It is also interesting to see how paths have crossed between not only cousins but families. For instance, in the 1850-1870 census my 5thGG was living next to a Dibble family in Flint, MI. When I was growing up in Flint, MI our neighbors were Dibble! Last year I decided to research a branch of my family that had migrated to Battle Creek, MI. There was quite a bit of info on this family in the local library and I decided to bring the research forward and contact some of the remaining family members. Not sure if anyone remembers the movie "Bitter Harvest" directed by Ron Howard? It was about the horrible problem of PBB, a fire retardant, that was accidently mixed in with dairy cattle fed in MI. I remember seeing that movie in the early '80s and I've talked about it several times over the years and it has always stuck in my mind. Come to find out it was my cousin that discovered the contaminated feed and it was on his family dairy farm! It is odd that I referenced that movie so many times and I had a connection to it other then drinking the contaminated milk! I ran into some birth records in IL for the same surname as my GC. Of course my interest was peaked and I did his genealogy back to the early 1700s. There was tons of info on his family at the local library so it was not difficult at all. His 4thGGM was named ELIZABETH but used the nickname LIBBIE. My GC has a daughter, 3yo, named ELIZABETH and they call her LIBBIE. I asked him if he had named Libbie after his GGM and he said he had no idea about his family history. Oddly enough both used "IE" instead of "Y" in Libbie. This is not the first time I've seen this either. Actually, what I started my family history research was my Mother wanted a copy of her father's birth certificate and had tried to find it but was not sucessful. I remember thinking that this was something I could do for my Mom and set off to find the BC. I finally did track down the BC but before hand found many interesting documents like his WWI military record, school records and so on. Well, that is all I needed! For me doing my family history is finding out just a bit about how my ancestors lived and what decisions they made along the way. My most precious record is that of my 4th GGM who one an award for hand spun wool at the 1854 MI State Agriculture Fair. I do tons of needlework and do weave and this connection was absolutely a thrill for me to find!

Another question. Pooh, is there an easy way to get this chart blank? I have family tree maker and had to do a convoluted print out for my cousins a few weeks ago, as I couldn't figure out how to chart what I wanted/needed. This would be so easy to just fill in the box. And might even make it easier for the in-laws to figure out where everyone fits. Which is kind of what we wanted. Maybe I will try to draw it out. Tami

What is odd about that? It takes a few days for them to download your raw DNA. You can do a one to one comparison right away, but the one to many takes a little longer. My kit # is A180584. You can compare yourself to me right away. You can write to anyone that you have a connection to. I know about the first 15 people who I have the closest match to. There are different parts to gedmatch. One part you are comparing your DNA to others related to you. There is a different part called admixtures, where you can look at each of your chromosomes to see your ethinic background. I like to use Eurogenes, as it is supposed to be the best one for native american, which I do have a little of. (Piscataway Indian tribe from Md. back in around 1642), which I knew about from family history. I have some 3rd cousins who I share no match with. They thought that was really strange, but since you only get 1/2 of your DNA from each parent, that leaves 1/2 that you did not get. You will enjoy gedmatch! Who knows, Rosefolly, maybe we are related!

I saw a blurb for a piece on a "news" program saying they tested identical triplets and "you won't believe the results". I didn't see the segment, but I did find a write-up of what appears to be that segment. http://www.insideedition.com/investigative/21784-how-reliable-are-home-dna-ancestry-tests-investigation-uses-triplets-to-find-out The results reported differed across a set of identical triplets, but less than I would have guessed: e.g. One triplet was 6% Scandinavian the other two were 0% I would also have liked for them to have done an "across companies" test where they send the same triplets' DNA samples to three different testing companies, and compare the results across the companies. But being a "news" program, they aren't especially versed in scientific rigor. Another post I found, asserts that there are three big reliable testing companies, and a bunch of other companies that have sprung up to tap into this burgeoning market, whose results are more dubious. https://dna-explained.com/2016/01/22/genealogy-and-ethnicity-dna-testing-3-legitimate-companies/