A Mild Scrub for Your GEDCOM File

A GEDCOM file exported from Family Tree Maker isn't compliant with the GEDCOM standard. That's what a reader of this blog told me. That's a problem if you export a GEDCOM and want to import it into different software. You may lose some data.

After going through the article he sent me ("How to Scrub Your Data", by Keith Riggle), my eyes glazed over. But I decided to see which changes I'd like to make to my family tree in the spirit of following best practices.

Protect your family tree file for the long haul by replacing outdated fact types.

As I looked into it, I discovered something new about the text editor I use every day—Notepad++. There's a plugin for use with GEDCOM files, of all things. It's called GedcomLexer, and it does a better job of displaying your GEDCOM file. To install it, I went to the Plugins menu and chose Plugins Admin. Then I selected GedcomLexer from the list.

Now all the 4-letter GEDCOM tags in my file are blue and bold. A person's ID number is maroon. Source and family numbers are orange. All other text is gray, with one exception. It displays what it calls a User Tag in bold magenta. The User Tags I see in my file include:

• _LINK
• _FREL
• _MREL
• _MILT

The initial underscore seems to be another way of showing that it isn't an official GEDCOM tag. The LINK tag happens when I add a URL in the Web address field of a source citation. I'm going to ignore that tag. I know my links work when I upload my GEDCOM to Geneanet.org. And in RootsMagic 8 they're displayed as Source comments or Detail comments. The article on data scrubbing suggests putting it in the source citation's notes. I have tens of thousands of source citations. No thanks.

The FREL and MREL tags also happen automatically. They're near the end of a GEDCOM where Family Tree Maker keeps track of family units. I can't find any online reference to them, but the word Natural comes after each one. They must mean Father's RELationship and Mother's RELationship. When I import my GEDCOM into other software, family relationships remain intact. Even an adopted relationship makes the transition. So I won't give anymore thought to FREL and MREL.

The MILT tag is the one that bothers me. First of all, the discontinued GEDCOM tag for Military Service is MILI, not MILT. I use this tag for military service dates. And I don't see any logical, GEDCOM-valid substitute. I checked my grandfather in RootsMagic 8 (a file created from a GEDCOM), and his military facts were intact. On Ancestry, everything's fine, but on Geneanet, all his military service dates are labeled Conscription! I'm not going to do anything about this one either.

Deciding What to Change

Let's keep this simple and choose a few easy-to-replace discontinued tags to edit. Here's how to begin:

• Go to https://www.tamurajones.net/GEDCOMTags.xhtml and scroll way down to Overview Table.
• Paying attention to the last column (labeled 5.5.5), look for familiar* GEDCOM tags marked with a red X. The X means they have discontinued this tag. The more common discontinued tags (you may find others that you use) include:
  • ARVL for arrival
  • DPRT for departure
  • EMPL for employment
  • SSN for Social Security Number
• Make yourself a running list of the ones you'd like to change.
• Export your GEDCOM file and open it in a text editor.
• Search the file for discontinued tags.
• In your family tree software, replace discontinued tags with approved tags.

*If you aren't at all familiar with 4-character GEDCOM tags, scroll through your GEDCOM file a bit. You'll see things repeated, like NAME, DATE, PLAC (for place), BIRT (for birth), DEAT (for death), RESI (for residence), SOUR (for source), etc.

It's a shame Family Tree Maker offers these discontinued fact types in its selection list. But going through this exercise should be enough to make us remember which ones not to use anymore.

Making the Changes

More things to do with your GEDCOM:

• An Easy Way to Rid Your Family Tree of Typos
• 4 Ways to Safeguard Your Digital Family Tree
• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree

1. ARVL and DPRT. When I first started using Family Tree Maker, I noticed there were emigration and immigration fact types as well as departure and arrival fact types. I decided to use emigration and immigration for a person's first voyage, and departure and arrival for later trips.

Now I see they've discontinued ARVL and DPRT. In my GEDCOM file, instead of ARVL and DPRT, I have TYPE Arrival and TYPE Departure. Is this Family Tree Maker's method of handling the discontinued tags? I do have EMIG and IMMI tags. I'd prefer to go with them.

This long-overlooked feature in Family Tree Maker is just what I need for this GEDCOM cleanup.

What I'll do in my Family Tree Maker file is:

• Go to a person with a Departure fact and select it in their Person tab.
• On the right, beneath the person's profile image, click the Options button. Then choose Fact Data Options.
• This opens a Departure Fact Data Options window. At the top, select "Show facts for All individuals". In my family tree, this covers 222 Departure facts.
• Beneath the list of people, check the box for "Change selected facts to this fact type". Choose Emigration from the list, then click OK. Done!
• Now choose an Arrival fact and follow the same steps, changing the fact type to Immigration.

That was so easy. The steps will be different if you don't use Family Tree Maker. I have a free copy of RootsMagic 8, and I can only change one instance of a fact data type at a time.

If your family tree software doesn't let you change every instance of a tag at once, you'll have to do it one at a time. Use your GEDCOM file to find each instance and scroll up a bit to find the person's name. Then make the change in your family tree software.

2. EMPL. I haven't used this tag, but if you have, you can change it from Employment (EMPL) to Occupation (OCCU).

3. SSN. In my early days, I recorded the Social Security Numbers of deceased relatives. This number is often included in a U.S. Social Security Death Index record.

I thought it would be handy if I needed to request more detailed information about that person. Take my grandfather's first wife, for example. Before I learned her maiden name, I thought about paying to see her Social Security application. Then I discovered her name when I found her passport application by using her birth date.

Soon after I started, there was an uproar over the publication of SSNs and the possibility for fraud. I decided to stop recording these numbers as a record type. I put them in the person's notes or skipped it from then on.

When I search my GEDCOM file for "SSN", I find only two SSN facts (for my grandfathers). There are also 4 mentions of "SSN" within a person's notes (that's fine). I'll go to my grandfathers in my Family Tree Maker file and move their numbers into their notes.

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It came as a shock to me that Arrival, Departure, and Military aren't valid GEDCOM tags. As I said, I'm sticking with Military unless someone can suggest a better alternative. But from now on I'll always use Emigration and Immigration for all trips. Think about these trips in modern-day terms. You have to go through Customs and show your passport for an international trip. So EMIG and IMMI seem reasonable.

If you want to scrub your GEDCOM harder, see the related articles at the end of "How to Scrub Your Data".

4-Tool Combo Solves a DNA Problem

I've been playing around with the chromosome browser on MyHeritage. In my DNA match list on MyHeritage, I have a woman, her father, and his mother. (They're all my AncestryDNA matches, too.) I know their roots are in the Italian hometown of my dad's family.

Their relationship to each another should look interesting on the chromosome browser. I compared them to myself and my dad and my 6th chromosome is where the action is! My dad and the woman and her father and her grandmother all intersect on two parts of my 6th chromosome.

Then I looked at my dad's DNA test. I added the 3 family members (but not myself) on his chromosome browser. I found that the 4 of them intersect on my dad's 6th and 11th chromosomes. That's a solid connection.

So here's the big question. Why does the grandmother show up in my Family Tree Maker file as "wife of 4th cousin 1x removed"? There was a ton of intermarriage in our shared ancestral hometown. So the grandmother and I have 27 different relationships in FTM, but none of them are by blood.

I've let this go unresolved for too long. It's time to bring in genealogy tools in addition to the chromosome browser.

I knew they were related to each other. A chromosome browser tied them to Dad and me.

Tool #1: Family Tree Analyzer

A reader of this blog once told me that Family Tree Maker has a known flaw when it comes to relationships. There will be cases where it is wrong—particularly with more distant relationships. The reader suggested I defer to Family Tree Analyzer for the correct relationship.

So I opened my latest GEDCOM file in Family Tree Analyzer. I found the grandmother in the Individuals table. When I scrolled over to see the Relation to Root column, it said she's my 6th cousin once removed. Aha! So there is a true cousin connection.

Tool #2: Ancestry.com

I build my tree using Family Tree Maker and synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.com. What a surprise to see that my Ancestry tree already knew she is my 6th cousin once removed. She's labeled as such on her profile page.

On that page I can click our relationship to see a list of generational steps from her to me.

Tool #3: Family Tree Maker

Back in Family Tree Maker, I followed those generational steps. I went from her to her father, grandfather, great grandmother, and up that paternal line until I saw it.

Way up the line, her 5th great grandparents had a yellow color code. (I use color-coding in FTM to identify my 4 grandparents' lines.) That tells me they are direct ancestors of my paternal grandfather. When I clicked their names, I saw that they are my 6th great grandparents. (Family Tree Analyzer agrees.)

Tool #4: Relationship Calculator

I wanted confirmation and to see my relationship to her son and granddaughter. (They each have more than one connection to me.) I opened my relationship calculator spreadsheet. First I went to the column for my 6th great grandparents. Then I went down that column to the row where my DNA match is this ancestor's 5th great grandchild. The column and row intersect at 6th cousin once removed.

The next 2 rows show my relationship to her son (7th cousin) and granddaughter (7th cousin once removed). Finally! I've known about these DNA matches for years without understanding our relationship.

Multiple tools pointed to one relationship. Then my color-coded family tree brought it all together.

I did look at the Shared cM Project tool on DNA Painter to try to figure out my relationship to the grandmother. But there were too many possibilities. I also looked at the diagram of possible relationships diagram on MyHeritage. Our true relationship is too distant to show up there. Even when I compared her to my father's DNA test, it leaned toward a 3rd cousin relationship. (Thanks, endogamy.) The true relationship of 6th cousins was too far away to show.

As I mentioned, I'd already placed these 3 DNA matches in my family tree. I can take their lines back to my 8th great grandfather, born in 1671. But it always bothered me that the real picture of our relationship was hiding. Family Tree Maker does know that my 8th great grandfather is my DNA match's 7th great grandfather. But I would never have seen the true relationship without the help of other genealogy tools.

The truth is out there, as they say.

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.