A post by John Reid on Anglo-Celtic Roots plus an email from My Heritage for a new Theory of Family Relativity finally got me to look at the Theory of Family Relativity for longer than a few minutes. I had occasionally glanced but had not really looked at them. I have five sibling kits up on My Heritage and all of them have at least eight such theories and as many as 16 Theories or in between. I thought I would do a little study just to see how many of these are absolutely correct, possibly correct, interesting and how many of them are not correct as written.
I did have a couple of discoveries (4 individual matches appeared in four of the five kits so represent 16 of the 45 correct) where I did not know how we were related and added them to my known matches in terms of relating directly to the family trees. Two of them were very interesting and helpful.
Kit 1 has 13 Theories with 8 correct, 1 an interesting possibility but it relates to my grandmother for whom her father is an unknown, and 4 that are incorrect
Kit 2 has 15 Theories with 10 correct, 1 is an interesting possibility but it relates to my grandmother for whom her father is an unknown, and 4 that are incorrect
Kit 3 has 11 Theories with 9 correct, 1 that is a small error in a family tree but otherwise looks correct, and 1 that is incorrect
Kit 4 has 16 Theories with 10 correct, 1 an interesting possibility but it relates to my grandmother for whom her father is an unknown, 1 that is a small error in a family tree but otherwise looks correct, and 4 that are incorrect
Kit 5 has 8 Theories with 8 correct
Looking at 5 Kits and a total of 63 Theories there are 45 correct, 3 are very interesting and would point to the same line as I hypothesized for my paternal grandmother, 2 appear to be just a small error in a family tree and are again likely correct, and 13 that are incorrect.
Looking at the 13 that are incorrect as they are written 3 of them appear on 2 of the kits reducing that number to 10 that do not relate as shown. The amount of DNA shared is at or greater than 20 cM for 5 of the 10 kits and it is likely I could work through those family trees and find the error as they are related with a large enough amount of DNA shared to place them into the 4th to 6th cousin range. The other five share between 15.7 and 17.9 cM so are perhaps a little more distantly related but my new standard is 20 cM for an unknown match so will not likely pursue those five Theories unless the person I am matching makes a change in their tree (or I make a change in mine!). Percentage wise 58 of the 63 Theories are either correct, interesting possibilities, known errors in family trees or possible errors in family trees not yet explored or 92% of the Theories. Only 8% do not fit into a criteria where I would explore them further at this time. I find that to be most interesting and I will check out the 8% to see if they show up in the autoclusters with known matches.
Looking at the incorrect items in all cases they are in my father's line where someone has either attached to him as an uncle (he was an only child born in England and came to Canada with his parents at the age of 9; for any of the matches to be that closely related (half sibling) they would need to share a lot more DNA with all of us) or given a line to my grandmother that does not fit the known data for the possible father's family plus at various points in the trees there are incorrect individuals as my ancestors. I would have to agree that this is a very interesting feature on the My Heritage site.
The kits that related to my paternal grandmother were very interesting and I continue to watch for a closer match to this line since individuals would be my half second cousins (possibly removed since my generations are very long). I will now check out all these new Theory of Family Relativity as they arrive in my Inbox!
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