5 Super-Cool Features of MyHeritage

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unexpected Finds from FamilySearch Labs

It's been a while since I looked at the "Labs" section of FamilySearch.org. This is where you can take advantage of their enormous "Full-Text Search" project. You can find new documents for your family tree because your ancestor merely gets a mention.

I went to https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/full-text and started by entering two names and one place. They were my great grandfather (Giovanni Sarracino) and his brother-in-law (Semplicio Saviano) in the Bronx, New York. They were businessmen whose dealings are still clouded in mystery. I don't know how they came to own a building with retail stores and four apartments.

Here are three complete surprises I found there. This should inspire you to search these records, too!

Find unusual genealogy documents where your ancestor is a supporting character, not the star.

My Great Grandfather's Signature

My first result says my great grandfather was a witness on a Petition for Naturalization in 1940. I don't know this other man. He didn't live in my great grandfather's neighborhood or come from his hometown. But how cool is it to see my great grandfather's signature for the first time?

My 2nd Great Uncle's Children

Next I found several pages of Bronx probate records. The subject of the records was Giuseppa, the widow of my great grandfather's brother. At first I didn't see a connection and didn't know who she was. But one of the pages is a 1908 baptism record from St. Rita's Church in the Bronx. That caught my eye. They baptized my grandmother there in 1899.

The baptism record is for my 1st cousin twice removed, Angelo Sarracino. He's the son of Angelo Sarracino (my 2nd great uncle) and his wife Giuseppa Orrosa.

This legal filing has an astonishing 100 pages, each of which I downloaded as an image. Here are the details I found in this document that I didn't know before:

• Giuseppa Orrosa (spelling uncertain) died on 2 Feb 1920 at 222 East 150th Street, Bronx, New York. With some difficulty, I did find her New York City death certificate. Too bad it uses her husband's name as her father's, and her mother's name is the same as hers.
• Her eldest son Anthony filed several legal papers to claim Giuseppa's financial holdings. Some of his siblings were minors, and there was no will, which complicated things. The document shows how much he paid for lawyers and his mother's funeral.
• Giuseppa had $1,339 in the bank, $750 at home, and held a promissory note for $1,000. My great grandfather and his brother-in-law's wife must have borrowed money from Giuseppa. I had no idea she was also involved in my great grandfather's business dealings.

Searching for more Sarracino documents led to a string of discoveries.

• I found New York City vital records and Italian birth records in towns that are new to me.
• I found a previously unknown child for Giuseppa who died after two days.
• I found several spellings of her maiden name. Her exact town of origin is still a mystery to me.

All the documents have different spellings of her maiden name. Only one spelling variation has a match on the Cognomix website. This website shows you where you can find any last name in Italy today. That one spelling is Orasi. I tried doing a wide search for anyone name Orasi coming to America. None of the leads from this wide search turned out to be helpful.

As I went through the 245 pages of search results, many were from Giuseppa's probate records. To narrow the search, I used only Semplicio Saviano's name. This led to a very sad discovery.

My Cousin James' Difficult Life

Semplicio and his wife Giovina had 11 children, four of whom died by the age of four. Giovina died at age 46 when her youngest child was only seven years old. Her son James was 12 years old at the time. All I knew about James was that he lived to be 79 years old and never married.

This set of 1928 documents shows that James was a delinquent child who ran away from home often. The file claims he had an IQ of 37 and had two mental examinations before his mother died. His father once placed him in an institution, a "Catholic Protectory", for six weeks, where he did well. At one point, Semplicio had to file a report with the Missing Persons Bureau. James' probation officer lists many incidents where James:

• was found dirty and neglected
• was delinquent from school
• called in a false alarm
• was begging for money at 3 a.m. by the Brooklyn Bridge!

A court order forced Semplicio to pay $3 a week for the boy's "maintenance", and he was having trouble keeping up.

An official interviewed James' sister Columbia. She said his weak mental and physical state were due to convulsions when he was born, and a 12-hour coma. The family wanted James to go back to the Catholic Protectory. There he could do manual work away from the "so-called crowd of defective children".

The institution said they'd welcome James. But if he didn't do well, the only alternative was to send him to the now-infamous Letchworth Village. It seems that never happened. Semplicio suggested in 1928 that James should work in the lumber yard where his brother Anthony worked. Anthony could keep an eye on James. The 1930 census shows that James was a lumber helper. In the 1950 census he's a pin boy at a bowling alley.

This document contains facts about Semplicio's family that I would never have known. It describes the family home in great detail. It lists the jobs, schools, and income of the whole family. I like the description of the apartment even more because this is the same building where my mom grew up. It's where my grandparents lived when I was a kid.

This amazing find tells a new, detailed story about my 2nd great uncle Semplicio's family.

The full-text search section of FamilySearch is well worth visiting every several months. Everything I described here didn't show up in my results the last time I looked. What will you find?

How to Share Your Family Tree With Cousins

Sometimes a cousin will ask if I have a printout of the family tree to share with them. Well, no. My tree has more than 83,000 people. If you specify which part of it you want, I can make a PDF. But can a family tree chart ever show you all the details you want? No. A family tree chart will only show names plus birth, marriage, and death dates and places.

I've kept a copy of my family tree on Ancestry.com since the early 2000s. I build my tree on my desktop using Family Tree Maker then synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.

A few relatives asked for access to my Ancestry tree, and I sent them an invitation. But some invitations were never opened. Only one person noticed when I deleted my original tree, voiding their access.

Give the Cousins What They Need

When a cousin asks for the family tree, how can we provide a tree that's:

• useful
• printable
• customizable
• easy-to-explore, and
• provides access to all the juicy details?

If you've been paying attention, you know I dislike collaborative family tree websites. I'm a control freak and won't allow anyone to change my facts. That's why I'm not going to consider the likes of FamilySearch.org, Geni.com, or WikiTree.com.

I'm already using two websites to display my family tree and allow others to find my work. Let's take a look at sharing your family tree on Ancestry.com and Geneanet.org.

After so many years of use, I can't tell if Ancestry's interface is overwhelming for guests of my family tree.

The Ancestry.com Option

I went to a friend's Ancestry.com tree where I have a guest role. I wanted to see what's available to me as a non-owner and non-editor. There are limits to what I can see and do:

• I can see the vertical or horizontal family tree layout and a fan chart with 5 generations of ancestors. But I can't customize the fan chart. (You can customize your own fan chart if you pay for Ancestry Pro Tools.)
• It's a bit hidden, but I can print one individual's tree view or fan chart. But first I have to display exactly the right people on the screen. I must expand or collapse siblings and generations before finding the print button.
• I can click any individual to see their profile page. This shows me all their facts plus any sources, and a list of parents, spouses, children, and siblings.
• I can see notes attached to any fact right there in the list of facts. In my tree, an emigration fact's description field says the destination and ship name. "Left for New York on the Lapland." Each immigration fact gives specifics about their arrival. "Arrived join uncle Antonio Pilla at 22 West Street, Newton, Massachusetts."
• Unless I'm the tree's owner or an editor, I cannot see notes attached to the person. This disappoints me. I wanted these notes to help other people investigating my family tree. This is where I record, among other things, military record details and obituary text.
• On each person's profile page, you can look at the sources attached by the tree's owner. If they've done it well, you can view the record and the image for yourself.

What I can't tell you is how easy or confusing this may be for someone who hasn't been using Ancestry.com for many years.

My Ancestry.com family tree has one big advantage. A visitor can see the document images I've attached to any person. I removed all photographs when Ancestry said they had rights to your photos. I don't own all the photos in my family tree, so I don't want to share them. The photos are in my Family Tree Maker file, but I marked them private to keep them offline.

I mentioned that some people never looked at my Ancestry.com tree even after asking for access. So I want to look at option two.

The Geneanet.org Option

Two years ago, you couldn't synchronize your Family Tree Maker to Ancestry.com for months. I had to find another option. I liked Geneanet.org because it's free and I can replace my GEDCOM at will. No worries about synchronizing. I can replace my whole GEDCOM each time.

Despite what their website says, I cannot upload my document images to the site along with my GEDCOM. If you know how to do it, please tell me.

I give my Geneanet family tree link and my Ancestry link to people in case Ancestry limits their access. You may need to create a free Geneanet account to explore my family tree, but I'd say the price is right.

Seeing a person's timeline alongside the family tree view might make Geneanet.org easier for a cousin with a casual interest.

Aside from being free, here's why I like Geneanet for sharing your family tree with relatives:

• The family tree view is easy to navigate. You can click plus signs to expand family units. You can click and drag the tree around to look at other generations. You can search for a person by name at the top of the family tree view. No complaints there.
• Clicking any person in the family tree view opens a right panel filled with their details. It's a complete timeline of all the facts attached to this person. Click any fact to see its complete source citation. This includes a clickable link to the source, if it's included. This panel also includes any non-private notes attached to a person. That's a big plus.
• With a person of interest selected, click the top-left tab to switch from Family Tree to Profile. The Profile view has everything in one place.
  • Birth and death dates and places.
  • Parents' names and lifespans.
  • Spouse's name and lifespan, along with marriage date and place, and children's names and lifespans.
  • Siblings' names and lifespans.
  • Life events, in order, with full details and source citation. This list displays any notes you may record in a fact's description field.
  • Source citations (again), all in one list.
  • Family tree preview showing 3 generations of ancestors with their names and lifespans.
  • From the preview section, click to print the person's ancestry or descendancy chart. Or click Printable Family Tree for more options. Choose the type of chart, color themes, and specify the number of generations. I find this easier than Ancestry.com's option. You can also create a family history book through a partner called Patronomia. You can save it as a PDF for free.

When a cousin wants to see a family tree chart for their branch, Geneanet.org lets them create a customized treasure.

My only complaint about Geneanet.org is personal. It refuses to recognize that DiAnn has a capital A. It's fine with the last names in my tree that have lowercase prefixes, like diPaola and delGrosso. It even allows a name like LaBrusco, where I capitalize the L so it doesn't look like an uppercase i. But it doesn't like that my first name has two capital letters. There are so many unusual first names. This seems like a programming problem to fix. It's ignoring the case of the letters in first names.

I'm going to send an email to any of my cousins who've shown interest in the family tree. I'll link them to my Geneanet.org tree, and give them an overview of how to use the site. This could be the perfect self-help solution for their needs.

Do you have any ancestors from Italy's Benevento Province? Search for your names in my Geneanet family tree. Take advantage of my ridiculous amount of research.