Tag Archive | Munson

MyHeritage DNA Matching: Excellent Enhancements

MyHeritage has kept its promises: tree matching, pedigree display, a place for notes, and best of all, a chromosome browser. Plus the cousin matching is finally quite good, at least for your closer cousins, and includes some triangulation.

A very nice new feature is the Ethnicities Map, a menu item under DNA, which gives you the common groups for any modern day country you select. Since a question I commonly receive from family members is “Why doesn’t my known German ancestry show up?”, it is great to be able to show them this map:

A picture says it better than telling them that in the DNA, northern Germans look Scandinavian, southern Germans look Italian, eastern Germans look East European, and western Germans look French. My maternal ancestors lived at the crossroads of Europe!

Uploading your results from another DNA testing company is still free at MyHeritage and you get many of the DNA features. Personally I have just a data subscription and a small tree (there is a 250 person limit for unpaid members). In a few weeks I will create an account for a cousin and see if this works as well as it is supposed to for completely free members.

After the recent change, the segment details for my matches to my close family are very similar to what I see on GEDmatch and 23andme, same chromosomes, similar sizes, slightly different boundaries. This is a wonderful improvement!

Since my ancestors are all fairly recent immigrants from Norway and Germany, I was hoping for some international matches when I uploaded my DNA results to MyHeritage last year. In practice, as usual, there were no Germans (testing is not popular there), but plenty of Norwegian cousins that I already knew about, plus a few new distant ones.

However, I did recently get a new close cousin match (1C2R-2C1R), Melissa from New Jersey. I will use her match to investigate the new improved DNA matching.
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My Dad, Larry Munson, 1920-2016

A week ago on Easter Sunday my 96 year old Dad died. He was ready, but I was not. He had a wonderful life and everyone in his assisted living facility adored him. I was told he was a real gentleman, he was sweet, he sang so beautifully … When mother died seven years ago, we did not expect Dad to last long after her. They were married for 62 years and were still very much in love.

But that Norwegian optimism kept him going. Some days he thought I was my mother, some days he thought I was his mother, but after about a year he was back to his charming self and usually knew I was his daughter. This is one of my favorite pictures of them taken when I was a toddler.

KittywParentsasToddler

Larry Munson, baby Kitty Munson, Gretchen Munson 1951

Here is his obituary in the Garden City News [UPDATE 23 Dec 2020 the Easthampton Star one is no longer online]
https://www.gcnews.com/articles/lawrence-shipley-munson/
We are taking him home to East Hampton for his final rest, service on April 22 at 11:30 St Luke’s church.

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