When you are doing family research, it can be tricky to track all of the relationships. I thought it might be helpful to explain what some of the relationship descriptors actually mean. My software helps me sort it all out, but it’s not too complicated if you know where to start.
First, Second, Third and so on
No, it’s not a baseball reference, it’s the starting point of sorting cousins.
- First cousins share a grandparent
- Second cousins share a great-grandparent
- Third cousins share a great great-grandparent
And so on. You can count the number of “greats” in the list to help figure out the relationship.
So Walt’s first cousins are the children of his aunts and uncles. Dorothy and Doris are two of Walt’s first cousins (See more about Dorothy here).
Walt’s second cousins are the grandchildren of his grand uncles and aunts. And so forth.
Once Removed, Twice Removed and so forth
This is where it gets a little trickier. A first cousin once removed can refer to two different relationships. The first is the children of a cousin. So the children of Myrtle Hoel Hillbrands (in this post) are the first cousins once removed of Walt’s dad Carl.
The second time first cousin once removed is used is for the child of a grand uncle or aunt. Kenneth Shively, who I wrote about in this post a couple of weeks ago is Walt’s first cousin once removed.
A first cousin twice removed goes back another generation in the connection. Catherine Wellman Pomberg (in this post) is Walt’s first cousin twice removed.
The pattern continues out based on the relationship to the common grandparent (no matter how many greats there are). Hopefully this helped clear up some questions about the terminology. I, for one, am glad that my software helps track the 4500+ people in our family tree.
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