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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Relationship Calculator

Many genealogists find figuring out relationships of one person to another or to themeselves, very challenging. Understanding generations removed and degrees of cousinship can also prove a challenge. Harold asked a question that illlustrates the difficulty

I'am trying to figure out a relationship.
My grandmothers, has a sister , she had a daughter who has a child what is the relationship to me.

There are many websites online that explain relationships and degrees of cousinship and so on. But I simply went to Steve Morse's One-Step Relationship Calculator and punched in, one at a time, exactly the relationships Harold outlined above.

You simply press the buttons one at a time to indicate the relationship of one person to the next. So it is Harold's mother, then his mother's mother (his grandma), then his mother's mother's sister and so on like this:

Mother \ Mother (his mother's mother) \ sister (sister to his grandmother) \ daughter \ child

And the answer popped up as

2nd cousin

There you go Harold. That child is your second cousin.


1 comment:

  1. Touche, Steve Morse! I do my genealogy trees in a visual way so that relationships like this are easy to establish. Think about your own family. Does your mother have a sibling? That person (your aunt or uncle) -- if they have children, those are the same generation as you, and are your first cousins.

    Similarly, your grandmother...if she had a sibling, that person's grandchildren would be the same generation as you, and 2nd cousins (or 2 generations removed from the siblings).

    Where it gets a little trickier is if the people are of different generations. Example, your grandmother's grandchild's relationship to your grandmother's sister's great-grandchild...first cousins, once removed (one generation difference).

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