Famous relatives
Did anyone get a notice from Family Search about being related to someone famous? I got one that said Pocahontas was my 12th Great Grandmother. I can't get the page to load to show relationship. I can't believe this is true. I had my DNA tested a few years ago and there was zero Native American in my DNA. What gives?
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Yes, everyone who is signed up to receive notifications got that one.
IMO, it's a rather silly bit of marketing fluff. Certainly not accurate, in my case, and probably not verifiable for 99% of the recipients.
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It points to the FamilySearch collaborative tree. If the communication gets a few people to correct some of the errors, that's a good thing.
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Yeah? That's super cheesy and plain wrong. I thought this was a legit site and I've contributed to it a lot in the past. I may rethink it now.
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FamilySearch is legitimate. It's just their marketing gets a little crazy sometimes.
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@LoriTottleben Those notifications are based on connections within the Family Tree, so they are only as good as the data contained therein at the time the notification originated.
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DNA ethnicity test would not show any DNA if it was ONLY for a person 12 generations back
if a person's only native american ancestry was through Pocahontas - the amount of Native American DNA they would get from Pocathontas would be so insigificant that it would be virtually undetectable by ethnic DNA tests .
if however it was a ancestor within 3-6 generations it should be very detectable.
The famous relatives are based on the links in Family Tree
In my case the vast majority of them appear to be correct - but if you have to go back like 10-15 generations for the connection - there are so many connections involved - that at some point there is a pretty fair possibility that one of those links may be in error and the relationship indeed may be in error - so I try to focus on the ones like 3-7 generations back.
at some point in the past we are related to virtually everyone - famous and non famous.
but again its all based on the data in Family Tree (which no one claims in inffallible or based entirely on proven relationships )
and actually it is not that uncommon of a thing to be descended from Pocahontas
today there are thought to be more than 100,000 people who descend from Pocahontas
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Roots tech suggests that she is my 12 great grandmother. DNA of close relatives show no native american ancestry. Was she a step grandmother?
I do not believe that I am a direct descendent. I do not know why Root Tech thinks that she is my 12th great grandmother.
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According to https://pocahontas.morenus.org/poca_gen.html , it is estimated that there are more than 100,000 descendants living today. If you are truly interested in investigating your possible descendancy, the web site I provided above has advice on how to go about doing that.
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Gail, the relationship that I found is that a descentdant of Pocahontas married Henry Meese, 9th great grandfather. But she was not a biological 9th great grandmother of mine.
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That message went to many people. It is mostly a bit of marketing fluff. Don't take it too seriously.
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Aine, on the positive side the message from rootstech leads to communication. On the negative side it brings into question the validity of rootstech data.
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The validity of any family tree data depends on the accuracy of the pedigree. If Rootstech used data from FamilySearch that pedigree will change if someone makes a change to the pedigree whether it is a correct change or an incorrect change.
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@Quint Hurst That is precisely why I posted that web site which has guidance for those who want to seriously research whether or not they are a descendant. @TDavid96 added a complication to the relationship finder which I have already encountered. This algorithm does not limit itself to biological connections. It will use any parent child connections. In the Rootstech program, I found surprisingly close "relatives" who ended up be descended from the guardian of my great grandmother when she was growing up.
I think all of this "finder" stuff should drop the word related or relatives and use the word connected. See how you are connected.
And FYI, to give someone a feel good ending, I never knew who my great grandmother grew up with, I only knew it was not her father. Her mother died when she was 3 or so. While it was indeed very interesting to review the new information, it was somewhat disappointing to find that they are not really related to me. They are connected to me, but not related to me.
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One problem with the Famous Relatives function is that it's inconsistent in what it considers "related": as Gail points out, for parent-child connections, it ignores the type, so that guardians or stepchildren are shown as relatives. However, at the same time, it completely skips marriages: according to Famous Relatives, I am not related to my father-in-law's first cousin. So it can't really be renamed as "connections", because it misses at least half of those.
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In my case, the message said Pocahontas was my 10th great grandaunt. Then on "view full relationship" Pocahontas is shown as the 1st wife of my 10th great grandfather.
She can't be both and, in fact, is neither.
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As for the DNA question, if you are not either (a) in a strictly female line of descent and testing mitochondrial DNA or (b) in a strictly male line of descent and testing Y DNA, then the probability of sharing any DNA by descent with an ancestor 12 generations back is essentially zero.
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(0.5) to the 12th power.....
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(0.5) to the 12th power.....
something like that - and most Ethnic DNA tests will not detect anything less than about 1%
12 generations ago each of us had over 4,000 ancestral lines (assuming no cousin intermarriage)
each ancestor (at the most would give us 1/4000 of our DNA) - but at that point - due to the fact that we dont inheirt genes in equal proportion - some of those ancestors we have virtually no DNA from.
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I also received notice that Pocahontas is my 12th great grandmother. My Mother had 1% Native American DNA according to Ancestry.com. My question is why can't I see all the details? When I click on it nothing appears - just spins endlessly.
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If your mother has 1% Native DNA - that 1% would not have come from Pocahontas.
but a more recent native ancestry.
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UGH SO much is wrong on those "Find out if you are related to:" things....that then say I am the 6 th cousin 3 times removed of whomever....I have researched a number of them , like Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, etc etc, and the trees and connections are WRONG!! For example, one was a lady having a child in her 70's and another was some "siblings" being born within 4 months of each other!! Parents being in completely different states of a child noted birthplace...come on, do better
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UGH SO much is wrong on those "Find out if you are related to:" things....that then say I am the 6 th cousin 3 times removed of whomever....I have researched a number of them , like Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, etc etc, and the trees and connections are WRONG!! For example, one was a lady having a child in her 70's and another was some "siblings" being born within 4 months of each other!! Parents being in completely different states of a child noted birthplace...come on, do better
FamilySearch is a public open edit system constantly being updated and evolving and growing - if there are errors - its up to people like you and me to correct them - just general users. The person profiles in Familytree are created/updated/corrected/merged by its users.
BUT I agree - you can find some weird things like you say - - - and when I see them - - I fix them.
the responsibility of the data is on the users - FamilySearch depends on its users to make the corrections - though in many cases - it will notify you of the errors that need fixing. Family Search employees dont generally make updates/correction that general users can correct themselves.
But YES - we can do better - and I include you and me and other users when I say that .
But the wonderful thing about FamilySearch - is that we CAN fix the data - not like decades ago when people printed genealogy books - rife with errors - and once it was on the paper - no one could change it.
(how many books are out there - with erroneous connections to Pocahontas - - a ton. and no way to fix these printed volumes)
Here we (any one of us) can fix the errors.
- Making changes within FamilySearch Family Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUYT0_CvbBU
- How to Correct Relationships https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-correct-parent-child-relationships-in-family-tree
- Correcting Mistakes in Family Tree https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/correct-mistakes-family-tree
- What do I do when someone else messes up my Family Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swa3Ub56dKI
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Can you tell me why I (and others, I'm sure) are receiving these emails claiming I'm related to famous people like Pocahontas, and now Wm Shakespeare, just to find out a few days later that the link to that person no longer exists?
Last week I clicked the link provided in the email about Pocahontas (supposedly my 10th g-grandaunt), and saw the family tree from me to her father Chief Powhatan (supposedly my 11th g-grandfather). Then on the next day I refreshed the screen and someone had deleted the last four generations leading to her father. How accurate are the email's claims of descent?
If the information is only speculation, FamilySearch should not be sending out emails like this.
Replies will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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Probably best that, as I have, you go to your FamilySearch settings page and uncheck the options in order for you to no longer receive such unwanted messages:
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For the most part, the messages along the lines of the Famous Relatives email are based on what is in the FamilySearch Family Tree. Unfortunately, once we get that far back in history in the FSFT, there is little documentation and much speculation. In addition, the Pocahontas email was poorly calculated, giving me 2 separate relationships, neither of which is possible, and the two actually conflicted with each other.
I have most email notifications turned off, and I also ignore many of the ones I do receive.
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Keep in mind it is NOT based on some deceptive speculation of Familysearch or it’s employees. Rather it is simply based on the data represented inside FamilySearch FamilyTree which comes from people like you and me. Like any open edit system the data may be incorrect as to specific connections. But it’s simply an automated computer program pointing out interconnections in the data. Like any open edit system the USER will need to do some of their own analysis to see if the data is reliable or not. The information is only as good as what people like you and me enter into the system. And if we do see any errors again it’s up to people like you and me to fix the errors. FamilySearch is merely pointing out interconnections in the data between Pocahontas and specific users - based on the data in the system that people have uploaded. And the data like any genealogical data needs to be reviewed for quality. It can and does have errors.
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How strong are the possibilities of being related to the famous people? Mine showed dozens of US Presidents. All sorts of famous entertainers- scientists etc. How can that possibly be true??
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If every link in your tree is correct and is not an adopted link the relation would be true.
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@PattyMorman As you check your relationship to those famous people, you will likely find that for the great majority of them, you are related via a common ancestor way back in the 1500s or 1600s. I am also related to a few dozen presidents and checking the earlest one, I see this:
Checking the most recent one on the list I see this:
Just keep in mind this activity is not showing famous direct line ancestors. Each of us will have few if any of those. It is showing famous distant cousins of which we all have millions, many of which are on the list of famous people included in this activity. It's an interesting way to see how we are all connected if you go back far enough but is not a way to earn any type of bragging rights or to share any type of blame.
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