Jonny Perl Does it Again!

New Ancestor Map Feature Amazes

I’m not sure why any new feature Jonny Perl releases can surprise me. But this one did. His blog post this month updating the new Places feature within DNA Painter piqued my interest. So, of course, I had to check it out.

Let me say that I’ve looked at several other mapping programs and found all of them to be lacking. Some couldn’t take a GEDCOM upload. Others had wildly erroneous location placement. I did not find these problems with DNA Painter Places. To be fair, Jonny has tagged Places as being in Beta still. It looks pretty finished to me.

The map accurately depicts the migrations of my various ancestors from their European origins to the U.S. and Canada and then within the North American continent. What I found particularly interesting is how similar the migration patterns were for ancestors within particular branches.

Places is very flexible. You can change the number of generations pictured with a simple slider. It’s also possible to view one line or as many lines as you have documented by checking or unchecking the boxes at the top with your family names.

Also, you can change the color schemes and select different maps. I chose the light map because it seems to render best for inclusion here. But you could choose a topographic map or even a satellite image. I think those might be useful for showing families who stayed near to each other for three or four generations. Your map could zoom in and show landmarks for a particular area.

When you have a few minutes to experiment with your family, give Places a try. I would be very interested to hear what you think. For that matter, so would Jonny. He can be reached on BlueSky @dnapainter.bsky.social or at jonny@dnapainter.com.