By testing with 23andme and testing several family members, I am able to narrow down where certain cousins are related to me in my family. Recently I was able to add my grandfather to the list of tested relatives- after much persuading! This has helped tremendously to figure out who comes from what side of the family, yet unfortunately I haven’t be able to confirm any of these lines except one.
Recently 23andme added another feature which allows you to link your parents, if you have them tested, and break up your matches into both “mother’s side” and “father’s side”. Here are some screenshots from the new updates to Relative Finder.
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| New Relative Finder menu |
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| Drop down menu which includes mother and father break down |
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| Here are two distant cousins- “M” for Maternal and “P” for Paternal |
For me this new update is both a curse and a blessing. The curse part of it is that practically all my cousins are related to me from my maternal and paternal side. except a handful of distant cousins that are too far away to actually determine how they are related to me. Puerto Rico’s population is pretty small if you consider how a country like the United States has many constant, different inputs of cultures. Granted, Puerto Rico has a good number of different populations that can be found on the island, yet the population became a bit inbred after a while since some families have been on the island for such a long time. Most of my family, for example, has been on the island for at least 200-300 years so my mom and dad’s side must have rubbed elbows somewhere along the genealogical tree; and 23andme does say they are 3-5th cousins, but I think the relationship is further because I’ve traced most of their lines through 3rd-5th generations and there is no overlap of ancestors from what I have found.