Gedmatch.com is a website where you can upload your raw DNA data from other websites and analyze it in fun and interesting ways. Thanks to Gedmatch.com I know conclusively that my parents are not cousins.
However, this might have been a more meaningful conclusion had it not predicted the color of my eyes as puce. They are more of a greenish puce.
My mother’s family and my paternal grandmother’s family (which is also my father’s family) both hailed from the eastern and central parts of Missouri. Not surprisingly I’ve found five of my mother’s 2nd+ cousins married to five of my father’s 1st+ cousins. As far as I can tell, these folks are related to me but not to each other.
From left to right, mom’s relative, then dad’s, with my relationship to each of them in brackets:
- Florence Schwartz (2nd cousin, 2x removed) married Edna Duesenberg (1st cousin, 2x removed)
- Irene Rohlfing (3rd cousin,1x removed) married Herbert Biesemeyer (1st cousin, 2x removed)
- Dwayne Kersten (2nd cousin, 1x removed) married Celeste Sprick (3rd cousin, 1x removed)
- Patricia Kersten (2nd cousin, 1x removed) married Glenn Bolm (4th cousin)
- Brenda Schroeder (3rd cousin) married Shane Bunge (4th cousin)
It occurred to me that my DNA and the DNA of their children would be very interesting to examine more closely on Gedmatch.com. It’s possible that we might actually share more DNA than your typical 3rd or 4th cousins might normally share because of how our family trees overlap. I’ll have to work on that.
Kenfolk: Both sides
Relations: Lots of them
Common ancestors: With me, yes. With each other, I don’t think so.