MyHeritage announced a revolutionary technology with
their city directory collection and when I say revolutionary I
mean not only do they just give you hints about your city
directory collections that have your ancestors in them but they
actually find all of the city directory hints and put them
together as close as possible I'm going to tell you about a
little bit of those caveats coming up Now, to access the
city directory collection, there's a number of ways to get
there but this is the way I get to it. Research and then, I go
down to directories which is way way down here at the bottom
and then, right here at the top, US City Directories. Now,
what we're going to do is we're going to search. So, let me
take myself off screen here and we're going to start
investigating. So, let me zoom in just a little so you can see
what we have going on. Whoop, that's too big. Down here,
we're going to put Gertrude Rang. Now, Gertrude Rang is
someone that I've been researching quite a bit and she
lived in Columbus, Ohio. So, type that in. Just keep
scrolling down. Girls just keep scrolling down. Ha. Gertrude L
Rang nineteen oh eight. She's there between 1910 and 1918 and
then there's another one 1919 to 1936. Okay, we are on the
right path for Gertrude Wayne. So, let's go and see what's
really super amazing about this. When we scroll down, it
says that there's an implied spout Edward that she's living
here between 1906 and 1909 and then we can click and look on
the actual image. Click on that. Full screen and we can
zoom in. Whoo. Going a little crazy there and we can see that
Gertrude is a dress maker at Parsons Avenue so this is
really great because honestly I hadn't known that she had this
entry before so MyHeritage found new city directory for me
that I hadn't seen before most of the time she's a teacher but
in 1908 she's a dress maker awesome okay so now we're
going to go and we're going to look further at what else is
happening here. So, when I scroll down, we've got that
she's in the 1906 to 1907 directories and then she's in
the 1909 to 1910 directory. Let me correct myself. In 1906, she
is a dress maker. So, I can save Gertrude to my family
tree, save Gertrude, that information and now, we have a
side by side. We have the tree on the left and the city
directory on the right and we're going to fix her name
Gertrude and we're going to take the L out because that's
her really represent her maiden name and then I'm going to add
I'm not going to add the ring. Rain is her their name. But I'm
going to bring in all this record information. And notice
it's also going to bring the source citation for me
automatically. And then I can actually add a new husband
Edward Reign. And it brings in all this information. Now in
the record it said she was actually a widow. So I'm not
going to bring the residence information because he didn't
live there. He was a widow. Which actually isn't accurate.
Um you know some of our ancestors do lie a little bit.
So I'm going to go ahead and save to the tree and now I have
two city directories that are attached to my tree from one
search. See that's what I'm talking about being
revolutionary. One search for Gertrude and I have two city
directories. But let's go back and see if we can find more
city directories for Gertrude. So now I have this Gertrude L
rang between 1919 and 19 sixth. We can go ahead and scroll
down. She's at a different address and she is still
implied that she has a husband named Edward. Now, she's a
teacher and look at all of the city directories, myheritage
has found for me. It is absolutely incredible and if I
click on this one, then the image down here will go to that
your city directory. Um I have all of these sources that are
now going to be coming to my tree. I am so beyond excited.
So, I'm going to hit save and then go through that process
again.
And I can just start bringing all of this information over
that she's a teacher. I'm not going to bring anything over
about Edward and I'm going to save to the tree. I can't even
begin to tell you how exciting it is to rapid fire find all of
those city directories. Now, I have videos on this channel
about city directories. I'm finding them in Ancestry and
Dawn's List and any place you can find City Directories. It
is not been this fast to find those city directories to link
them to your tree. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I don't think
I'm going to come off cloud nine for a very long time but
there are more things that you need to know about city
directories. I'm not even getting started. Okay, calm
down. Now, let us go back and let's look at this little cool
feature right here. It says, see who else lived at this is
Dressed. Well, of course, I want to see who lived at this
address. So now, we have Edward O' Long lived there between
1930. Oh, who's Edward Long? Lawrence Sanders. Lawrence
Sanders is definitely somebody in my tree. Agnes Merling.
Agnes Merling. That is Elizabeth's sister-in-law and
her sister because Howard is her brother-in-law. Emma J
Long, I'm not entirely sure who that is. Something to
investigate. Um Ed Elizabeth Long, that's another sister of
Gertrude. Gertrudeau Wrong. Uh who's Gertrudeau wrong? Let's
go look at what happens. Let's zoom that in really quickly.
Let's scroll down. Gertrudeau Long. Ah. We have what is
called a mystery. So this image and all the images in the city
directory collection was read through OCR technology. And if
you've seen my video on newspapers in working around
OCR technology you know that OCR isn't perfect but it is
pretty darn fascinating. So there is a way to go turn
Gertrudeau wrong into Gertrude Rang. Let's go and see how to
do that next. So I need to come back out of that full screen
mode and scroll to the bottom and notice that did you spot an
error? Select suggest an alternative. So I'm going to go
here and I'm going to correctly spell Gertrude Rang and say
there was a transcription error. Now they want us to tell
tell us why you're suggesting this. So the OCR miss red
and then hit submit. So, they will take that submission and
in a few days, all of the users of MyHeritage will now be able
to see that it's Gertrude rang. So, let's go back one more time
to see who else is in this address. This look at who else
is in the address can help tell help you figure out missing
relatives that you didn't know about who were living in the
house at the same time that I don't know who Edward O'Long
is. I'm going to have to figure out who's and wisy in the tree
or it can help you learn house histories because you can see
how the house changed hands in multiple generations and maybe
you'll pick up some extra relatives remember city
directories they began to be popular in about the 1835s
that's the chicks and tally section of the US census record
y'all oh my gosh I told you I was excited I told you it's
excited now remember I said OCR technology is sometimes a
little wonky well is really nice that Online Heritage we
can attempt to self heal the misreads but sometimes there
are reads that just yeah they don't work so let me show you
this so we have a record we're looking for Geraldine Rain and
the address is 304 Deshler Avenue and when we come to
workplace it says Deschler Avenue Gertrude L Teacher Reeb
Avenue School because the entry the raw that the OCR read
smooshed Gertrude and Geraldine Geraldine together. So, if we
scroll in, I know I'm going fast. If I'm scrolling in, you
can see there was a ditto mark. Oh, those dang ditto marks.
When we have those ditto marks, sometimes the OCR doesn't
separate the individuals. So, I asked MyHeritage what happens
in that case. They say, well, the only thing you do is just
put that it's Gertrude Rang and or Lee Sitz Geraldine Rang and
leave that information and and because you can't alter the
address you can't say hey there's a new there there's two
people smushed together so what you're going to have to then do
is get the web link for this profile and also go and attach
it over to Gertrude to remember that you found it as well. So
it maybe in the future it'll make it fully self healing but
is one area I was like oh darn wouldn't it be great if we
could edit that up but you know OCR isn't perfect so we just
have to deal with it there's one more thing I want to point
out to you with the city directories in a perfect world
I would have my way but honestly I'm still super
excited I about what's going to take place so I'm going to look
for Alita Geisler she's in Ohio and when I come to the search
results I see Alita here and another Alita and then Alita N,
Alita M, Alita C, more Alita's, more Alitas. All of these
Alidas are the same person but when you get into the profile,
MyHeritage when it says, oh look, we found, we found all of
these entries for Alida, it even picked up the Lina but I
think primarily because the William Joseph taking place, it
not picking up those Alita Ms, the leader N, the leader Cs,
and all the variations because you're right. I'm over here in
William instead of Alita, that's interesting. So, I click
on Alita N here and it doesn't pick up all the other elitish
just the ones that are elitta ends. So, what that means is
that you still need to keep looking through all of the
hints especially if there's slight variations because you
want to make sure you grab every instance of the city
directories your ancestors were are in. You could amend the
record but Alita N is what is actually appearing on the
record. So, it's not a misread. So, my hair I totally get it.
They're not really going to change it all that much but you
can put an other spelling variation and people will be
able to search that in the future but by and large, what
I'm trying to tell you is go and get all of the entries for
your ancestors and link them to your family tree but oh my
goodness, the time you're going to save and the cool
things you're going to find because MyHeritage is doing
the work for you. I this by far is my favorite new technology
of twenty twenty. Can you imagine where we're headed
where these algorithms are going to get so smart? Not only
are they going to ask you is this one record at a time
related to your ancestor. But here's ten or 20 records that
we think are connected. And this is from the records only.
There's no on MyHeritage other month than myself putting
together a leadest tree that I know of finding all these
records. So, I'm super excited. I'm so excited. So, I want you
to go and practice playing with the city directories on
myheritage if you want more tips and tricks on how to use
MyHeritage, go check out this playlist up there and if you
want to see our latest video, go right here and then, tell me
how much fun you're having with City Directories in the comment
section below.