Genealogy Chat

I have recently made contact with the gg grandaughter of my gg grandfather's brother and we are busy exchangeing e-mails, hopefully filling in some blanks.

For the life of me I don't know what or how many times removed cousins we are. Can anyone help me please?

According to my genealogy programme, as you share the same ggg grandparents, you are in the same generation, it makes you 4th cousins .
Removals only apply for relatives from a different generation.
IE your new relative's parent would be your 3rd cousin 1x removed.
( He/she is the gg grandchild, and you are the ggg grandchild, which makes you one generation removed from the commom ancestors)

Hope that makes sense
Anne

You may find this chart helpful

http://genealogy.about.com/library/nrelationshipchart.htm

There is also this one:

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/_resources/images/general/relationshipchart.jpg

Yes I also work out that you are 4th cousins, ie the common link (for you both) is your g.g. grandparent who is 4 generations away from you (both).

Karen

Many thanks for your replies.

Sorry for the late acknowledgement but slept in this morning, not enough time to check into GR before work this morning.

Easy method of working it out:-

For each person, count the number of G's back to to your common ancestor. i.e. great grandfather = 2 g's, gg grandfather 3, and so on.

If the two answers are the same, then this gives you the degree of cousins, 2nd cousin, 3rd cousin etc.

If the two answers are different, then the lower of the two gives you the degree of cousins and the difference between the two, the level of removal.

Example:-

Me - our common ancestor is my GGGG Grandfather - G=5

You = our common ancestor is your GG Grandfather - G=3

So, our relationship is third cousin, twice removed.