New in March 2025, the MyHeritage Cousin Finder™ is a robust alternative to Ancestry's ThruLines®. You can use Cousin Finder even if you have a free account on MyHeritage like I do. (Read on to see the roadblock I hit.)
Now it has a new and big advantage over the competition. And that makes Cousin Finder a remarkable asset for your genealogy research. You can use it to find cousins for Any Person in Your Family Tree, as long as they have ancestors in your family tree. On Ancestry, you can only view ThruLines for the AncestryDNA tests you manage.
My sons have not taken a DNA test, but I can view their Cousin Finder results. I see cousins from their father's side of the family. (I've gone deep, but not wide, on my ex's family.) I can see two cousins in Canada who seem to be brothers, one in the United Arab Emirates, and one in Ireland. And it names the common ancestors they share with my sons. I found even more of my boys' relatives when I viewed my ex-husband's Cousin Finder.
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| No DNA test? No problem. Follow these steps to use the unique capabilities of the MyHeritage Cousin Finder™. |
The results page tells you each relative's expected relationship to the subject. Plus it breaks that relationship down to one of 6 categories:
- Father's side
- Mother's side
- Father's father's side
- Father's mother's side
- Mother's father's side
- Mother's mother's side
This means I can see that my sons' cousins in Canada are:
- their father's mother's 4th cousin
- related through common ancestors Patrick Egan and Mary Hickey. Patrick and Mary are my sons' 5th great grandparents. They're the Canadians' 3rd great grandparents.
The cousin in the UAE is my sons' 5th cousin on their father's father's side. Their common ancestors belong to my sons' paternal grandfather's mother. (She's the lady who swore she was the niece of the captain of the Titanic, but she wasn't.) The cousin in Ireland is the boys' 6th cousin on their father's mother's side. Their common ancestors are, again, Patrick Egan and Mary Hickey.
Give It a Try!
Using this new, expanded feature is simple.
- Create a MyHeritage account if you don't have one. It can be a free account.
- Build or import your family tree. It's easy to import a GEDCOM file using the Family Tree menu.
- Choose a person as your subject and click their name.
- In the panel that opens, click their Profile button. This opens up a detailed page with the person's facts and immediate family.
- Scroll down and look for the "Additional actions" box. Click the person's Cousin Finder in that box.
I ran into a new roadblock when viewing anyone's Cousin Finder, including my own. I can't click to view a diagram of the relationship. And I can't view their family tree. I used to be able to do this on my free account, and it was a huge benefit. I wrote all about it 4 months ago. Now it seems to be behind a paywall. Take a look at "5 Super-Cool Features of MyHeritage" and you may decide it's worth paying a little money for. (It is available with the lowest paid subscription level.)
Even with the roadblock, you can use this feature to your advantage. The relatives you find using Cousin Finder may be on other DNA websites and social media. You may be able to use the Cousin Finder hints to learn how they fit into your family tree.
The names I'm seeing in Cousin Finder are all new to me, so I'd say it's well worth a try.
Awesome! Thanks DiAnn, you are inspiring.
ReplyDeleteYou need to be careful using this tool. The cousin finder showed me a brother and sister alleged cousins of my grandmother. The brother in this case would have been born circa 1700 and the sister was born in 1914. A result that was clearly crazy and not correct. Cousin Finder did list some correct cousins for my grandmother.
ReplyDeleteYes, you bring up an important point. Like ThruLines, Cousin Finder bases its results on published family trees. If all published family trees were correct, I wouldn't need to write this blog. :-)
DeleteSo true DiAnn! (Don't ever stop writing your blog!) The alleged match had a pretty good tree but some of the listed ancestors on my side leading up to the "in common" ancestor were not in my tree. Very strange. I am writing to My Heritage. There is some glitch in the programming. Also I have a DNA match on MyHeritage that is a cousin with an accurate tree not found by the "Cousin finder". Anyway, like Thrulines you need to check and verify all results. Many thanks for always emphasizing the importance of documenting sources and verifying facts.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone tried this with a floater person or would it be better to create their own tree? I have some floaters on my Ancestry.com tree that are not on Myheritage. If separate trees could easily be incorporated to my main tree I would not mind not using floaters anywhere. In this case Cousin Finder might help a brick wall.
ReplyDeleteI think as long as the person has some ancestors in the tree, it can work.
DeleteI hit the roadblock you mention with my tree, so I tried my wife's tree. She has a free account. When I scrolled down to Additional actions, I do not see Cousin Finder - only Print charts and PedigreeMap.
ReplyDeleteCousin Finder is in the Discoveries menu.
DeleteThanks for the great article! CousinFinder works for me from Discoveries but not from my tree. It's not displayed on any profiles.
ReplyDelete