[email protected] wrote: > I was going to thank everyone for their responses but now I'm > confused: > > If the uncle isn't related to me except by marriage, how could I be > second cousins once removed with his great-great granddaughter? He is in your cousin's bloodline, but not in yours. He married your 3G aunt; even if she had borne her children by someone else, her 2GGDau would have been your cousin. > I think I didn't make my question clear, so I'll restate it. > > My "cousin's" great-great grandfather married my great-great aunt. > They raised my great-grandmother, the great-great aunt's niece, > whose mother died. Had your question been posed this way the first time, I would have answered with a different kinship term (second cousin, to be exact). A link through your "great-great aunt" -- a *sister* of your GGM -- lines up your cousin a little differently from a link through your "great-grandmother's aunt." But my answer as to the aunt's husband would have been negative, just like before. The question was originally posed like this: > > > I would like to figure out the relationship between me and a > > > "cousin." Her paternal great-grandfather married my paternal > > > great-grandmother's maternal aunt. The two of them raised her after > > > her mother died. Here is how I parsed it (make sure your newsreader is set to display fixed-width text): ______________ | | F [Maternal] F = H [Aunt and husband] | | M [GGF] M [GF] | | M [GF] M [Father] | | M [Father] Cousin | Kberry I presumed male ancestors in most of the intervening generations based on the word "paternal" in both lineage descriptions, but the principle is the same no matter which side you trace in each generation. The diagram does not dictate an identity for H, except in so far as he could not be anyone other than Cousin's GGF. It is only by virtue of his wife's bloodline that his descendants are your kin. Conversely, the father of Cousin's GF could be someone other than H (by what the genetically inclined call a "non-paternity event"), and Cousin would still be your cousin. It may be conventional to address the spouses of kin members in kin terms, but it is not biologically factual. > How am I related to the great-great granddaughter? How am I related > to her great-great grandfather? > > Kberry <[email protected]> What can I say? The answer depends on the reconstruction. Austin W. Spencer