See Your Ancient DNA Origins on MyHeritage

I've taken only one DNA test. In 2012 I tested with AncestryDNA and then convinced my parents and husband to test. Later I uploaded the 4 AncestryDNA tests to MyHeritage and other DNA websites.

Last week MyHeritage released a new feature. "Ancient Origins" sets them apart from the other major DNA websites. (You'll find it in the DNA menu on MyHeritage.) I've traced my ancestors as far back as the late 1690s using a paper trail. They lived in one small section of Southern Italy from at least that time. Let's go back further. Here's my Ancient Origins Breakdown.

Trace your DNA origins through ancient times on MyHeritage.

Bronze Age

In this most ancient time frame, MyHeritage says I'm:

• 50.4% Anatolian (3400 BC–1500 BC), which is modern-day Turkey.
• 29.2% European Farmer (6300 BC–2800 BC), which covers most of Europe. My highest concentration is in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary.
• 13.4% Western Steppe (3300 BC–2600 BC), north of the Black Sea with the highest concentration in Russia.
• 7% Canaanite (1800 BC–1100 BC), along the Eastern Mediterranean shore. My highest concentration is in Lebanon.

Iron Age

In this still-BC time frame, MyHeritage says I'm:

• 46.6% Anatolian (780 BC–30 BC), modern-day Turkey.
• 44.2% Italic and Etruscan (900 BC–200 BC), hurray! Here's where my Italian roots begin. The highest concentration a bit north of my ancestors' paper trail.
• 9.2% Phoenician (1000 BC–330 BC), with the highest concentration in Lebanon.

Roman Era

Now we're coming out of BC times into AD times. This is where it gets exciting for me. MyHeritage says I'm:

• 94.4% Roman Italy (20 BC–600 AD). This covers the entire Italian peninsula with the highest concentration around Rome.
• 5.6% Roman Sardinia (400–500 AD), still Italy, but off the western coast on the island of Sardinia.

This pleases me to no end.

Middle Ages

No surprise for me here, but a lovely confirmation of my ethnicity. MyHeritage says I'm:

• 100% Italian (650–1450 AD). I was a blonde-haired blue-eyed baby, so people never suspected I was Italian, but holy cow am I Italian! I do know that my rare maiden name of Iamarino existed in my grandfather's hometown in the 1400s. This new MyHeritage feature confirms the absolute depth of my Italian roots.

My parents' DNA tests show very similar Ancient Origins in each era. They each have trace origins I did not inherit—Germanic and Sub-Saharan African.

Make sure you watch the Ancient Origins video clips. Most genetic groups have an AI video clip of a person from this area talking about their homeland. Mine all looked a lot more Italian than I do. Although, if I ignore their coloring, I do see a similarity in facial structure.

My husband is a different story. His parents' families came from Japan. His first AncestryDNA result said he was 100% Japanese. He still is, but now his test shows 3% Southern Japanese Islands and 97% Japan.

But the earliest inhabitants of Japan had to come from somewhere else, right? So what does MyHeritage show for my husband's Ancient Origin Breakdown?

By the Middle Ages, Paul was:

• 84.4% Japanese, without touching the Japanese islands in the south.
• 14.8% Sinitic, which is Chinese and doesn't quite reach North Korea.
• 0.8% Southeast Asian. This covers an area that touches Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, and Indonesia.

His breakdown was almost identical in the Roman Era, but going back to the Iron Age, China takes on a larger role.

• 60.4% Sinitic (Chinese).
• 20.4% Amur River, which is the part of China (and Russia) closest to northern Japan.
• 14.2% Jomon, which is Japan before they called it Japan.
• 5% Southeast Asian, covering the same territories I listed above.

In the Bronze Age, Paul's map looks much the same as it does in the every other era. But the concentrations are more specific.

• 52.6% Yellow River, which is an area of China west of Beijing.
• 15% Amur River, which is in his Iron Age breakdown in a somewhat higher percentage.
• 14.6% Liao River, which is the part of China west of North Korea.
• 14.4% Jomon. It seems some of his ancestors were always in Japan.
• 3.4% Southeast Asian, in a smaller percentage than he had in the Iron Age.

Taken altogether, Paul is overwhelmingly Japanese. But he does have ancient roots in China, and a few in Southeast Asia. He's almost as concentrated as I am.

MyHeritage Ancient Origins offers more than the Ancient Origin Breakdowns I've explored above. There's also a Hunter-Gatherer and Farmer Breakdown you may find interesting.

You can also explore the Sample Database to learn more about any of your genetic groups. For example, I looked into Phoenician, which came up on my map as Lebanon. It is in Lebanon, but also to a small extent in Sardinia, Italy. And Sardinia is in my Roman Era results.

The Genetic Distance Maps show where you are on a scatter plot of different DNA groups. My map is Southern Italian. But I have genetic similarity to Central Italians, Ashkenazi Jews, and Greeks. My parents' maps are almost identical to mine. Paul's map is Japanese with genetic similarity to Koreans, Chinese, and Tibetans.

Who else in the world has similar DNA to you?

I would love to see your Genetic Distance Map if you're much more of a mixture than we are. What type of cluster are you in if your four grandparents came from very different places?

Another Option

Yes, Ancient Origins sets MyHeritage apart from all the big DNA competitors. But there is another website for ancient results. I never wrote about it because I didn't know how trustworthy its results are. I uploaded my DNA tests to mytrueancestry.com a long time ago. Now I can compare the results to MyHeritage to see if they're reliable.

My True Ancestry says I'm:

• 25.1% Roman, with origins that match the Italic and Etruscan group from MyHeritage. It even says the Etruscans were from Anatolia…Turkey!
• 12.9% Hellenic Roman, which is Southern Italians who came from Greece. No doubt.
• 9.06% Carian, which is a subset of Anatolian…again, Turkey.
• 7.5% Ancient Greek.
• 6.88% Byzantine Empire. The sprawling Byzantine Empire included Italy, Turkey, the Middle East, and Greece. That tracks with the MyHeritage results.

The information on MyHeritage is more robust, but My True Ancestry is a good option. It's easy to upload DNA kits. You'll need to make a separate account for each DNA test using different email addresses.

Paul's results on My True Ancestry are:

• 35.8% Tokugawa Shogunate. That's Japan.
• 28.2% Licchavi Kingdom or today's Nepal. This is the one I had doubts about, but it isn't far off the areas shown on MyHeritage.
• 17.4% Han Dynasty, covering parts of China that mesh with Paul's MyHeritage results.
• 14.9% Three Kingdoms of Korea (the bottom of South Korea). The MyHeritage Genetic Distance Map does show his genetic similarity to Koreans.

The percentages are different between the websites. But I now have a higher opinion of My True Ancestry than I did before. With a free account, you can also see Modern Populations. I'm all Italian and Greek. Paul is very Japanese and bits of Chinese. There's even a genetic distance map.

I do prefer how MyHeritage breaks down the time periods with such precision.

Tell me what you think of your results on MyHeritage or My True Ancestry.

A 15% discount for readers of Fortify Your Family Tree!

And speaking of DNA tests:

• This Number is Crucial to Your DNA Match Research
• How to Use DNA Matches to Go Beyond Vital Records
• 4 Practical Methods for Identifying a DNA Match

Finally! A Great Tool to Transcribe Handwritten Documents

Note: You must follow any of the Handwriting OCR links in this article, create your free account, and if you do make a purchase, you'll get a discount in the form of additional document credits.

Last year I wrote about two different tools that extract text from document images. Ever since then I've been using OneNote to extract text from newspaper clippings—obituaries and announcements. It does a pretty good job, but I do have to clean up the text if the image isn't very clear.

In that article, I explained how Google Docs can pull text from handwritten documents. But the results were not what I'd hoped for at all.

Then I heard about a new tool called Handwriting OCR. Let me tell you, I'm astonished at the results. Not only can it read handwriting, it formats the text results so they make perfect sense. Google Docs' formatting is awful. It's all different text sizes and colors. It seems completely random. But Handwriting OCR matches the format of the written document in straightforward text. You're going to love this new tool.

At long last, a truly exceptional tool for transcribing handwritten documents.

Here are some of my results using Handwriting OCR:

• A 1925 employment card containing pre-printed and handwritten sections. The handwriting is clear, but a bit fancy. Handwriting OCR did a perfect job. It scored 100%. It even transcribed a word the writer had crossed out!
• A poor-quality image of a completely handwritten Italian birth record from 1866. Handwriting OCR scored about 95%. Yes! You can use this tool on non-English records and paste the clean text into Google Translate. My only word of caution is to double check the spelling of any proper names and years. A couple of times it did get the year wrong. But I am so very impressed.
• My own handwritten notebook page. I have an old notebook with my notes about a bunch of Ellis Island ship manifests. It's printed, not cursive, but I can get sloppy after writing for a while. Handwriting OCR scored 100%. I could scan the entire notebook to capture all this information!
• A 1917 U.S. death certificate. How many times have you found a death certificate and been unable to make out the cause of death? Let Handwriting OCR read it for you! I'll give this result a score of 95% for one reason. It turned the mother's maiden name of Iacobacci into Jacobi. Yes, the I looks like a J, but it ignored the ending of the name. Again, double check proper names.

Then there's the big test. While writing my article two weeks ago, I downloaded Johns Hopkins' 1870 will. It's 12 images of facing pages, handwritten on long sheets of paper. I tested this tool on page 1 of the document.

Not only did Handwriting OCR score 100%, but it obliterated the competition. I uploaded the same document image to Google Docs for a test. It did a terrible job of transcription. Terrible! Take a look at the results. Note: You can click each image to see it larger.

Figure 1. The handwritten document.

Figure 2. The unacceptable results from Google Docs.

Figure 3. The outstanding results from Handwriting OCR.

Now for some more good news. You can choose 5 documents to transcribe for free when you create a free account. If you're happy, and I'm sure you will be, they have a couple of very inexpensive price options. The first option may be perfect for you: to transcribe 100 document images for $12.

Plus, the company has given me a 20% coupon only for my readers. If you buy 100 image credits for $12, you'll actually get 120 image credits. Whichever amount of credits you buy, you'll get another 20% for free. I'll bet you can complete several big projects with that deal.

All you have to do to get the free 20% is follow this link: https://www.handwritingocr.com/?ref=FAMTREE. Create your free account, give it a try, and then decide how many credits you need to complete your project.

Use your first five credits wisely. For me, that 1870 will was the ultimate test. Before you start, some very important tips:

1. Upload each page at the highest possible resolution. Blurry documents won't do you any favors.
2. Instead of uploading book spreads (two pages side by side), separate them into individual pages. This is what I did with the 1870 will.
3. Before uploading, crop the images to show only the text/handwriting itself. If the page contains, say, a rubber stamp and official signatures that you don't need, crop them out.
4. Use your favorite photo editing software to enhance the contrast if the image is faded, and sharpen the clarity if the best image available is a bit fuzzy.

Let me know how well Handwriting OCR scores on your documents.

Finding the Chain of Immigrants that Led to You

The first time I visited my grandfather's hometown in Italy, I couldn't imagine why he left. Rolling hills surround his beautiful little town, and everyone knows one another. My great grandmother's town is so clean and pretty it practically shines.

How could they leave the serene Italian countryside for bustling American cities? To figure out why my people became immigrants, I had to find out what was happening at home when they left.

People have always left their homelands for the same basic reasons:

• To escape persecution, religious or otherwise.
• To escape extreme poverty, hunger, or famine.
• To escape the brutalization of war and armed aggression.
• To escape disease and a high death rate.

Which ancestor led the way for your family to follow to a better life?

In my family's case, their rural Southern Italian towns were, and still are, left behind. In the early 1900s, local transportation was difficult. This made it hard for people to get the food and other goods they needed. They had to raise their own crops and livestock. There was little to no industrialization in the south, which meant there were no jobs. Everyone was a farmer or practiced a trade. The vast majority of people were illiterate with no access to higher education.

That's why Southern Italians traveled to America in droves. They came to work on the railroads, in the steel mills, in the coal mines, and in the factories. They were hard, dangerous jobs, but at last they could earn money to help support their families.

Using Ship Manifests to Find Your Chain of Immigrants

Who paved the way for your earliest immigrant ancestors? Very early ship manifests won't offer you much information. But if you have anyone who left their home country in the 1890s or later, you're in luck. Your relative's ship manifest should tell you who they're coming to join in the new country. You may even see a street address.

Here's what I've put together by studying ship manifests.

anchor: a person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security

My Iamarino Anchor. My great grandfather, Francesco Iamarino, traveled to New York City a handful of times. He earned money and went back home to Italy. The first ship manifest I find for him is from 1903. He is coming to join his brother Giuseppe Iamarino on Morris Avenue in the Bronx, New York. Also on board with Francesco are Giuseppe's wife and two children.

On a 1909 ship manifest, Francesco is sailing to Boston, but he isn't alone. He's with his brother Teofilo, brother-in-law Innocenzo Pilla, and cousins Giorgio and Antonio Paolucci. All five men were heading to the Bronx to join Giuseppe Iamarino.

In 1920, my grandfather Pietro Iamarino (Francesco's son) had no opportunities at home. His only choice there was to work the land and hope to get by. Instead, Pietro joined his uncle Antonio Pilla in a Boston suburb where he worked for a baker. Then he went to Pennsylvania to join some men from his hometown and work at a steel mill. Then on to Ohio to work in another steel mill and live with a cousin who would become his father-in-law. (Pasquale Iamarino, my great grandfather.) Finally, he took his family to the Bronx to join his uncle Giuseppe Iamarino. That's the same Giuseppe his father had joined at least three times. Pietro worked as a stone setter for a jeweler, finally achieving security for his family.

I've never found a ship manifest for my 2nd great uncle Giuseppe Iamarino. The 1905 New York State Census says he arrived in 1900, but I don't know who was here for him. Giuseppe became an anchor to help his family find a better life in America. My father was about 3 years old when his family moved from Ohio to the Bronx. He says his family lived with Giuseppe until they could get their own apartment nearby.

My Caruso Anchor. My great granduncle Giuseppe Caruso boarded a ship in 1900. He and his brother-in-law set out to join their shared brother-in-law Michele in Elmira, New York. Michele arrived in America in 1894. His ship manifest offers no extra details. That's why I'm so lucky my ancestors arrived as late as they did.

Giuseppe Caruso sent for his wife in 1901, his brother Nicola in 1902, his brothers Filippo and Luigi in 1903, and his sister Maria Rosa (my great grandmother) in 1906. Each person listed Giuseppe as the person they were coming to join.

Four months after Maria Rosa arrived, she married Giuseppe's friend, Pasquale Iamarino (my great grandfather). Part of Giuseppe's work in paving the way for his family was finding a husband for his sister.

Who paved the way for your immigrant ancestors? Did they find a better life? Do you think you could have been born if they hadn't left?