageQuest Online. All you need to do to log in is enter the bar code numbers on your library card. (If you do not live in Morristown or Morris Township, check the available online resources at your town’s library.)
If you are new to genealogy, the rule of thumb is to begin with yourself and go back-always go backwards in time. Do not skip generations. Download this free family tree form to get started.
Both MyHeritage LE and HeritageQuest Online contain digitized images of each decennial census from 1790-1940. Census records from more recent censuses are not yet available due to 70-year access restrictions.
Federal census records should be one of the very first sources you use to find information about your ancestors who lived in the United States. Census records can help you identify unknown relatives and how your ancestors lived in a family group. Sometimes census records have interesting details about your ancestor’s lives that you might have not known.
Technically census records are a form of oral history; they are the result of information your ancestor told the census taker. They sometimes are inexact and can contain errors. Census takers may have made mistakes for a number of reasons. To counter the errors it is a good idea to use spelling variations of your family name, and be flexible with birth dates.
As you explore both MyHeritage LE and HeritageQuest Online, you will find many records that will help you assemble your family history.
MyHeritage Library Edition is strictly a search-based research tool. It is slightly different from MyHeritage.com in that MyHeritage Library Edition does not offer you a personal account with interactive features; however, you can assemble your family research records the old fashioned way by printing out them out or you can purchase family tree software!
What’s included in MyHeritage LE:
United States Records
• Full U.S. Census (1790-1940) including index and images
• Public Records Index (816 million records)
• U.S. World War II Army Enlistment (8 million records)
• Civil War Soldiers (6.3 million records)
• State & local birth, marriage, and death records (300 million records)
• Social Security Death Index (94 million records)
• Local directories, newspapers, registers, genealogies, etc. (over 100 million pages)
• Passenger & Immigration Lists (over 10 million)
• Immigration, military and tombstone records
• 3 billion family tree profiles
European Records
• Hundreds of millions of vital records from Germany, England & Wales Census, 1841 – 1911 (200 million records)
• Ireland Census, 1901 & 1911 (9 million records)
• Census & Church records from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, UK, Ireland, Hungary,
• Slovakia, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Portugal, and more
• Millions of family trees built by local European genealogists
• Birth, death and marriage records from 48 countries
How to search records in MyHeritage LE using the Basic Search
The central search area on the main page of the MyHeritage Library Edition enables you to perform a Basic Search. Basic Search provides fields for First & Middle names, Last name, Year of birth, Place, and Keywords. By default, basic searches include a certain amount of flexibility in search results, but you can check the “Exact search” box to limit the results to the search terms. The default also checks off the box “With translations”, meaning that the search engine will also look for results for the same name translated into other alphabets (Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, etc.). Clicking on the “Clear form”link will clear search terms from this form.
How to search records in MyHeritage LE using the Advanced Search
Advanced Search enables you to input a wide variety of additional search terms and filters in the search. Additional fields available through Advanced Search include Gender, Events and Relatives. Moreover, for each search field, you have the option to choose a level of matching to arrive at the optimal set of results for your search. If you are looking for a name spelled a specific way, you can choose to limit the results based on that spelling only. Alternatively, you can broaden the filters to include variations in spelling, dates, etc.
Any other questions about MYHeritage LE, click here.
HeritageQuest Online is also a search based tool that combines digitized searchable images of U.S.federal census records, the Social Security Death Index, and digitized version of the popular University Microfilm International (UMI )Genealogy & Local History collection and other valuable content.
As of 2020, HeritageQuest Online caught up with its indexing so now you can search almost all names in the census records, not just the heads of households.
What’s included with Heritage Quest Online:
• Census: U.S. Federal Census 1790-1930
• Books: Digitized versions of University Microfilm International (UMI) microfilm collection consisting of over 25,000 family & local histories
• PERSI: The Periodical Source Index (Allen County Public Library Foundation, IN)
• Revolutionary War Era Pension & Bounty Land Warrant Application Files
• Freedman’s Bank Registers- a bank founded after the Civil War to serve ex-slaves and other African-Americans.
• Canadian Census Collection, 1851-1916 and Nova Scotia, Canada, Census, Assessment and Poll Tax Records, 1770-1795, 1827, 1938
• Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Census Records from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Mexico, Central and South America, Caribbean, Africa and Asia
• Cemetery Indexes for the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Brazil and Global Burials at Sea
• Social Security Death Index (SSDI) containing over 94 million records of deceased persons with social security numbers whose deaths were reported to the Social Security • • Administration U.S. Public Records Volumes 1-2, contains a compilation of 800 million various public records spanning all 50 U.S. states from 1950 to 1993.
There are many ways to search using HeritageQuest Online.
The above landing page of Heritage Quest offers many methods for searching. If you click on any link to a record set on the page, it will take you to a search window. The search boxes for each record set have slightly different criteria for searching. The site does not do a global search through all of its records except for U.S. census records.
HeritageQuest secondary search page takes you to a selection of record sets to choose from. When you choose any of these links, a search box will appear.
Information about each Census from 1790 to 1940:
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
For more about the North Jersey History & Genealogy Center please click here. For information about our other online genealogical resources, please click here. (The Library is closed until further notice.)
