Nu? What's New? Vol. 20 No. 46

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Black Friday DNA Tests as Low as $39
Autosomal DNA tests are now available for as low as $39 during the Black Friday period.

23andMe. Ancestry+Traits Services $79. Health+Ancestry Services $99. Offer ends December 2.
Ancestry. $49. HealthCore $79. Discounts end December 2.
Family Tree DNA. $59. Discounts on other services. Discounts end December 3.
MyHeritage. $39. Offer expires December 1.

MyHeritage Adds Nine New Reports to Its Genetic Health Product

MyHeritage has announced the addition of nine new health reports to its at-home genetic health test, the MyHeritage DNA Health+Ancestry test. The new reports include a comprehensive polygenic risk score for high blood pressure based on thousands of genetic variants, 3 genetic risk reports that estimate personal risk for developing a disease, and 5 carrier status reports that indicate if an individual is a carrier of a disease that may be passed from parent to child.

Launched in May 2019, the MyHeritage Health test now provides 36 comprehensive reports that may empower future health and lifestyle choices. The current product offering consists of 4 advanced polygenic risk scores (including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and female breast cancer), 14 reports on personal genetic risk for developing health conditions, and 18 reports regarding genetic diseases that may be passed from a couple to their children if both partners are carriers for the same condition.

MyHeritage users receive personalized reports for each condition and are encouraged to share and discuss their results with their healthcare provider. MyHeritage Health also includes the pillar features of the MyHeritage DNA product line: ethnicity estimates and matching with relatives through shared DNA.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/MHGeneticHealth.

British Newspaper Archive Exceeds 35M Pages

The British Newspaper Archive, located at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, has passed another milestone with more than 35 million pages now available. The archive is a partnership between the British Library and Findmypast to digitize in the next 10 years pages from the British Library's vast collection of newspapers. The collection can be searched at no charge but displaying the actual newspaper pages requires a paid subscription.

Time to Think About Donations to Genealogy-Based Institutions
The end of the year is approaching, and it is time for all of us to evaluate whether we have made our annual charitable contributions to non-profit genealogical organizations from which we have benefitted. Be sure to include those institutions that helped you in your genealogical pursuits.

These are the organizations I have contributed to in 2019. What is on your list?
International Institute for Jewish Genealogy
Jewish Heritage Center at New England Historic Genealogical Society
JewishGen
Joint Distribution Committee
JRI-Poland
Reclaim The Records
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem
Yahad In Unim

Are You Familiar with Family History Centers?

If you are unfamiliar with Family History Centers, the “branch libraries” of the Family History Library, FamilySearch has written an article that describes the function of these Centers.

Family History Centers reproduce much of the experience of being at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
• There are computers that give you access to the Family History Library collection including downloading of actual records not permitted from your home computer.
• One-on-one support from Family History Centers staff to answer questions and assist in research.
• Access at no charge to many fee-for-service genealogical websites

There are more than 5,000 family history centers in more than 140 countries.

The article can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-center/.

A Beginner's Guide to Searching for Records on Findmypast

Findmypast now provides a beginner's guide to searching its collection. It is located at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/getting-started/search- genealogy-records. It provides a description of the various type of collections (e.g., vital records, passenger lists, newspaper collection) and how to search records on Findmypast.

Swiss National Archives Has New Website
The National Archives of Switzerland has redesigned its website. The new version is located at https://www.recherche.bar.admin.ch/. The site can be viewed in English, French, German or Italian.

FamilySearch Adds More Than 10M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 10M index records and images, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch112519. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. This week, 8M historical newspaper obituaries (1815–2011) from U.S. Genealogy Bank were added. New historical records include Catholic church books from Croatia, Cambridge parish registers from England, Irish directories, archival indexes from the Netherlands and passenger lists from California and Louisiana.

Note that at the website, announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date. Also note that counts shown in the announcement are the number added, not the total number available in the collection, which can be greater.

Findmypast Adds More Than 6M Scottish Records

Findmypast has announced a new online collection spanning nearly five centuries of Dundee and Angus history. The new collection includes:
• Fully indexed images of more than 23,600 obituaries from local Dundee newspapers from 1869–2018. This is an addition to its national Scottish collection of more than 600,000 obituaries.
• Nearly 4M Dundee & Forfarshire (Angus) electoral registers 1857–1939.
• Hundreds of thousands of indexed records of baptism, marriage and burial from across Dundee and Angus 1562–1855.
• More than 5,000 indexed original photographs of Dundee and Angus dating 1844–2010.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FMPScottish.

Is Your Family Included inThe Unbroken Chain - Third Edition?

Author Neil Rosenstein has devoted the past 27 years to updating and improving his landmark work The Unbroken Chain and now is in the process of publishing its Third Edition. The new edition is a major improvement to the previous edition both in number of persons and quality of the work.

The volumes identify more than 42,000 people with a full name index. There are 300 illustrations, thousands of footnotes and up to 22 generations.

Addtional informaton, including the a complete list of names can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/books/UnbrokenChain-1.html. Check to see if your family is included.