This week I'm exploring overlooked features on the MyHeritage website. Not long ago, I told you about their new Ancient Origins Breakdown, which was a lot of fun to explore. Now I've fallen in love with a few more features, and I must share them with you.
1. Cousin Finder™
This new feature uses published family trees to find your cousins. It gives you "DNA-level insights without a DNA test," according MyHeritage. And it's fascinating.
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| The MyHeritage Cousin Finder™ gives you DNA-level insights without a DNA test. |
To use Cousin Finder, go to MyHeritage and select it from the Discoveries menu. In my case, the tool brings me 5 cousins:
- my 1st cousin Nick
- my 2nd cousin John (both of whom I grew up with)
- a 3rd cousin with my maiden name
- a 4th cousin's daughter whose last name I recognize
- my father's 5th cousin in Italy
To find out if the woman with the familiar last name is who I'm guessing she is, I can click View relationship. This opens up a family tree diagram showing my exact connection to her. Based on her last name, I figured she had to be the granddaughter of my mother's 3rd cousin Rita. Rita had 2 biological sons, so I thought this woman must be the daughter of one of those sons.
The diagram makes it clear that she is who I thought she would be.
Next I looked at the match with my maiden name. Our relationship chart says he's a descendant of Teofilo Iamarino. I know him! He's my great grandfather's brother. When I checked my family tree, I found that I have this man in there already. But I only knew his name thanks to a distant cousin from Brazil.
Finally, there's my father's 5th cousin in Italy. The relationship chart shows me he's a descendant of my 4th great grandfather's sister. Because they never left Italy, I didn't have this cousin's name, or his father's name before. I'll have to ask my Italian cousins if they know him from town.
2. Fan View
Ancestry.com offers a fan view of your family tree. You can choose from vertical (family), horizontal (pedigree), and fan views. Unless you pay extra for Ancestry Pro Tools, though, you can see only a 4-generation fan view. For someone like me who can name a pair of her 9th great grandparents, 4 generations won't cut it.
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| I love everything about this 10-generation fan chart, free on MyHeritage. |
The Fan View on MyHeritage lets you show up to 10 generations. For me, that means everyone I've identified up to my 7th great grandparents is in the chart! A second view identifies 8 branches of my family tree using the last names of my great grandparents.
As I hover over any solid block in this view, I can see the name of the person it represents along with their lifespan. But what's also helpful is seeing the blank spaces. Those are the dead ends in your family tree. For me, these are the places where the vital records end. For you, they may be the places you need to research next.
It's a terrific representation of all the work you've done researching your ancestors. Remember, you can select anyone in your family tree to see their fan view.
3. Chromosome Browser
MyHeritage lets you compare your DNA (or that of any kit you manage) to as many as 7 DNA matches at a time. You can see where their DNA overlaps and use the information to narrow down a connection.
I used GEDmatch years ago to learn that my parents share DNA. It's a small amount, and I'm sure it's Identical By State, not Identical By Descent. All their ancestors came from neighboring towns in a small region.
This Chromosome Browser highlights the spots where you and 2 other people share DNA. It shows me the triangulated segments I share with both my parents. On chromosomes 6 we share genomic position 6358001–11179154. On chromosome 9 we share genomic position 19946627–28460340. It may help me to find DNA matches who share those same genomic positions.
Using the Chromosome Browser, I found a DNA match who shares several segments with my father and me. I decided to follow up on this match using the next feature.
4. Diagram of Possible Relationships
If you click to review a DNA match, the screen begins with an estimated relationship. I'm looking at a match named Deborah from the USA. MyHeritage tells me her estimated relationship to my father. She should be his first cousin's daughter.
Beneath the estimated relationship is a section called Possible relationships. This tells me there's a very high 93.6% chance Deborah is my father's 1st cousin's daughter. There are other possible relationships with the tiniest percentages of probability. At the bottom of this short list is a link that says "Show more relationships plus diagram". That diagram is the key.
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| This MyHeritage diagram shows you where to look for that DNA match's identity. |
The diagram makes it very clear where their relationship fits. It tells me to look at the siblings of my father's parents, and then their grandchildren. Deborah will be the grandchild of one of my father's aunts or uncles.
Sure enough, there is a Deborah in my family tree—the granddaughter of my father's Uncle Mike. If I didn't already have her, this diagram would tell me where to look. I would research my grandmother's 2 siblings and my grandfather's sister.
Digging into Deborah a tiny bit led me to her mother-in-law's missing maiden name, so that's a win!
5. Photo Dater
Finally, there's a feature I'd been looking for ever since I read about it a while ago. It's supposed to be able to date your photos. I didn't see it in the Photos menu, but then I found out it happens by itself—if it's going to happen.
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| The MyHeritage photo dater could be the answer you need to solve a genealogy mystery. |
I have a few photos that had no results, but one that did. It's a photo of me as a kid in about 1972. There's nothing useful in the background for dating the photo, but I got a result. The estimate is 1975. That's pretty good! I uploaded a 1986 photo of myself wearing huge sunglasses. There are several old cars in the background. The estimate is "after 1985". Wow! What other photos have I got?
I uploaded a photo from about 1961. It's my mother, my siblings, and me (in a stroller) in the California sunshine. The estimate is 1963. Very impressive! Finally, I have 4 photos of my grandmother and her family in the nineteen teens. (See "My Aunt's Photos Tell the Other Side of the Story.") Two of the 4 showed estimates that were once again very close.
Go through your photos to see which ones could use a date estimate to help you figure out who's who.
Last week I revisited FamilySearch.org's Full-Text Search and found new treasures. Today's look at MyHeritage tells us we should revisit resources and take a deeper dive.
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