Knowing Cousins You Did Not Know Were Cousins

This past weekend I attended a seminar for area churches and one of the attendees said, "Hi, Cousin." She is one of my 3rd cousins. I had known her for many years before I discovered that we were related.

How did I find the relationship? It was a few years ago through DNA. We both had tested at Family Tree DNA. When I looked at my results, I saw her name near the top of my matches, marked as 2nd to 4th cousin. Could it possibly be the person I already knew? How would I find out?

While I was at our local genealogical library which has a large collection of local newspaper, I was looking for something else and I happened to see a notice of her marriage. There it gave the name of her parents. So then I used the public family trees on Ancestry.com to see if anyone had submitted that father. There I found her parents and her mother's maiden name was the same as my gt-grandmother's maiden name. When I checked the tree farther, I found that we shared 2nd gt-grandparents, so we were 3rd cousins.

I wanted to tell her what I had discovered, so I sent an e-mail. No answer came. I later discovered they did not have a working computer at the time. I knew her brother-in-law and he was able to give me her telephone number, so I called her and related the news that we were related. It took her awhile to understand how, but now she did know that we were cousins.

It does pay to check those DNA matches because you may find local relatives.