Friday, September 10, 2010

23andMe's Relative Finder - Matching a cousin on both sides of my family

I had long suspected that Cousin E and I were related on both sides of my family, but didn't have proof until today. On Relative Finder, I match Cousin E on two segments, but she only matches my mother on one. The other segment was a fairly small one (7cMs), so I thought it could possibly have just been missed.  I was curious and wanted to find out.
My father is deceased, so I recently asked my paternal uncle to test at 23andMe in the place of my father. Today, I received his results. Sure enough, he too matches Cousin E!


The dark blue on the chart above signifies the areas that my DNA matches Cousin E. The green is where my mother matches E and the light blue is where my paternal uncle matches E. As one can see, my uncle and myself share the match with E on Chromosome 5 (represented by the bar with the number 5), and my mother and I share the match on Chromosome 7 (represented by the bar with the number 7). Therefore, the matching segment on Chromosome 5 was inherited through my father's ancestry and the match on Chromosome 7 was inherited through my mother's ancestry.
Cousin E and I have not determined our exact connections yet, but we do share Finnish ancestry from the same area (my mom's side) and New England Colonial ancestry (my father's side), so the matches do seem to make sense. We are predicted to be 4th Cousins (3rd to 5th) based on our two matching segments and .37% shared DNA. Since the two segments are obviously inherited from two different ancestors, our likely connection is further back. My mother is predicted to be a 4th Cousin (3rd to 7th) to Cousin E with .28% shared DNA and my uncle is predicted to be a 7th Cousin (4th - 10th) to Cousin E with .09% shared DNA.

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