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I've had better luck with relative finder as well. My very first contact was able to trace his great-great-grandparents roots to a village that is only 30 minut

I've had better luck with relative finder as well. My very first contact was able to trace his great-great-grandparents roots to a village that is only 30 minutes away or so from my Dad's ancestor's town. This person is marked as a 5th cousin, so I'd consider that pretty compelling. Regarding your "mostly seem not to be cousins" comment, I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. If you look at their FAQ, they claim that it's fairly accurate that if someone is marked as a relative, that's a relative. The degree of relation may be off by a generation or two, but it's there. I find it interesting how many people, even those who sign up for the service and enable visibility on relative finder, heck, even those who fill out their profiles with surnames and extra information, either don't respond to contact requests or entirely dismiss relations dubbed by the system "likely 3rd cousin" as "impossible". At the 6th, 5th, and even 4th cousin levels, especially going into the past with typically large families, we are talking about fairly large networks of people. I see a lot of folks say things like "I can trace my roots back 10 generations", when they really just mean one single paternal line, for example. How can you be sure that someone didn't jump in the hay with someone else in secret that one summer in 1807, or that some forgotten sister of a great-great-grandparent went off to America for 5 years before returning to her homeland, etc? With such large numbers of people, the likeliness of having huge numbers of cousins goes way up. For example, look how many hops it takes to get to your 4th cousin: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4th+cousin Can we all vouch for all the surnames, brothers and sisters, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc in a relation even as "close" as this?

endtime 16y ago
Well, I can trace back 3-4 generations, at least in terms of surnames and maiden names, and none of the people I've talked to are even from the same parts of Europe or know of any relatives with the same last names (with one exception for Miller, which is a very common name). I've talked to several Ukrainians, one Portuguese, and one Argentinian - whereas my family is English, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. As far as I know I didn't have any Ukrainian ancestors, at least not in the last few generations. >I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. Well, I consider someone to be a cousin based solely on our most recent common ancestor. If someone happens to have similar genes to me but we haven't shared an ancestor for 5,000 years then that person's not a cousin for any useful definition of the word. It also might be that Asheknazi Jews, as a historically small/insular community with, therefore, a smaller gene pool, have a different experience with the relative finder than people with less, uh, incestuous (broadly speaking) family trees. Edit: Just logged into 23andMe and saw this relevant thread: https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/ https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/. So I guess my speculation was right, and my concerns should be disregarded if you aren't part of a similarly small population.
- myth_drannon 16y ago
  The same person can be Polish,Russian,Ukrainian or Belorussian depending on which years he lived in.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Each Cousin will go back typically (there area always exception) go back no more than 50 years. In my family, the separation in age between youngest and oldest cousin is 35 years. So, A fifth cousin speaks to a common ancestor no more than 250 years ago. I have 472 Predicted Relatives on 23andMe, 382 of which are 5th cousin or closer. It's pretty awesome seeing all these "Percent DNA Shared" at 0.09% to 0.86% (My previous High) and then seeing my mother/brother/niece/nephew pop out at 49.98%, 43.77%, 21.92%, 21.11% I do wish that my "3rd" cousin would respond to me - they are the only ones I think I have a chance of tracking down.

endtime 16y ago

Well, I can trace back 3-4 generations, at least in terms of surnames and maiden names, and none of the people I've talked to are even from the same parts of Europe or know of any relatives with the same last names (with one exception for Miller, which is a very common name). I've talked to several Ukrainians, one Portuguese, and one Argentinian - whereas my family is English, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian. As far as I know I didn't have any Ukrainian ancestors, at least not in the last few generations. >I think people have an overly narrow definition of cousins where 23andme has a much more strict genetic definition. Well, I consider someone to be a cousin based solely on our most recent common ancestor. If someone happens to have similar genes to me but we haven't shared an ancestor for 5,000 years then that person's not a cousin for any useful definition of the word. It also might be that Asheknazi Jews, as a historically small/insular community with, therefore, a smaller gene pool, have a different experience with the relative finder than people with less, uh, incestuous (broadly speaking) family trees. Edit: Just logged into 23andMe and saw this relevant thread: https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/ https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/6449/. So I guess my speculation was right, and my concerns should be disregarded if you aren't part of a similarly small population.

myth_drannon 16y ago
The same person can be Polish,Russian,Ukrainian or Belorussian depending on which years he lived in.
ghshephard 16y ago
Each Cousin will go back typically (there area always exception) go back no more than 50 years. In my family, the separation in age between youngest and oldest cousin is 35 years. So, A fifth cousin speaks to a common ancestor no more than 250 years ago. I have 472 Predicted Relatives on 23andMe, 382 of which are 5th cousin or closer. It's pretty awesome seeing all these "Percent DNA Shared" at 0.09% to 0.86% (My previous High) and then seeing my mother/brother/niece/nephew pop out at 49.98%, 43.77%, 21.92%, 21.11% I do wish that my "3rd" cousin would respond to me - they are the only ones I think I have a chance of tracking down.