Paint Your Way Up Your Tree with MyHeritage, AutoClusters and DNAPainter – Free Webtember Webinar

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Legacy Family Tree Webinars is sponsoring a free Webtember genealogy conference for everyone. Last week, 7 speakers presented, including my session, titled “Paint Your Way Up Your Tree with MyHeritage and DNAPainter.”

You can watch all 7 sessions free, here, for the full month of September – um – I mean Webtember😊. By the way, they have closed captions too.

You can download the syllabus with a paid membership and watch any of the 1500+ videos anytime. Click here to join and be sure to enter the coupon code, webtember, to receive a 15% discount!

Webtember Webinars

On the main Webtember page, you can sign up to view the sessions live each week for free.

Recorded sessions will be available later in the day on Fridays all month. You can read about Webtember, here.

Last Friday, we had people from 52 countries in attendance, including a few new cousins I didn’t know I had. How fun is that!!!

What can you learn from my session?

Paint Your Way Up Your Tree with MyHeritage and DNAPainter

We are so fortunate to have wonderful vendors and outstanding third-party tools. My session focused on how to turn your AutoCluster at MyHeritage into a beautifully painted chromosome map at DNAPainter.

While your genetic artwork is beautiful, that’s not the point. AutoClusters are a shortcut to identifying groups of people who match you and each other and therefore share a common ancestor.

I’ve developed a technique to utilize your close matches at MyHeritage, and your clusters, together, to identify ancestral groups at DNAPainter.

Each AutoCluster file contains about 100 of your matches in colorful groups.

This technique works for both beginners who have never done chromosome painting before, as well as people who paint regularly.

I’ve broken this technique down into easy step-by-step instructions for both novices and experienced DNAPainting artisans.

At the end, I show an example of how I leapfrogged from 3 to 7 generations back in time using these tools. I was able to identify segments that descended from Philip Jacob Miller and his wife Magdalena whose surname is unknown.

I know that segment either had to descend to all of us from either Philip Jacob or Magdalena. If it descended through him, then I should be able to find matches on that same segment from Philip’s brother’s descendants too. If that segment doesn’t descend from Philip, then I won’t match any of his relatives (except his children’s descendants) on that segment.

If that segment descends from Magdalena, maybe I can figure out her parent’s names by evaluating the trees of people who match me and these other people. In other words, I need to look for people who triangulate, on this or other common segments between this group of matches and share common ancestors in their trees. Fortunately, MyHeritage offers triangulation.

I’m oh-so-close, just oh-so-close to revealing Magdalena’s surname.

Do you have mysteries you’d like to solve?

Maybe painting your way up your tree using the AutoCluster Tool at MyHeritage, combined with DNAPainter and triangulation will help you break through your brick walls.

If you haven’t yet tested at MyHeritage or uploaded your results from another vendor to MyHeritage, you can purchase a test here or I’ve provided easy instructions for uploading your results from another vendor, here. If you’re ready to upload, click here to get started.

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Thank you so much.

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9 thoughts on “Paint Your Way Up Your Tree with MyHeritage, AutoClusters and DNAPainter – Free Webtember Webinar”

  1. One of the very best posts of all time, everyone including beginners will love this. After trying this using my info at MyHeritage, where I have the most matches (35,000+) sure was infomative! (and colorful, I could frame the art!) Thanks, Roberta for all you share with us!!

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  2. I watched your webinar and have now spent the afternoon painting. Because I “know” so few of my MyHeritage DNA matches, I am using my mother’s and two full brothers’ uploaded results (and visual phasing done a few years ago) to at least identify which grandparent line my DNA results at MyHeritage are from.
    Yes, this has been a fun afternoon – thank you!

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  3. Today I realized it’s too late to view your Legacy webinar about auto clusters and paint. Is there somewhere I can see it for free. I prefer not to purchase a subscription to Legacy’s webinars.
    Thank you Fran

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  5. If I am understanding you correctly, the process involves first painting your closest relatives. Then painting your AutoClusters and using known matches to label some of the clusters, and then downloading the csv segment file. Then importing the Clusters segments into your closest relatives map. If this is correct, why is that better than painting your closest relatives one at a time onto your AutoClusters map? By the way at our recent DNA SIG meeting the participants were asked to use your strategy to paint their MyHeritage matches. It was a successful meeting, so thank you for giving us the idea.

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