MyHeritage Updated Their Census Helper



Just before the release of the 1950 U.S. Census in April 2022, MyHeritage released the Census Helper, a tool that scans your family tree and complies list of your relatives who are very likely to be found in census records. In the initial release the Census Helper calculated a list of family members to find in the newly released 1950 U.S. census records as well as all available census collections.

Now, MyHeritage has expanded the Census Helper to include census records from other countries, so people with roots in places outside of the U.S. can take advantage of it as well. And they added some handy interface improvements.

You can use the Census Helper now for free.

The Census Helper is a powerful tool that offers help with census research and enables you to focus your research. Armed with the list it creates, you’ll know exactly which family members to search for in census records.

With this current update, the Census Helper now supports nationwide censuses in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, and Norway. MyHeritage has also added some sorting and filtering capabilities that will make it even easier for you to make the most of the helpful tool.

When calculating the list of results for the Census Helper, MyHeritage believes it is enough to know that the person lived in the United States at one point in time, either before or after the census in question. This is because it wasn’t very likely for people to leave the United States after living there – although it is entirely possible that they still moved around. MyHeritage uses the same logic for determining whether a person would be found in Canada, England, or Wales censuses.

In other European countries, especially during times of political upheaval and war, populations were much less stable. That means that the likelihood that a person located in that specific country before the census was taken would still be there at the time of the census was not great.

For example, If MyHeritage has evidence that a person lived in Denmark in 1920, they can’t necessarily assume that they would be included in the 1940 Danish Census, as many people emigrated out of Denmark during those years. If MyHeritage had proof that the individual was in Denmark after the census was taken, however, there is a much greater likelihood that they were there when the census was taken, so they will be included on the Census Helper list for that census.

To determine whether an individual may have been included in a given U.S. census, the initial version of the Census Helper, searched for evidence that that person was in the United States at the time by analyzing place information entered for the life events in the family tree.

It also examined Record Matches the individual has to other U.S. collections, such as other U.S. census collections on MyHeritage, or the Social Security Death Index. MyHeritage has now added which U.S. state the record is from to make it easier for you to search for the individual in the U.S.Census.

The Census Helper continues to be a useful tool that helps genealogists save time while searching for their ancestors in census records – now from across the globe and not just the United States. MyHeritage has improved the reports that it generates, and made it easier to use. They continue to offer it completely free of charge to MyHeritage users and non-users alike and they warmly invite you to give it a try and see what new information you uncover about your family in census records across the world.

Related Articles on FamilyTree.com:

MyHeritage Publishes 1950 U.S. Census

MyHeritage Improved Their Family Tree

MyHeritage Will Let You Confirm or Reject Theories

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