The Year in Genealogy 2022 |
Happy holidays from all of us here at Family Tree! We hope you’ve had a successful year of research, and are spending this season creating new memories with family and friends. As 2022 draws to a close, we wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on some of the year’s most-important family history developments. New Records As I shared in the December episode of our podcast, 2022 was a year of major record releases. First up was the 1921 census of England and Wales, published by Findmypast. The census for that year is especially important because those countries’ 1931 enumeration has been lost, and the 1941 count wasn’t taken. And in April, the (U.S.) National Archives released the long-anticipated 1950 federal census. Artificial intelligence, assisted by volunteers, indexed the census’ microfilmed images in record time. The whole collection was searchable in a matter of weeks, and is now available on FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, MyHeritage and the National Archives. (The collection is browse-only on Findmypast.) We have a free guide to the census, as well as a downloadable extraction worksheet. Other notable record drops include the Beyond 2022 Project’s Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (which re-creates records lost in a 1922 courthouse fire), as well as a new database of New York City Historical Vital Records. Tech Tools The big genealogy websites also took strides in providing storytelling and DNA tools for their s: • Ancestry.com launched its pioneering SideView technology, as well as a chromosome painter and photo-colorization and -enhancement features. • MyHeritage released DeepStory, which adds storytelling to its AI-assisted photo-animation. The site’s latest feature, AI Time Machine, uses a similar technology to put you in a historical (or futuristic, or fictional) setting. • Findmypast announced its long-awaited Tree Search, adding search functionality to its online family trees. We’ve been busy here at Family Tree, too, covering all the above plus publishing guides to other important family history tools and strategies. The articles linked in this newsletter are just some of our most-popular from this year. We can’t wait to see what 2023 has in store! Stay tuned for more exciting news from the world of genealogy. |