Are Your Friends Related To You? Find Out!

Have You Ever Wondered?

Have you ever wondered if any of your friend's are related to you? I have. I am adopted and never had a family tree of my own until late 2015. I found out that one of my wife's friends was related to me (7th cousins 4x removed) and it spurred me to find out if other friends were as well. It can be a tough undertaking, but you can find out - most of the time without asking your friends! This works especially well if you are in a small town or rural setting. For example, this does not work too well in Atlanta, where there is a large, diverse population. But I know this works well in Tuscaloosa, AL.

Getting Started - Think Like a Private Eye

There is a wealth of information on the web just waiting to be found. I usually start with a google search with the person's name and the town they live in. This sometimes pulls up some newspaper links. Newspapers have obituaries and marriage notices that contain great information for finding parents and grandparents. Obituaries sometime record the parents and birthplace of the person in question. Marriage notices contain the most information as they usually name the parents and grandparents. If you do not find any information from the google search, you can use Google Newspaper Archive to find newspaper references. If this does not work, you can use sites like Advanced Background Check, Spokeo or Radaris to find the person. This information can give you a close relative's name. This relative's name can be used along with their name in another google search. As a last resort, I go to Facebook to look the person up and view any family members they have listed. You can then search on the person and those family members or just the family member to get more information on the person's parents.

Rule of 25

After you have found the person's grandparents, you can use those names and location to search for them in Ancestry.com. I add the person I am trying to find as a brother or sister (or as my father's brother or sister depending on their age). I then delete their parent relationships to my parents and then I add their parents and grandparents in my tree. I have what I call the Rule of 25. I may know the person's age or relative age when I start. But I do not know their mother or father's, nor grandmothers and grandfather's birth dates. I usually subtract 25 years from the person's birth year for the parents birth year and I subtract another 25 from the parent's birth dates for the grandparents. For example, I add my friend Josh Jenkins to my tree. I know Josh was born in 1979. I add his parents William Jenkins and Barbara Ford to my tree and I use 1954 for their birth year (I add it as Abt 1954 in Ancestry.com). I find that Ancestry finds the parents about 95% of the time when I enter these dates. So for all Josh's grandparents, I use 1929 as their birth year. I find that the Rule of 25 is about 80% effective for grandparents. You can tweak the dates by 5 years up or down to find better information if your first initial guess does not work.

Adding People in Ancestry.com

I do not spend a lot of time researching in Ancestry on friend's descendants. I am doing a quick once-over, not a paid search. I like to find the parents of ancestors using other people's trees in the Ancestry Hints. You can argue that I may be finding incorrect information and I concede that. But if most everyone in Ancestry is saying that the parents of the person in question are the same, then I usually take that as being fact. If the people list the parents for that person as 7 different people, I end the search on that branch of the tree. Most people are not compiling "Super Trees" like I am. Several of the people searching for ancestors have spent hours upon hours searching for the parents and they have not found them. I do not need to spend hours upon hours uncovering new information that will be a breakthrough for other people. I have tried this many times, and I have not broken through yet.

Rings a Bell

After several generations of digging, sometimes I find a name that I recognize from my tree. Now, I may be really good at remembering names from my tree and this technique may not work for you. We all have our strengths. This is one of mine - fixing transmissions is not one. You may want to go a few generations and then test the people that you find for duplicates by searching for that name with the Find Person box on your tree. If you find 2 of a similar name or the same name, you will want to see if those entries are the same person using the Merge With Duplicates function (right-click on the person and choose Profile -> then choose Tools -> Merge With Duplicates). I then go to the person I found the duplicates for and I search down their tree to see who this person is related to. That's when I tell friends that my other friend is their 4th cousin.

A Lesson in Frustration

Now finding friend's ancestries and linking them to your own is not a task for the weak. It takes time and a lot of patience. It is not for everyone. But I have found it rewarding for me. I find the history of my friends and get an insight into what makes them tick. I often find older pictures of their ancestors and find out what they did for a living and I sometimes find ancestors with great accomplishments or ancestors who were famous people. I like to tell someone that they are related to a president, an actor or a company founder. Some people don't care, but some of my friends are genuinely interested. I found out that one of my co-workers is a 5th cousin to Randy Travis (born Traywick). Randy Tavis is about 6' 5" tall and my friend is 6' 6". Maybe that height came from one of their ancestors.