I was reminded this morning of the importance of having your paper genealogy tree as complete as possible when analyzing your DNA matches. I know that completing your tree is why many of us do DNA analysis, but it still helps to have that tree as complete as you can.
Discovered today that my great-grandmother was related to another of her husband’s spouses–as a second cousin. That’s close enough–both families come from a set of my 4th great-grandparents–that it could impact my own DNA match analysis.
This means that siblings of my great-grandmother’s husband married the following relatives of my great-grandmother:
- Great-grandpa sibling A married one of my great-grandma’s siblings.
- Great-grandpa sibling B married one of my great-grandma’s paternal first cousins.
- Great-grandpa sibling C married one of my great-grandma’s maternal second cousins.
Had I not known this, my analysis would have been much harder. And, if your family lived in the same small area for generations, what is the chance that something like this happened–and you don’t know about it?
One response
Tell me about it! My great grandfather had 27 double first cousins. I’m now discovering connections between my father’s family and my mother’s. Did I mention the family has lived in the same general area of Arkansas since 1857? LOL.