Have you ever checked someone’s DNA tree and thought, this isn’t a tree it’s a sapling. It’s hard to figure out your connection if they are your third cousin and they only have a bit of information. If they are your fourth cousin it’s even tougher. So what do you do? You get out your tree program or a piece of paper and start gathering the information they do have and start building a tree for them.
There are many reasons why your cousin might not have a tree. One of my previous complaints about Family Tree DNA was that their tree view was weak, but they’ve made some good improvements recently. Even so, some people are not familiar with how to upload a gedcom or may have concerns with uploading too much information into their tree. So they may have only entered partial information, manually.
Also if you think about it, if they are your 3rd cousin that means you have a common 2x great-grandparent. If you do the math that means they would need to have all 16 of those 2x great grandparents entered into their tree. That’s a lot. If it turns out they are a 4th cousin, now we’re talking 32 sets of 3x great grandparents. That’s a really big number. How fleshed out is your own tree?
In the case of Ancestry.com sometimes you have matches but that person has their tree marked as private. So that won’t help you at all. I know people are hesitant about opening up their tree but if you want your DNA to work for you, then you will need to open up your tree. If a person is really concerned they can always create a tree with limited details and attach that to their DNA and then have another private tree with all the research. This is cousin bait; because now your match has something to look at. Then maybe they will feel like they can at least start a conversation with you. But just remember one other thing. Just because your cousin doesn’t appear to have a tree attached to their AncestryDNA doesn’t mean they don’t have a tree. They just might not have it attached to their DNA. So click on their user name and see what you find. Sometimes you find a tree or at least an explanation of why they don’t have a tree. I’ve added my gedmatch number to my profile, so you might want to add that to yours.
If you are able to reverse engineering their tree, you just might be able to help them with their genealogy. You might think of an angle they never thought of or find a record they’ve missed and make that family connection.
Whatever the reason for your cousin’s lack of tree or lack of branches you just might want to ask the question. Take a chance they just might answer you. After all isn’t it all about finding other family members? I know; because I’m looking for cousins.