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MyHeritage Updates Theories of Family Relativity – Who is Waiting for You?

Roberta Estes

I always love to receive e-mails from Daniel Horowitz, Genealogy Expert at MyHeritage, because I know there is always something good waiting for me.

Today, it was the announcement that MyHeritage has refreshed the Theories of Family Relativity database again. The last time was mid-May.

If you recall, Theories of Family Relativity (TOFR) provide you with theories, aka, hints, as to how you and other people whose DNA you match may be related to each other – through which common ancestor.

According to Daniel:

Since the last update, the number of theories on MyHeritage has grown by 64%, from 20,330,031 to 33,373,070! The number of MyHeritage users who now have at least one Theory of Family Relativity™ for their DNA Matches has increased by 28%.

MyHeritage reruns the connections periodically and updates customer results.

By signing on to your account and clicking on “View Theories,” you can view only the matches that have an associated theory.

I have a total of 67 theories, 5 of which are new.

In my case, I create a note for each match, so I can scroll down my match list and easily identify which people have new TOFR

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You can see in the screenshot that my match, David, has a note, indicated by the purple icon, but Sarah does not. She also has a “New” indication for the TOFR which will remain for 30 days.

I’m excited. I can’t guess based on the 13 people in her tree how we might be connected, which is a little game I like to play, so I’m going to have to click on “View Theory” to make that discovery.

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Aha – William Crumley through daughter Mary who married William Testerman. I’m glad to see this, and I suspect this new connection may be due to the fact that I optimized my trees to enable TOFR to make connections by adding all of the children and grandchildren of my ancestors, with their spouses. This facilitates the “spanning trees” connections, indicated by the red arrows above, where Mary Brown “Polly” Crumley 1803-1881 connects in another tree with Mary Brown 1803-1881 and then further down that tree, James Harold Mitchell 1899-1961 connects with James Harold Mitchell born 1899-deceased. In other words, the theory is that these are the same people and those connections allow us to “cross and connect trees” and walk down them like a genealogical ladder.

Now, of course, I need to verify the connection both genetically and genealogically as well as reach out to my new cousin.

Sarah only has 13 people in her tree. She might be a new researcher. I’d like to provide her with my articles about our common ancestor, assuming the connection verifies. There were multiple William Crumleys and there is a lot of misinformation out there, waiting for unsuspecting genealogists. Maybe my articles will help her avoid the sand traps I landed in and who knows what information she might have to share. Like, if there is a graveyard on her Testerman ancestor’s property – which might be where William is buried. You never know and hope springs eternal!

If you already have DNA results at MyHeritage, sign in, and see if you have new Theories of Family Relativity.

If you don’t have DNA results there, you can transfer from elsewhere for free by clicking here and then either try a trial MyHeritage subscription, here or unlock the advanced features that include TOFR for $29. Or you can order a DNA test from MyHeritage, here.

We don’t know in advance when MyHeritage is going to refresh the database for new TOFR connections, so it’s important to be in the database when that happens.

If you’d like to know more about Theories of Family Relativity, I wrote about how to work with them here, here, and here.

Have fun!!!

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