Viewing a Family Tree at My Heritage

My Heritage now offers pedigree views of family trees. This was a desperately needed modification.

In this view, you can see the ancestors of a person.

My Heritage originally offered only a "family view." If you clicked on a person, you saw one line of ancestors and could not click back to the original person. This made navigating a tree frustrating.

I discussed this issue three years ago.

My Heritage became an important factor in genealogy research when the DNA testing site 23andMe enabled customers to link to My Heritage to display family trees.

My Heritage is free to sign up, but a subscription charge must be paid to add larger trees and access records.

My Heritage offers its own autosomal DNA testing services. The price for a kit is in line with the other testing companies. DNA tested at My Heritage is compatible to upload to GedMatch.

If you tested your DNA elsewhere, you can upload the file for free to My Heritage for an ethnicity estimate and family matches. No subscription is required to access this information.

I have found many more matches from United Kingdom at My Heritage as compared to the other testing companies.

In the examples below, the tester's parents were from Ireland. At other testing sites, he has many distant matches. At My Heritage, he has several close matches.

My Heritage Offers an Ethnicity Estimate

Most people who ask me about DNA testing are interested in finding out their "ethnicity."

"Do your family tree instead," I tell them.

Why?

First, you do not carry DNA of all your ancestors.

Second, your DNA is not a proportional representation of your ancestors beyond your mother and father.

Third, your results will vary from company to company and over time.

Fourth, modern-day political boundaries of countries do not represent a homogeny of inhabitants now or throughout history.

Three months ago, I uploaded DNA files to My Heritage because it was free.  I am looking for relatives to fill in missing leaves and branches of my family tree.  So far, my mother has two matches in the second to fourth degree cousin range, but neither has responded to my inquiries.

Today an email signaled the arrival of My Heritage's Ethnicity Estimate.  The spinning globe with music, supposedly from the area of origin, is eye-catching and unique.  I could not reproduce the spinning globe here, so I created some screen shots.  It seems that the spinning globe function is limited to five regions.

The beginning of my spinning globe ethnicity display

The end of my spinning globe

Greek is new to me.  The beauty of my situation is that I can compare my ethnicity results with my parents.  From either parent I can inherit all of a particular ethnicity, a portion, or none.

Neither of my parents is Greek, according to My Heritage.  We've done this before with Family Tree DNA and 23andMe.  Some of the purported ethnicities do not line up with my parents.

The remaining ethnicities for my father do not include Greek.
His Baltic and Scandinavian are not reflected in my estimate.

My mother.  I currently describe her as three quarters Irish and one quarter Russian.

My maternal grandmother's first cousin (O'Donnell/Joyce branch) came up 100% Irish.

The Rest of the Family's DNA at My Heritage

The other twenty DNA files that I uploaded to My Heritage have processed after a week.

My own kit processed first within two days, showing a close match in the second to third cousin range.  After the files of my parents were processed, this mystery cousin showed up in my father's matches with around the same amount of shared DNA as I share with this person.

Now that I know the match comes from my father's side, I have better direction.  I built out this cousin's family tree, but I do not see the connection yet.  I sent follow-up inmail to the administrator of the account, but have not heard back.

We need to see where the shared segments of DNA fall on my father's genome.  There may already be identified ancestors.  This cousin does not appear in the matches of the cousins I uploaded, but that does not mean that the match is not through one of those branches.



My paternal aunt has a possible promising match not shared by the other siblings:  110 cM total, with the longest segment 79 cM.  Again, without a chromosome browser, I can't rely on these numbers.

My mother has a match in the second to third cousin range.  I don't recognize him from any other other testing companies.  Let's hope he answers my inmail.

My mother has the most matches of anyone I uploaded- just under 100 matches.  She has thousands of matches at the other three main testing companies: 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and Ancestry.com.

DNA at My Heritage

Based on a recommendation over at Your Genetic Genealogist, I uploaded DNA test results to My Heritage.  This is (currently) a free service.

The site offers its own DNA testing.  They do not have a pool of customers comparable to the big three (23andMe, Family Tree DNA, and Ancestry.com/DNA), so you will not have as many matches.  There have also been questions concerning how My Heritage computes matches.

Because My Heritage has its own testing service, some people may have tested only at that particular site.  If you are looking for a recent non-parental even (which is my situation), then it's worth checking out this other database.

You never know where the missing link tested his/her DNA.  (And didn't transfer the results to any other site.)

So far, only my results are computed.  I have 45 matches at My Heritage.  For comparison, I have thousands of matches at the other sites.

My top match is probably a good one.  I like the information displayed:
-shared percentage
-total centimorgans
-longest segment
-possible range of relationship
-age of match
-direct link to match in the family tree

I don't see a chromosome browser.  Without seeing the actual shared segments, there is nothing else I can do with this match if we don't see commonality in our family trees.

When my parent's results are in, this match should appear near the top of either my mother's or my father's matches, providing more direction.

I still do not like the family tree display at My Heritage.  It explodes into siblings and spouses instead of direct ancestors and drops where you were in the tree.  The default setting displays women by the surnames of their husbands.  You can change this, but most people don't.  I don't need to see a woman's husband's name twice.  I need to see her name.

Further displeasure arrived in an email, encouraging me to add an entire branch to my tree with just a few clicks.  Folks, this is not how genealogical research is done.

Views on MyHeritage

MyHeritage partnered with 23andMe to provide family tree making services and records to consumers of DNA tests.  A profile page at 23andMe can display a direct link to a tree at MyHeritage.

23andMe provided an inefficient family tree making tool.  You could not upload a gedcom file; instead, you had to manually enter every person.  Trees often crashed.  A better system was necessary.  By aligning with MyHeritage, DNA customers new to genealogy were introduced to a genealogy service, to try for free or to buy.

Good plan.  Except that the family tree service at MyHeritage is not so good.

A Pedigree View is what I need to get an overall view of someone's ancestors.  Here is an example at Ancestry:

At MyHeritage, you cannot view the tree as Pedigree.  You need to click on an individual to see back a generation, which drops the generations below while expanding to include siblings, spouses, and their descendants.  You become lost quickly.

I emailed MyHeritage, asking if it was possible to view a tree on their site in Pedigree.  No answer.

Message boards at MyHeritage also carry this request, to no avail.

Another unfortunate outcome at 23andMe is that you cannot attach your profile to a parent in a tree at MyHeritage and sort your DNA matches by parent.

My family trees for review by DNA cousins are at Ancestry and Rootsweb.  I post web addresses on profile pages that I manage.