I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again: I am fascinated with the DNA aspect of genealogy. Each of us has thousands of distant cousins out there who share a little or a lot of our genetic make-up. Finding my distant cousins has become an obsession. And I blame/thank Ancestry.com. I’ve now surpassed 43,000 leaves on my family tree. But of my thousands of DNA matches on Ancestry.com, I only know how I am related to 162 of them (including some close family members).

Ancestry.com randomly displays photos of your DNA matches on your homepage. These photos were uploaded by folks like me who’ve taken the DNA test. I happen to like this feature. Every once in a while I’ll see an interesting face and I’ll click on their profile to learn more about them. Since my father’s DNA was also tested, I can usually tell if the person is related to me on father’s side or my mother’s – of course, sometimes they are related to me on both sides. Yesterday, I noticed a picture of guy holding an Emmy Award. (Mic drop.) Naturally, I had to click on his profile to learn more about him. I am a sucker for finding famous folks in my family tree. Surprisingly, he used his real name in his profile so I was able to find the same picture (below) on the internet along with his bio. He’s won 14 Emmy Awards and has been nominated 41 times. He doesn’t share his family tree on Ancestry.com but that’s okay. He’s a genetic match to my father, one of my father’s paternal first cousins and one of his paternal 3rd cousins. So I pretty much know where to look to figure out how we might be related.

This is why my townhouse never gets dusted and why I still have Christmas decorations out from two years ago. At least they are back in season now albeit a bit dustier.

Kenfolk: Tranthams
Relation: TBD
Common ancestors: Also TBD