MyHeritage adds world's oldest Jewish newspaper to its digital collection of historical records

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah & LONDON, England – March 30, 2014: MyHeritage, the popular family history network, announced today that it has added The Jewish Chronicle newspaper archive to its digital collection of historical records. The archive contains over 200,000 pages and millions of names, and dates back to 1841.

The Jewish Chronicle is the world's oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper. Based in London with reporters located around the globe, the newspaper captured the lives and times of the Jewish people during waves of immigration from Europe to Britain during two world wars and Jewish life in England at the turn of two centuries.

The Jewish Chronicle includes details of births, marriages and deaths that occurred within the British Jewish community, providing a rich source of information for people researching their family history. Many Jewish individuals and families from Europe resided in the UK before moving on to the USA, Canada, and other countries. Information on those families is also available in the pages of The Jewish Chronicle. 

In addition to The Jewish Chronicle, MyHeritage is currently adding millions of records from a variety of Jewish organizations. Included are the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) databases with various records related to Israel. This collection spans the years 1860 to 1960 – covering the lead up to and the establishment of the State of Israel. Surnames and given names in the IGRA databases have been transliterated so the documents are searchable in both English and Hebrew. 

Another collection soon to be live on MyHeritage is Avelim, containing searchable death notices from Israel. Access to IGRA and Avelim content on MyHeritage will be free.

“We're delighted to offer these unique collections, that have never been offered on commercial family history mega-sites before”, said Russ Wilding, Chief Content Officer of MyHeritage. “The Jewish Chronicle is an extremely social publication, capturing the lives of individuals and families who lived in the UK and beyond. Anyone with Jewish ancestors who lived in the UK is bound to make fascinating discoveries.”

The new collections will be available for searching via SuperSearch, MyHeritage’s search engine which contains billions of historical records. MyHeritage users enjoy highly accurate matching technologies that automatically match relevant newspaper articles and records with their family trees, notifying users whenever relevant information is found. 

The Jewish Chronicle collection is available online at http://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10148/the-jewish-chro...

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage is a family history network helping millions of families around the world discover and share their legacy online. As technology thought leaders and innovators in the space, MyHeritage is transforming family history into an activity that’s accessible, exciting and easier than ever before. MyHeritage empowers its global community of users with unique social tools, a massive library of historical content and powerful search and data matching technologies. The service is available in 40 languages. For more information visit www.myheritage.com