MyHeritage U.S. Yearbook Records Now Free and in Color

From the MyHeritage Blog - 23 April 2020

A few months ago, we released MyHeritage In Color™, which lets users colorize their old family photos automatically. The genealogy community fell in love with this feature, and in the first 3 months, 10 million photos have already been colorized by MyHeritage users! After we released MyHeritage In Color™, one of the ideas raised by our team was to apply this technology also to records, in cases where black and white photos are abundant and colors could enhance the records. We focused our attention on the huge U.S. Yearbook collection on MyHeritage, which spans 290 million names in 36 million yearbook pages, covering the years 1890 until 1979.

Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve colorized the entire U.S. Yearbook collection, and to celebrate this moment we’re opening up FREE access to our U.S. Yearbooks for an entire month!

Search MyHeritage U.S. Yearbooks for Free Now

Ordinarily, accessing the yearbook records on MyHeritage requires a Data or Complete subscription. Now, through this wonderful freebie, anyone can access the yearbooks for free, without even having to sign up, through May 23, 2020. And the yearbooks are now colorized!

Why are we doing this? Because we want to help our community in these challenging times of Coronavirus, and give people a fun activity to do when they are isolated at home that is genealogical, enjoyable, and free.

Take this opportunity to reminisce about your own high school years or search for your loved ones in the collection. Look up your high school crush or revel at the unbelievable hairstyle of your aunt Mavis.

Searching the yearbooks – now in color

Follow the link below to search the collection:

Search MyHeritage U.S. Yearbooks for Free Now

We have colorized the yearbook pages using the MyHeritage In Color™ technology.

Now when you search the yearbooks, we will show a symbol on each thumbnail (that represents a yearbook page) in the search results, to remind you that a colorized version exists.

Search results in the U.S. Yearbooks (click to zoom)

This is the symbol we’re talking about:

Search results in the U.S. Yearbooks (click to zoom)

For consistency, it’s the same symbol we use on thumbnails in your albums to indicate that photos have been colorized using MyHeritage In Color™.

We’ll explain how to access yearbook records using a nice example.

Actress Sally Field’s 1964 Birmingham High School yearbook can be found in our collection. In case you are curious, you can access that record directly.

Here’s the page where she appears — colorized:

The colorized version is compelling and lifelike, but we also love the original black and white page:

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose because you get both!
(P.S. don’t you just love those hairstyles?!)

Here is what the record page looks like:

Click the orange “Save record” button to save a record to an individual in your family tree.

There is a new message with a pink background that explains that the colors on the yearbook page were simulated using MyHeritage In Color™. You can dismiss this message after reading it. A toggle control in the top-right corner lets you view either the colorized version or the black and white original of each yearbook page.

You can also ‘jump’ to other pages in the same yearbook and see them in color too.

Yearbooks Can Reveal Great Clues

Academic yearbooks or annuals from public schools and universities can provide a wealth of information and clues about your ancestors and their associates. They can provide photographs of the people and of the environment in which your family members spent a significant period of their formative years. You can see the buildings, the instructors, the students and the ways they dressed and wore their hair, school and/or athletic uniforms, the various groups and their activities, and the individual “biographical sketches” that accompany the seniors’ class photographs. These bios may often contain cryptic or mysterious references to school-year hi-jinx and adventures. However, they are always interesting for their references to the activities and organizations in which the student participated. They often include the aspirations for the future that the student has projected.

In addition, you may learn about ancestors who were faculty at the school, college, or other institution. For example, I recently found an entry for my great-uncle, John Allen "Jack" Morgan at Middlebury College in Vermont from 1917 that significantly expanded my knowledge of his educational background, his academic employment, his professional affiliations, and the beginning of his academic employment at the college. The photo from the period was also a great addition to my collection. What a great find!

Source: Ancestry.com Yearbook Collection

Yearbooks may be among family possessions or in the libraries for the institution attended. Used bookstores may be a source for locating them. There also are digitized yearbook collections online at Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Classmates.com, and other websites.

Here are some other images that I found in about twenty minutes in the Ancestry.com Yearbook Collection.

Mary Allen Morgan, my father's sister, at Peace Institute in Raleigh, NC, in 1925

Samuel Thomas "Tom" Morgan, my father, at Davidson College in 1927

Sara Edith Weatherly, my mother, at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC, in 1929

 

In addition to portrait photographs, there may be a biographical notes about the individual's interests and activities while in school. Other photographs of people involved in sports, academic clubs, dramatic activities, and casual cavorting can add great insight and context.

Don't overlook yearbook collections in your research. They can truly add a great deal to your understanding of your ancestors' lives.