• Nth cousin defined. So you think you might be a 3rd cousin, twice removed. What does that mean?
I saved some text about that:
from RootsWeb Review, 3 December 2003, Vol. 6, No. 49 email see here below:
• 1b. EDITOR's VIRTUAL DESK. Removing Cousins -- Gently A reader recently wrote about finding a cousin with whom he shares a 3-great-grandfather but not the 2-great-grandfather. He wanted to know "how times removed are we?"
The answer is you are not removed at all. The genealogical term "removed" means that a person belongs to a different kinship generation.
In this instance the reader and his new cousin are 4th cousins. Their mutual ancestors are the reader's 3-great-grandparents, which means their 2-great-grandparents were siblings; their great-grandparents were 1st cousins; their grandparents were 2nd cousins, and their respective parents were 3rd cousins.
However, the "removed" part enters the picture if you want to compare what YOUR children are to this new 4th cousin. They would be HIS 4th cousins once removed (because they are one generation removed from this kinship (4th cousins). Such a relationship is recorded as 4C1R.
You will find links to some relationship charts in RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees: