[Ancestry] Am I actually related to all these people? How diluted is the ancestry?

throwaway12222

So I made a thread a few days about about ancestry and I decided to try the free trial. I started entering the basics of my parents and grandparents and then I saw that my mothers death record was linked in someone else's tree. 

So I checked out this other persons tree and they have some of the same people linked as I do, but their tree is way more expanded. They have dozens of relatives and stuff, here's a screenshot of their tree. Also the person who made this tree lives in Australia! And is part of the red line near the bottom right.

The green square is me, so following the green line backwards, assuming their tree is accurate, I know the names of my great great great great great great great grandparents... Supposedly born in the 1700's. I'm not quite sure how they're able to know this considering pretty much only nobles and famous lineages would have names and dates documented?

But anyway am I technically related to all these people that are linked by the green line? What about the people all the way down to the right who I've linked by the red line? What about all the people elsewhere in the tree?



Obviously using the word "related" is a stretch but technically, as a matter of bloodline, are all these people "my family"? If so how diluted is the bloodline by now?

I'm not sure if I'm even reading the tree correctly. 

Mark_d

Your great great grandparents (and their ancestors) had like 6 children each.  So yes there are a load of people in the blood line.

Whilst you share great great great grandparents with the people on the red line, all this means is that you share a tiny part of your DNA.  You have no living relatives in common, no shared experiences - so nothing to bring you together.

It can be interesting to look upward on the family tree but looking as rat to the right as the people in red, you see people you really have no connection with.

comeandgo

Ancestry is not reliable, you need to do your own research using whatever the U.K. package is for accessing births deaths and marriages.  In Scotland we are very lucky and use Scotlands People but you do need to be prepared to spend a bit of money.

FlorayG

It's quite possible I think. My grandfather had 7 siblings, all disappeared from my connections but somewhere I have as many third cousins as do you

p00hsticks

You will find as you explore Ancestry further that when you look at a particular name, it will suggest others that may be related to that person. Some users will happily just accept those recommendations without doing further research to confirm if they are valid or not, so as @comeandgo suggests you need to be a bit wary of piggy-backing on the results of users that you are not familiar with. 

With regard to your comment that ...

throwaway12222 said:

Supposedly born in the 1700's. I'm not quite sure how they're able to know this considering pretty much only nobles and famous lineages would have names and dates documented?

Parishes were ordered to start keeping records of all births marriages and deaths in 1538. some of these parish registered have been digitised and can be browsed online, and as most people didn't tend to move much you can often trace ancestors back using them (my family spent many generations in the same village and browsing the three sets of registers, for births, marriages and deaths I could reliably find a number of ancestors. 

Civil records of births, marriages and deaths started in 1837.     

Runner_Duck

Some of the trees on family history sites are best described as fantasy.  A potential clue is the number of people named in the tree, anything greater than 10,000 raises a red flag for me.  I've been researching for >20 years and have only got as far as 6,000, all with the relevant sources attached. A large number of people simply add any recommendations without any checks. I have found my parents and grandparents still alive and married to someone else; other relatives have married and had children after they died. You get the picture.  Online trees can be useful, but you have to validate the research yourself by finding the sources and deciding if they are correct or not.  Done properly family history is time consuming and fascinating, otherwise all you are doing is gathering up a list of random names.

pseudodox

Runner_Duck said:

Some of the trees on family history sites are best described as fantasy.  A potential clue is the number of people named in the tree, anything greater than 10,000 raises a red flag for me.  I've been researching for >20 years and have only got as far as 6,000, all with the relevant sources attached. A large number of people simply add any recommendations without any checks. I have found my parents and grandparents still alive and married to someone else; other relatives have married and had children after they died. You get the picture.  Online trees can be useful, but you have to validate the research yourself by finding the sources and deciding if they are correct or not.  Done properly family history is time consuming and fascinating, otherwise all you are doing is gathering up a list of random names.

Excellent advice!  Although after 20 years I do have over 12,000 researched/authenticated names on my tree.  A number of them are "floating" family groups.  Whilst I have documents for them I am missing maybe a baptism or marriage which definitely connects them - but as they are all in a small rural location it is highly likely they are related. I had an argument with someone who had my father in her tree, alive long after he died, living in a town he had never been & married to a woman who was not my mother.  But his name & birth year matched so this other person insisted her record was correct. 

Parish records, family bibles, court rolls, wills, gravestones etc have allowed me to trace some lines back as far as 1350.  Certainly I can stand at the gravestone dated 1760 of my 7 x great grandparents.  My ancestors were in the same rural location for 100s of years so cross marriages between my paternal & maternal lines are common.  I am my own cousin!  But I also connect with 4x, 5x & 7x cousins living today in USA, Australia & NZ.

If you get addicted it will be a lifelong interest, & new discoveries are found as more records are digitised.

kimwp

You are related to literally every human.

silvercar

You are 4th cousins to the people in the red block that are on the same horizontal line as you.

People don’t tend to get very excited by a relationship that is only 4th cousin, certainly wouldn’t warrant a wedding invitation.

RAS

Looking at the tree, if you are the green square, then your 3xgreatgrandparents had a child from whom the red lot are descended (where your lines meet). 

What's difficult to know is who amongst those owns the tree? Look half way up that line and you'll see that one of the male squares is marked black? That person is the "Home Person" round whom the tree was built. 

What you don't know is if that is the tree owner, or one of the people in the group on the far right corner?

You also don't know if the tree is correct. You and the home person appear to be 2nd cousins twice removed, but.........

This may be correct, I contacted someone who appeared to be descended from a 3 x great grandfather's sister whose eldest son emigrated in 1853. Actually it was his wife's tree. DNA now supports the trail which relied on the only surviving child being the son's, so she's a 5th cousin.  And I've some going back further.

I'd be more careful about the generations earlier than the meeting of the lines. A third cousin asked me to check a DNA link for her, on the other side, to help a fellow adoptee. There were a couple of badly scrambled trees, but I took the document trail back to a baptism in 1800. The parents had several other children, but almost all the trees combined that family with another one living a few miles away. My US cousin and her contact now have the documentary evidence of their link.

SiliconChip

Listen here to Sliced Bread on DNA ancestry tests.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xzb

"Listener Chris from Suffolk recently took a DNA ancestry test, and after getting some interesting results back, he wondered how accurate they really were?

Greg Foot finds out by taking two tests himself – and has the results and his family tree revealed to him by DNA Genealogist from Finding Families, Louise Baldock.

He also speaks to Professor of Genetics at Leicester University Mark Jobling to find out what these companies are looking for, what they can or can’t determine from our DNA in terms of where we came from, and asks the question – is sharing our DNA with these companies safe?"