Genealogy Chat

In my family tree who would be my third cousin.
Kind regards
Victor

People who share a great-great-grandparent.

It goes up for each generation! So:

grandparent 1st cousin
great-grandparent 2nd cousin
gg grandparent 3rd cousin

and so on!

Jan

Look at:

http://www.islandregister.com/cousin.html

for a Family Relationship Chart

Simple rule:

The number of generations you have to skip to find a common ancestor gives you the degree of cousinship.

So if you skip over your parents (one generation) to your grandparents as common ancestors the person is a 1st cousin, and so on.

But (as always!) it's not quite so simple:

You have to work back from the person nearest the common ancestor.
So if your common ancestors are the other person's grandparents but your great-grandparents you are still 1st cousins.

The number of generations difference between the cousins gives you the "removed" part

So in the case above you would be 1st cousins once removed.

Several people that in childhood I called aunts were actually 1st cousins once removed - their father was my grandfather's brother.

You first count the number of 'G's back to the common ancestor for each person

i.e. Grandfather = 1 'G'
Great Grandfather = 2 'G's
Great Great Grandfather = 3 'G's
etc, etc

Secondly, you then determine which of the two people has the fewest 'G's This is the degree of cousins.

Finally, if the number of 'G's for the two people is different, then subtract one from the other. This gives the no of Removes.

For Example:-

Person 1 has 6 'G's back to the common ancestor whilst person 2 has 4 'G's

The relationship is therefore 4th cousin, twice (6-4) removed.

Thankyou very much for the information.

Regards
Victor