Sometime over the summer, a distant cousin found my tree on ancestry.com and contacted me about a potential relationship. According to our paper trails, my 4th great grandparents on my maternal side of the family are part of her family as well.We were both pretty sure that this match was accurate but not 100% completely sure. The cousin decided to test with 23andme.com, and now we were able to see if we: 1) Came out in each others relative finders and 2) If we matched in the 4th cousin range.
When we got our results, we fit! We were fourth cousins (though sharing only .09%- but this relation is 4 generations back so I wasn’t expecting a lot of DNA). Here is a picture of my cousin’s match against my mom, my maternal uncle and myself:
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| My 4th cousin matching with my mom and myself |
Even though my maternal uncle doesn’t share with this cousin, she doesn’t share with neither my grandmother or my great grandfather on my maternal side so that rules out a connection from that family. I’m guessing this part of the DNA my mom received and passed it down to me but my uncle didn’t receive.
This is my first cousin to share both DNA and paper trail with me. I’m hoping we’re right about this match because it helps me to solidify a line I had doubts about and didn’t know too much information about until sometime last year. Hopefully this will get the ball rolling with other matches from 23andme.