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Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 4:53PM GMT
Classification: Query
Hello,

I descend from a Hessian soldier that deserted the British line and remained in America after the Rev war. He had a brother that also served in the same Hessian regiment and also deserted. I recently have discovered the brother's descendants an would like to personally do a DNA test in coordination with one of his descendants. Bottom line I would be dealing with approx. 5th or 6th cousins X times removed depending on who I can find. Has anyone had luck with a similar cousin separation?

Thanks!

Brian G

Re: Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 5:52PM GMT
Classification: Query
I just got a leaf match yesterday to a 6th cousin 2x removed from Ancestry. I could not find any other possible ancestors in common in the tree. But, of course, we both have missing lines. And, without tools, Ancestry results cannot be triangulated & researched further. I am going to message this match to see if he will upload his results to GEDmatch. Would love to explore this match.

Re: Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 6:52PM GMT
Classification: Query
There is only about a 10% chance that you and a 5th cousin will have sufficient shared DNA segments to detect a match and on the order of 2% for 6th cousins. See:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gbonner/DN...

Re: Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 9:26PM GMT
Classification: Query
Thank you both for your replies.

So if I am to read the link provided correctly and its supporting documentation... it is therefore best to seek as many descendants from the my Hessian's brother's line as possible to increase my odds of finding enough individuals in the "Specualtive Relative" category to validate the genealogical research? But, that number may have to be rather high.

Brian

Re: Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 11:50PM GMT
Classification: Query
According to this, it's much less than 10 percent. http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics

The bottom line is that unless you can transfer the results to a place like Gedmatch, it's highly unlikely that any link can be proved.

Re: Accuracy for 5th or 6th cousins

Posted: 31 Jul 2015 10:36AM GMT
Classification: Query
Thank you for the link. It's obvious now that there is no reason to expect reliable results.
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