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.

Which DNA test to buy for genealogy?

People ask me often:  Which kind of DNA test to buy?

I tell people they should do an autosomal DNA test.  This is the only test sold by AncestryDNA and 23andMe.  Family Tree DNA also offers this test, called Family Finder.  The price has dropped to around $100 at all three companies.

An autosomal DNA test matches you with other people whose DNA is identical to yours in a few spots, as most will be distant cousins.  These identical areas were passed down from an ancestor common to you and your match.

Diagram of Autosomal DNA inheritance

The goal is to figure out which of your ancestors you have in common.  This is not easy.  The DNA test will not produce a family tree for you.  You still must research your ancestors in records to find the leaves of your family tree.  You may find a close cousin who has done a lot of research and this cousin may provide you with his/her research.  You may find others who help you work past a tail end in your tree suspected of holding the ancestor in common.  If you were adopted, you may find close relatives who can help you identify your biological parents.

If you are serious about finding relatives, you need to test your DNA at all three companies.  You may have a close relative at one site who is not going to test multiple times to find other relatives.  You have to find them by testing at all three sites.

Confusion arises with the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.  These tests are offered by FamilyTreeDNA and vary in price based on number of tested markers.

One ancestral line only:  Y-DNA testing and mtDNA testing

The Y-DNA test is for males.  Testers are matched to other men who share an almost identical Y chromosome.  The value of this test is that you don't have to figure out which ancestral line holds the common ancestor.  The common ancestor will always be on the direct paternal line, father to son, because this is how the Y chromosome is inherited.  Fewer differences with a match indicate that the common ancestor is within fewer generations.  This test is useful in surname studies, if your direct paternal line comes from a community that perpetuates last names from father to children.

The mtDNA test (mitochondrial, not maternal) is similar to the Y-DNA test in that the common ancestor will be in one ancestral line, mother to daughter.  MtDNA is passed on from mother to children, both sons and daughters.  Men and women may take this test.  A man will not pass his mtDNA on to his children, so that is why the test-taker can be male, but the common ancestor will be found in his mother's direct maternal line.  Unlike the Y-DNA test, the most recent common ancestor could be thousands of years ago, as mtDNA does not vary generation to generation as much as Y-DNA.

These Y-DNA and mtDNA tests provide your haplogroups, which is useful in tracing ancient migratory paths of humans across the globe.  23andMe provides predicted haplogroups with their autosomal test.  This is not the same as taking a Y-DNA or mtDNA test.

Anyone who has been researching their family tree should try the autosomal DNA test.  Your tree will grow.

DNA Link for Newark and Chicago Branches

Someone with a Lutter ancestor has appeared in my DNA matches (autosomal) from AncestryDNA.  This has never happened before.  (Even the Y-DNA test produced no matches.)

Possible relative in AncestryDNA matches for Jody
(Name and picture blocked by Jody)

The family tree for this DNA cousin had one Lutter ancestor, Emma Lutter, from Illinois.

Emma Lutter (1892-1948) in the family tree of Jody's DNA cousin

I know this Emma Lutter.  She lived in Chicago and married Frank Scaar.  I have Emma's bank book from the year 1907.

Emma Lutter's bank book.  Gustav Schwabe was her guardian.

The bank book for Emma and her siblings, Adolph and Gertrude, were not handed down to me as family heirlooms.  They were purchased on eBay.

The bank books caught my attention because I researched a man named Alex Lutter from Chicago.  Emma, Adolph, and Gertrude were his children.  I was looking for Alex Lutter because he witnessed the marriage in 1888 in Newark, New Jersey, of my great great grandparents, Hermann Lutter (1860-1924) and Clara R Uhl (1864-1955).  

Signature of witness Alex Lutter

Aside from this marriage record and the newspaper announcement of the nuptials, I found no traces of Alex Lutter in Newark, New Jersey.  Instead, I found a man named Alexander Lutter in Chicago.  In 1890 he naturalized, registered to vote, and married Ottilie Dahlke.

cookcountyvitalrecord.uscertificates.com
(fee-based site)

Alexander Lutter died in Chicago on December 23, 1897, age 33.  (Born about 1864.)  His wife died May 23, 1904, leaving the three children orphaned.

Alexander Adolph Lutter (1895-1969), the son of Alex and Ottilie, married Anna Kabitzke.  Anna's family contacted me.  The couple had no known children.  (Her relative was the first to write a guest blog post.)

Alexander the son filed for a passport.  Below is his photo from the application.  Alexander wrote that his father came to the United States from Germany in 1885 and resided in Chicago, Illinois for "12 years, uninterruptedly," from 1885-1897.

Alexander Adolph Lutter (1895-1969)
Is there a family resemblance?

If the father Alexander lived in Chicago from his arrival in 1885 until his death in 1897, this contradicts the voter registration from the year 1890, where Alexander is stated to have lived in Illinois for only one year.  Then I considered the source and decided that this information was not too reliable:  the informant was not even born until 1895 and was two years old when his father passed, so he likely has no personal knowledge of his father and no older relative to ask.

So how is Alexander Lutter (1864-1897) of Chicago related to my Lutter line of Newark?  We don't know- yet.  Let's hope that the submitter of the DNA contacts me and provides more clues.

With a birth date in 1864, Alexander Lutter could be the brother of my great great grandfather, Hermann Lutter, who was born about 1860.  In his will in 1924, Hermann mentioned two siblings, both deceased:  his brother Otto (1845-1909), formerly of Harrison, Hudson County, New Jersey; and his sister, Ottillia, formerly of Neuhaus, Thueringen, Germany.  If Alexander is another sibling, why was there no mention of Alexander or his children, three of whom were alive in 1924?