52 Ancestors Challenge Week 34: "Timeline" - My Review of MyHeritage

The theme for this week, Timeline, immediately makes me think of the Family Tree Timeline feature in MyHeritage so I am going to take this opportunity to write a review of the genealogical research website. I have poked at it in the past but I was never had a subscription before this year and quite honestly, I do not think I will continue it when my membership expires. 

Don't get me wrong, it is a good website. It has many resources but it doesn't strike me as having more than Ancestry or anything all that different in terms of records I need to enhance or advance my family history research. It does, however, have some truly amazing, fancy, features some of which I will highlight in this post. I just pay so much for my Ancestry membership already and I use Ancestry so much with clients and students. I can't really afford to keep up with 2 sites. I prefer Ancestry.com. Truth be told, I find the abundance of fancy features on MyHeritage a bit overwhelming even though they are really cool. Maybe if I had started with MyHeritage it would be my go-to.

So let me tell you about some of my favorite features at MyHeritage:

1. DNA: For one, MyHeritage allows for the upload of raw DNA from other direct-to-consumer DNA test providers which AncestryDNA and 23andMe do not allow. By uploading your DNA to MyHeritage, one can increase the number of potential matches that they have. You never really know where that one needed match will be that will help you bust through your brick walls. One can also take a MyHeritage DNA test as they too sell a direct-to-comsumer DNA testing kits. In MyHeritage I have over 12k DNA matches. A lot of people use this site for DNA research. I tell all my adoptee clients to use it.

They also have DNA tools like auto-clustering and a chromosome browser which Ancestry does not have at present. A chromosome browser helps you view segments of DNA shared between you and multiple DNA matches which can help point to a common ancestor. Auto-clustering is much like application of the Leeds Method, if you are familiar with that, its a tool that organizes your DNA Matches into clusters or groups that likely descended from the same common ancestor.

2. PHOTO TOOLS: MyHeritage's photo tools have gotten a lot of publicity in the past couple of years since it added the tool to animate photos. Below is a head shot of me animated. It is very cool when applied to photos of long deceased ancestors that you may have. However, I find something kind of unnerving about it when applied to photos of recently deceased relatives. Kind of creeps me out. Fun feature though, not to mention the other photo enhancing and editing tools they provide. Ooo, but the creepiest photo tool they have, if you ask me, is DeepStory which actually can make your family photos speak. Yeah, worth checking out but not something I need on the daily.

 

 

3. FAMILY EVENTS: I am going to miss this feature when I say goodbye to MyHeritage. This is basically a calendar of family birthdays and anniversaries based on the information you have put into your own family tree. You can add to it holidays from an assortment of countries and even display dates according to the Hebrew calendar.

4. FAMILY STATISTICS: This is a neat feature that presents aggregate data from your tree. Just fun factoids like I haven't set the gender for 27 individuals in my tree, thus 52% of my family tree is male, 47% is female, and 1% is of an unknown gender. The most common first name for males in my family tree is John and for females is Mary. 

And ta-dah, 5. TIMELINE: The Family Tree Timeline can help you visualize your ancestors’ lifespans, including whose lives overlapped and what major world events they lived through. It is a visual representation of the direct ancestors of one individual from your family tree, you are typically the default person. The lifespans of these individuals are presented on a bar graph. By default the Timeline shows 4 generations, from you to your great-grandparents. However, you can choose to display more or fewer  generations.

Each person’s name, profile photo, and age appear on a colored bar. If the individual is deceased, their bar is rounded on the right and their age at the time of their death appears at the far right. The bars representing living individuals are squared on the right and their current age appears there. If the date of birth or death is unknown, the bar will be faded towards the birth or death date, ending at an approximation of the time of their birth or death.

However, what I wish Timeline did was show the overlap of lifespans for family groups, not just direct ancestors. I'd like to see my siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles, etc. represented on a timeline. I think it would help my research in a lot of way. For example, such a feature might help pinpoint a date on which a group photo was taken. For example, I have a group photo with 10 people in it. I can identify 9 of them. I know it has to be taken before person A died and after these six kids were born. Maybe I could figure out that 10th person if I could see who was alive at the same time.

ABOUT THE 1950 CENSUS: MyHeritage came up with this awesome tool shortly after the recent release of the 1950 U.S. Federal Census that kind of incorporates their Timeline capabilities. Under "Research" there is a new link for Census Helper. It generates a list of individuals in your family tree who are likely to be found in the 1950 census. In fact, it does this for any U.S. census you're researching in as well as censuses for Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, France, and England & Wales!

Again, MyHeritage has great features which if you have never explored before, you should!