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How to Use the NEW MyHeritage DNA Chromosome Browser

How to Use the NEW MyHeritage DNA Chromosome Browser

by | Mar 24, 2018

The new MyHeritage DNA chromosome browser offers two different kinds of browsing–and a triangulation tool. Here’s what these tools are and how to work with them.

Just last year, if you had asked me if I thought anyone could catch AncestryDNA in their race to own the genetic genealogy market, I would have been skeptical. However, it is clear that MyHeritage intends to be a contender, and they are quickly ramping up their efforts to gain market share–and your confidence.

MyHeritage began 2018 by making a much needed change to their DNA matching algorithm, which had some errors in it. They were able to adjust it, and now it is humming right along, telling our second cousins from our fourth. Another development, launched in February, is the addition of a Chromosome Browser.

The new MyHeritage DNA Chromsome Browser

Much like you would browse the library shelves for the perfect book, or browse through the sale rack for a great bargain, you can use a Chromosome Browser to look through your chromosomes for the pieces of DNA you share with your genetic cousins. Chromosome Browsers can be everything from a fun way to review your genetic genealogy results, to a tool to assist in determining how you are related to someone else. Let’s go over three tips to help you make use of this new tool:

Navigating to the Chromosome Browser

There are actually two different kinds of Chromosome Browsers in MyHeritage: one to view only the segments you share with one match (the One-to-One Browser), and a browser where you can see the segments shared with multiple matches (the One-to-Many Browser).

To get to the One-to-One Browser, head over to your match page and find a cousin for whom you would like to see your shared DNA segments. Click on Review DNA Match, then scroll down past all the individual match information, past the Shared Matches and Shared Ethnicities until you see the Chromosome Browser.

Using the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser

To find the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser, you can use the main DNA navigation menu at the top of the MyHeritage homepage. Click on DNA, then on Chromosome Browser, as shown below.

In the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser you can compare yourself, or any account you manage, to anyone else in your match page. To choose a match to evaluate, just click on their name and they will be added to the queue at the top:

Clicking on Compare will then allow you to see the actual segments you share with each person:

In this One-To-Many view, each individual match gets their own line for each chromosome. Since we have added 7 people to the Chromosome Browser, there are seven lines next to each chromosome number. Each match not only gets their own line, but also their own color. So you can easily match up the lines on the chromosome to the match that shares that piece of DNA with you. For the majority of people the majority of the time, these Chromosome Browsers are just another fun way to visualize the connection you have with your DNA match. In the end, it doesn’t matter where you are sharing on the chromosome, just how much DNA you are sharing. You can obtain that information from your main match page and never look at this Chromosome Browser image, and still make fantastic genetic genealogy discoveries.

The Triangulation Tool

Another feature of the Chromosome Browser on MyHeritage is the Triangulation tool. To understand how this works, you first need to understand that you actually have two copies of each chromosome. Two copies of chromosome 1, two copies of chromosome 2, etc. One copy is from mom, and the other from dad. However, in the Chromosome Browser image, you see only one line for yourself (in grey). Therefore, when you see someone matching you on chromosome 14, for example, you don’t know if that person is matching you on the chromosome 14 you got from your mom, or the chromosome 14 you got from your dad.

Likewise, if you see two people whose shared piece with you looks to be in the same location on the same chromosome, you can’t tell if they are both sharing on the same copy of that chromosome, or if one match is related to your dad’s family, and the other match is related to your mom’s family. However, this is what the Triangulation tool does for us. It tells us if two (or three or four, etc.) matches are sharing on the same copy of the same chromosome. Be careful when you use this tool, though. Many erroneously assume that when they see a segment shared between multiple people, that indicates the presence of a recent common ancestor for all of those people. However, that is not always the case.

Start Using the MyHeritage DNA Chromsome Browser

Ready to start exploring what the MyHeritage DNA chromosome browser may tell you about your family history? You have two options. Click here to upload your autosomal DNA test results from another company to MyHeritage for FREE. Or click here to order a MyHeritage DNA test kit. Either way, you can start using all the great tools at MyHeritage DNA!
The Author: Diahan Southard

The Author: Diahan Southard

Your DNA Guide

Diahan is Your DNA Guide at Genealogy Gems! She has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

New Irish genealogy records and more

New Irish genealogy records and more

by | Mar 23, 2018

New Irish genealogy records top this week’s list of noteworthy new family history collections online from around the globe. Also, find records for Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Guatemala, Spain, Wales and the U.S. (FBI criminal files and collections for CO, ID, IL, KY, MA, TX, WV. All these collections come from the Genealogy Giants: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com.

Featured:  New Irish genealogy records online

The fabled luck of the Irish—or at least that of their descendants—continues throughout March, with significant new Irish genealogy records coming online. Subscription site Findmypast.com has updated its indexes of the Irish civil birth and marriage register images hosted online at IrishGenealogy.ie:

  • The updated Irish Births Index consists of over 2.7 million indexed entries. “As well as listing the date and location of your ancestor’s birth, these new transcripts provide a variety of additional details including the names of both parents (including mother’s maiden name), father’s occupation and full dates of birth.”
  • The updated Irish Civil Marriages now boasts over 2.6 million records. “These new transcripts…also provide a variety of additional details including the names of the couple’s parents, their fathers’ occupations, their residence and marital status.

Findmypast.com also posted more new Irish genealogy records:

  • Antrim Histories & Reference Guides. Search George Benn’s authoritative work, A History of the Town of Belfast from the Earlier Times to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1877). “It contains historic maps and illustrations as well as a chapter on noted inhabitants mentioned in seventeenth-century records including names such as Captain George Theaker, Arthur Chichester, Hugh Doak, Thoams Waring, George McCartney, and more.”
  • Armagh Records & Registers. Browse 600 pages of Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh (1819) to learn more about the history of Northern Ireland. “It contains biographical accounts of both Protestant and Roman Catholic archbishops, a narrative of important events, an account of the establishment of the Presbyterian congregations and the history of various customs and manners.”
  • Church of Ireland Histories & Reference Guides. This collection has two PDF publications: The National Churches: The Church of Ireland (originally published in 1892) and Some Worthies of the Irish Church (published in 1900). Learn more about the history and practices of the Church of Ireland.
  • Dublin Registers & Records. Over 2,000 records have been added to this collection of PDF images of “parish records (baptisms, marriages, and burials) from the Church of Ireland, census indexes, school registers, monumental inscriptions and printed histories. The records span from the 1600s up to 1800.”
  • Irish Tontines Annuitants 1766-1789. “Over 153,000 annuity statements, accounts of deaths, death certificates, and marriage certificates relating to the subscribers and nominees of the Irish Tontine….The records in this collection have been released in association with the National Archives and cover the English tontine of 1789; the Irish tontines of 1773, 1775, and 1777; and the life annuities of 1766 to 1779.”
  • Ireland, American Fenian Brotherhood 1864-1897. “Over 125,000 records from British Foreign Office correspondence regarding the American Fenian Brotherhood during the years from 1864 to 1897. Records include newspaper cuttings, letters, telegrams, lists of prisoners, and a number of photographs…. The collection includes accounts of the Brotherhood’s incursions into Canadian territory during the years 1866 to 1871.” Subscribers may also browse American Fenian Brotherhood records from 15,000 volumes of British Foreign Office papers.
  • Royal Irish Constabulary History and Directories. This collection has been updated. It contains “an assortment of pay records, lists, directories, commendation records, treasury books, Constabulary Code books and training manuals.”

Ancestry.com has updated a few of its own Irish genealogy records collections (original data for the Irish Catholic registers comes from Celtic Catholic Registers, digitized images):

More new genealogy collections worldwide

Austria. Nearly 34,000 indexed records are part of a new free collection at FamilySearch, Austria, Carinthia, Gurk Diocese, Catholic Church Records, 1527-1986. According to the site, this is a “collection of church books containing births, marriages, and deaths held at the Diocese of Gurk in Klagenfurt, Austria.”

Brazil. More than 100,000 records have been added to an existing free FamilySearch collection, Brazil, Santa Catarina, Catholic Church Records, 1714-1977. Also recently updated is its collection of Brazil, São Paulo, Immigration Cards, 1902-1980.

France. FamilySearch has added two new free census collections for France: upwards of 150,000 indexed names in France, Hautes-Alpes, Census, 1856 and over 66,000 names in France, Hautes-Alpes, Census, 1876. According to the collection descriptions, these are complete listings of the census for Hautes-Alpes in these years.

Germany. About 10,000 records each have been added to existing FamilySearch collections, Germany, Prussia, Brandenburg and Posen, Church Book Duplicates, 1794-1874 and Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, Kreis Steinburg, Civil Registration, 1874-1983.

Guatemala. Over 687,000 names have been added to the free FamilySearch collection, Guatemala Civil Registration, 1877-2008. According to the site, documents report “births, marriages, deaths, indexes and other records created by civil registration offices in Guatemala. Some of these records have been indexed and are searchable as part of this collection. Additional indexed records will be published as they become available.”

Spain. Over 22,000 names have been added to the free FamilySearch collection, Spain, Diocese of Cartagena, Catholic Church Records, 1503-1969. “These records include: baptisms, confirmations, pre-marriage investigations, marriages, deaths, indexes, testaments, and parish financial and land records. Some of these records have been indexed and are searchable as part of this collection. Additional indexed records will be published as they become available.”

United States. Subscription giant Ancestry.com has posted a new collection of F.B.I. Deceased Criminal Identification Files, 1971-1994. According to the site, “This database contains details about deceased individuals extracted from criminal identification files from 1971-1994….Details vary widely by form, but details in this index may include the following: name, birthplace, birth date, gender, race, death date, eye color, hair color, height, and weight.”

Various U.S. state-level collections include:

Wales. Subscription site Findmypast.com has added over 43,000 new records to its collection of Monmouthshire Electoral Registers. According to the site, “The new additions consist of handwritten Gwent registers spanning the years 1832 to 1849 that will allow you to discover where your Welsh ancestor lived and the type of property they owned or rented. The early handwritten registers (1832-1839) are presented as images and transcripts and the later printed registers are presented as portable device formats (PDFs). The format of each register can vary depending on the constituency or the year of the register but most will reveal a combination of your ancestor’s abode, property type, property location, property name, year, constituency and district.”

Learn more about the Genealogy Giants

I keep my eye on the Genealogy Giants for you!  All four, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage, boast billions of historical records that can help you find your family history at home and abroad. But learning about each can be overwhelming! Click here for an introduction to these sites: what they have in common and what sets each apart. You’ll want to know so you can get the most out of them!

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

About the Author: Sunny Morton

About the Author: Sunny Morton

Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s  known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.

Deciphering Place Names Just Got Easier

Deciphering Place Names Just Got Easier

by | Mar 21, 2018

When you need help deciphering place names in hard-to-read genealogy documents, two free online tools may have great suggestions for you. Use them to take the guesswork out of identifying great-grandpa’s hometown!

Thanks to guest blogger Katherine Schober, expert German translator and author of the new book, Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting, for this article on deciphering place names (or anything else) in hard-to-read old documents.

There are times when you know from the context of an old document that a certain handwritten word is a city or town–but you aren’t sure of the exact letters the scribe has written. Perhaps you can make out most of the name, but not the first letter. Or maybe you can’t tell whether you’re looking at an “r” or an “n” in the middle of the word. Other times, you can read the place name, but this particular spelling doesn’t appear on a map.

Deciphering place names with a simple trick—and 2 free online tools

Two online resources that are very helpful for identifying town names are Google’s search engine and Meyer’s Gazetteer. At both sites, you can enter what you do know and have these sites help suggest possible place names.

Google search suggestions

Type your transcribed town name into Google—along with any other known place clues, such as the county/province or country name–and see if you get any search results for the region you are researching. If you do, congratulations, you likely transcribed it correctly!

If not, Google may actually suggest the correct transcription of your word for you. For example, when I was translating a nineteenth-century document a few months ago, I read the letters of the town as “L-e-h-t”. I typed “Leht, Germany” into Google, and waited to see what search results would appear. As it turned out, there were no search results for “Leht, Germany,” but Google’s “Did you mean…” function actually provided four other possibilities for what I could have meant as a town name! Here’s what it gave me:
After comparing these Google suggestions with my handwritten word and the specific region of Germany, I realized that the word actually had an “r” and an “e” squeezed in and was, therefore, the German town of “Lehrte.” Taking advantage of this “Did you mean” feature of Google can be very helpful when trying to decipher city and town names.

(Learn hundreds more tips on using Google search–and all the other free Google tools–in Lisa Louise Cooke’s popular book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox.)

More help from Meyer’s Gazetteer

If you can only recognize the first few or the final few letters of a German town, Meyer’s Gazetteer is the site for you. Meyer’s Gazetteer is a free database containing names and information on pre-World War I German cities, towns, and villages (meaning that this site includes towns in present-day France, Poland, and other places). Type in the letters you recognize in your word and use an asterisk to represent the letters you don’t. Meyer’s Gazetteer will then provide you with a list of all places with your letter combination. Then you can then see if there is a town that matches your handwritten word and region.

In the example below, I recognized a capital “A” at the beginning of the word. The middle letters looked like a scribble, but I could see “e-n-b-a-c-h” as the final letters of the word. I typed this into Meyer’s Gazetteer, using an asterisk for those unclear middle letters. The website then provided me with a list of possibilities, and–by only looking at the town names in my specific German region–I was able to significantly narrow down what my handwritten town name could be. By comparing this list to my handwritten word, I was able to then decipher the remaining letters and figure out the name of the town. (Click here for more tips on using Meyer’s Gazetteer.)

By taking advantage of the resources available online, you can make your transcription process much easier and much more fun. Best of luck!

About the Author

Katherine Schober is a German translator who specializes in genealogy documents. Her new book, Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting, is available in paperback or Kindle format. She also has a terrific German Handwriting Course here.

Check out Katherine’s other Genealogy Gems guest blog posts:
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

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