New Feature Sets MyHeritage Apart

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.

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.

How to Create Your Origins Chart

You may have seen people sharing a different kind of family tree online. Instead of showing the names of their direct ancestors, each block shows a person's place of birth. I made a somewhat different version of this chart.

My family tree is so extensive, it includes nine of my 9th great grandparents. When I created my Elder Scroll, it was clear I had more ancestors from one town than any other. Having more Colle Sannita roots than any other justifies all the time I spend on this town.

But a visual is always nice, isn't it?

Get out your crayons! Create your Origins Chart and see clearly which places are the most important to your genealogy.

To make my origins chart, I used the 10-generation fan chart I exported from MyHeritage last April. These are so beautiful and fun to look at. If your tree is on FamilySearch or Ancestry, you can see your fan chart there, too.

I used Photoshop for this project, but you can make an old-school version. Print your fan chart in black and white and get out different colored markers or crayons.

The MyHeritage fan chart using blocks of color to separate my ancestral lines. It uses a different color for each of my 8 great grandparents. There's also a version that shows all the names rather than color blocks.

I opened the color-block chart in Photoshop and kept the fan chart with all the names open on MyHeritage. (You can keep your family tree open for reference if you aren't using MyHeritage.)

Divide and Color

Starting at the center with myself, I saw that my maternal grandmother, my mother, and I were all born in New York City. So I outlined the 3 of us, filled the area in with one color (yellow), and wrote New York City on top of it.

If you're doing this on paper, outline and/or color in each group of people from one place. Make a separate key to show which place each color represents.

Next I chose the area representing my father. It was already colored baby blue, so I kept that color and labeled it Ohio. He's my only ancestor born there. His mother is my only ancestor born in New York State, outside the city, so she gets her own label, too.

Now comes the parts of my family tree with the deepest roots. The reason I kept my tree open on MyHeritage was so that I could click any person and see where they were born. My maternal grandfather and all his ancestors came from Baselice, Benevento, Italy. I outlined them, made them red, and labeled them with the town name.

All my great grandfather Sarracino's ancestors came from one town. His wife and her paternal ancestors came from the same town. So I outlined those blocks and made them orange. I labeled them Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Benevento, Italy. Then I carved up my great grandmother Saviano's maternal ancestors. I colored in and labeled them: (1) Santa Paolina, Avellino, Italy, and (2) Apice, Benevento, Italy.

My paternal grandmother's section was simple. Her maternal side came from one town. I colored them green and labeled them Pesco Sannita, Benevento, Italy. Her paternal side was all Colle Sannita. So is most of my paternal grandfather's side. I carved out the ancestors not from Colle and colored them dark blue. I labeled them Circello, Benevento, Italy. Everyone else on my paternal side is from Colle Sannita. I colored them a lighter blue and labeled them Colle Sannita, Benevento, Italy.

These colorful fan charts from MyHeritage inspired me to turn my family tree into an Origins Chart.

How to Use Your Origins Chart

As you look at your colorful origins chart, remember to keep the scale in mind. My chart has a big chunk of yellow from New York City, but that represents only 3 people. The big chunk of baby blue from Ohio is only one person—Dad. His family was only in Ohio for a short time, and he moved to New York City as a toddler. So despite the large block of color, Ohio represents a very small part of my genealogy research.

It's the earlier color blocks that drive my genealogy research. When you consider the scale, Colle Sannita is an enormous chunk of my family tree. The second largest is Baselice. I've spent years researching these towns' vital records. I created and published inventories of all the available vital records. I have fit almost everyone from these towns into my family tree.

But it's clear I can do a lot more work with the other towns. I've gathered the vital records for all my direct ancestors already. But with such deep roots, there's much more to discover.

• Sant'Angelo a Cupolo is problematic because they have no vital records before 1861. But I can try to connect more of the town's families.
• Pesco Sannita holds a lot of promise for me.
• Santa Paolina is my only ancestral town outside of the Benevento border. It's close by in the neighboring province of Avellino. I've found DNA cousins with roots in this town. I need to connect more of those families.
• Circello has an added bonus to drive my research. My aunt's husband had roots there and in Colle Sannita. That gives me lots of ways to connect to him and his children, my maternal 1st cousins.
• Apice, the little ghost town I've written about before, is my latest target. I've almost completed an inventory of its available vital records. My nearest ancestor from Apice, my 3rd great grandmother, was born in 1816. That's so early that I didn't expect to find a lot of relatives. I was wrong. Like all these small towns, every family intermarried. That creates a lot of connections I'm eager to pull into my family tree.

You can see how your origins chart can focus and drive your research. Of all the towns I've visited, it was Colle Sannita and Baselice that had the strongest pull on my heart. My origins chart actually bears that out.

Can you see which places in your origins chart make up the most of you? If you have lots of unknown places—areas you can't color in—that's where you should focus your work. What if you haven't done any research in a place that winds up being a very important part of your story?

I invite you to create and share your origins chart. Then use it to guide your genealogy research.

5 Details to Review for a Richer Family Tree

You know the old phrase, "If I'd only known then what I know now"? It relates to genealogy very well because we build our family trees over a long period of time. Over the years I've learned so much about building a family tree. I'm sure you have, too.

As I continue to add source citations to my family tree, I revisit my early inexperienced work. Now that I know what I didn't know then, I can see past my incorrect conclusions and make breakthroughs.

Take a fresh look at your early genealogy work with these details in mind.

My "newbie" errors fall under a few categories. Here are 5 details you can review to enrich your family tree.

1. Not Assuming a Country of Origin

Years ago I documented all the available vital records from my grandfather's hometown. When I entered people with no birth record available into my family tree, I left their place of birth blank. I decided not to assume they came from the same town, or even the same country, where they later lived.

Tens of thousands of documents later, I know it was uncommon for people in this place to leave home. My roots are in small, remote, rural towns. Evidence shows people stayed in place unless they moved to the next town to marry.

Historic events in your ancestors' country may have led to a lot of migration at different times. But in my family tree, people were rarely uprooted. So even though I don't have proof of a person's town of birth, I can assume a couple of things:

• If they lived in a town where their last name was common, I'll assume they were born there. No harm done.
• If their last name is not found in their town, I'll assume they were born in Italy. This way they won't show up in a report as missing their 1870 U.S. Federal Census. (See "How to Find Location Errors in Your Family Tree".)

But let's say you're researching people in a country that saw a lot of immigration (the United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc.). You shouldn't assume anyone was born in that country. You're going to need to find other documents to narrow down their place of birth.

2. Missing Certain Annotations

I looked at a ton of vital records before I realized certain important clues could be hiding there. Now that I'm hunting down source citations, I get a second chance to scan those records for clues like these:

• If a baby is born after their father died, check the birth record for a note about the his date and place of death.
• If a child is born and the father doesn't report the birth, there may be an explanation why. You may see that he was ill, the weather was terrible, he was dead, or he was somewhere else working. I have a lot of records in my family tree that say the father was in America when the baby was born. This is a good prompt to search for his immigration records.
• On Italian vital records, you may overlook the fact that a baby was stillborn. Look for the words "nato morto" (stillborn), "senza vita" (without life), or a death date in the column of a birth record. It's important to notice this because of the next item to review.

3. Not Recognizing Human Error

A town clerk is the person who creates these old vital records. And being human means there's a possibility of human error.

Some marriage records confused me long ago because the dates didn't line up. Here's what was happening. To get married in Italy, the bride and groom had to show a copy of their birth record. It's not like today. You didn't have your birth certificate in a strongbox at home. You had to request that a town clerk find the original record and hand-write a copy of it. (No Xerox machines, either.)

I found cases where the clerk copied the birth record of the bride or groom's dead older sibling with the same name. Since I have access to the birth records, I can see that this was human error. But there's another wrong-person error that can lead to big problems for your family tree.

Aside from their own birth records, the bride and groom needed their parents' consent to marry. If their mother was dead, they needed a copy of her death record. If their father was dead, they needed his death record. And if their father's father was dead, they needed a copy of his death record. Grandpa may have died many decades ago. If the town clerk didn't have the right details, he might copy the death record of a different man with the same name. And they all had the same name, didn't they?

Not recognizing this error may lead you two merge two very different people in your family tree. If the details seem off, try to search for the man who fits this stray death record.

4. Overlooking Marriage Clues

Early on I made this mistake over and over. If a couple posted marriage banns, but there was no marriage record to go with it, I assumed they never married.

Sometimes that is the case. (See "When Is a Marriage Not a Marriage?") But then I learned two important facts. In Italy, if a bride and groom came from two different towns:

• they had to post marriage banns in both towns
• they almost always married in the bride's town, even if they were going to live in the groom's town.

A couple's second marriage banns should tell you if one of them was born in another town. (See where to look in "How to Read Italian Marriage Records REVISED".) If she was born somewhere else, you can expect they married there. Now I'm making sure I check the other town for marriage records. And I'll find the original birth record of the out-of-towner.

5. Not Expanding the Search

Building on that last point, the original vital record is always better to have. The town clerk is less likely to misspell a name that's common in his town. If marriage records tell me the groom's father died in another town, I'll get the original record in that town. Then I use the original document for the source citation.

In the past I was more likely to stay within my ancestral hometown and not chase down the out-of-towners. But the purpose of my family tree is to help countless other family tree researchers. If I can cite the original birth record of my third great uncle's second wife from another town, why not do it? I won't build her entire family tree, but I want to put together enough facts to make that possible for someone else.

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It took a huge source citations project to get me to review everyone in my tree. But it's so worthwhile. I've made discoveries, added new people, and enriched my family tree. Find a way to give your family tree a thorough review. What big discoveries will you make?