A Face Breaks a Brick Wall

 

You've put your profile photo on Facebook and other social media, but what about the genealogy sites that you use? Genealogy is often a collaborative effort -- another form of social media. Have you uploaded your profile photo to sites like Ancestry and MyHeritage? If so, do you use the same photo on all those sites?

I haven't done as well as I could, but was recently reminded of just how important that consistent profile photo can be. Thanks to a DNA match who uploaded the same photo to Ancestry and MyHeritage, one of my most challenging brick walls was demolished. It was that profile photo which grabbed my attention.

When you look at your DNA matches, which ones intrigue you? The matches with photos always lure me first, while the others are all just a forgettable blur. 

I was specifically looking for matches related to the surname Vosseler. One of my family testers (with a photo) has a MyHeritage match to a gentleman of that name who lives in Germany (with no photo). 

Looking at seven shared matches, there are five matches with triangulated segments (example boxed in red), which is an important clue. Two of the seven matches have profile photos.

 

 

 

 

The gentleman near the top looked familiar and the segment was triangulated with Mr. Vosseler. I had seen that photo on Ancestry DNA. Why had I seen it? This was an important match.

 

Going to the same family tester on Ancestry, I was able to find the man in the match list. He had the same photo, though the two sites show it a bit differently. The face was the same and there were far more shared matches on Ancestry, some with a much higher shared cM level.

 

Using the shared matches from Ancestry, I was able to identify a surname of interest, build a tree, and demolish the 20-year-old Vosseler brick wall.

 

Looking at these nine matches to the highest match, there are only two photos, the first being the face that broke the wall. 

 

 

Sadly, with both Ancestry and MyHeritage, there are very few profile photos in this entirely random look. 

The moral of the story? Upload a profile photo. Be a welcoming and consistent face to your matches and collaborators. 

There is a lot of advice online about good profile photos. I'll be updating mine soon. Will you join me?