I've spent time lately updating my public Ancestry tree and hoping to optimize its' effectiveness, per some hints from found at Roberta Estes DNA-Explained blog. Focusing right now on adding some pictures to my direct lines.
Some of these pictures have been shared on social media, such as Facebook, but not all. I'm trying to include a good picture from my relatives younger days - either a graduation picture or a wedding photo. I'm also adding high school graduation photos for as many relatives as I can locate. Some I already had in my files, others I've sought out online through either MyHeritage or Ancestry's yearbook collections. Many others have been found through local high school yearbook collections as they come online.
For those ancestors that didn't graduate high school, I have substituted either a military photo or some other early life photo. I'm finding that for a few of my direct relatives, I am missing photos, so will have to reach out to other family members to see if I can locate one.
Right now I'm going to focus on adding at minimum a portrait (graduation, wedding or military) and a tombstone photo for my direct line ancestors. As I complete them, will work on adding the ones for the descendant lines to complete the tree.
Hopefully, as I work my way back in the family tree, adding this pictures will trigger some cousin bait as others find the photos I've uploaded as hints in to use in their Ancestry tree.
I've also began adding Web Links to the profile pages of my direct line ancestors that link back to my blog posts here - such as the 52 Ancestors series - hoping that others will find them useful. I do not know if Web Links show up as hints for others, but if not, at least they can be found through the ancestor profile page. Adding the Web Links to the Facebook Groups I've created for common ancestors as well.
While at RootsTech last week, I was reminded that MyHeritageDNA was allowing people who had tested at other sites to upload their raw DNA data into their database for free. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to fish in another pond before that offer went away. Yesterday, I received an email letting me know that the first of my DNA matches were in.
How to take a MyHeritage DNA test from
MyHeritage on
Vimeo.
MyHeritage was out in force at RootsTech and they have a big following, so I will be interested to see how their database develops as I obtain more matches. Right now their test kits are on sale at a competitive price as well.
My top three matches were for ones who I already matched with at other sites, but the rest of the matches did not look familiar at all. So I have a new set of relatives to reach out to.
It does seem as if more of these matches have the family trees than those found at 23andMe or Ancestry.
Christmas came a few days early for me this year, as I downloaded version 7 of the RootsMagic genealogy software. After watching the YouTube video on What's New in RootsMagic 7, I couldn't wait to try it out and take it for a spin. I haven't even been using all of the features in RM 6, but am eager to dig into this version right away.
Notice the screen shot above of my database in RM7 and the yellow lightbulbs. Those are the web hints from both FamilySearch (free site) and MyHeritage (commercial site). The software API work behind the scenes to check out these databases and show that you have possible matches in the record to the people in your database.
I'm really impressed with the way technology can be utilized to do the searching in the background for these hints. Playing around on Saturday morning, I jumped from family to family, seeing what types of hints the software would show me. I haven't added them to my database yet, but RM7 will allow you to add the sources and images right into your database! Easy as pie!
I am not a subscriber to MyHeritage, but if I find that the hints are worth it, I may be adding that to my arsenal. With a free site like FamilySearch having so many records (and growing all the time), having the software do the hard part of searching will make adding information to my database a snap.
The data clean feature of the software will aid in cleaning up the names and places in my tree by eliminating problems such as invalid characters, same names as spouse, etc.
After watching the video, I'm also looking forward to using the web publishing, a feature from earlier versions I didn't use. This version looks easy to use, and will allow me to upload and update a family tree easily that can be searched by others. This will be particularly helpful for my DNA matches, many of whom do not have an Ancestry.com subscription.
Wow! What an honor it is to be mentioned along with so many great genealogy blogs at MyHeritage.com's Top 100 Genealogy Blogs.
I follow many of these blogs, so I know the quality and I'm humbled to even be considered. According to Thomas at GeneaBloggers, 81 of the top 100 are members of the GeneaBloggers community. Congratulations to everyone mentioned!
I only hope I can add quality content to this blog and keep readers interested.
Thanks for stopping by!
