jim, thank you for the response - very interesting as always !! just wish we could be more certain about sylvia's grt grand parents just cannot understand if they were from a male powell, why the 3 boys would go by jones in a powell household ??? In a message dated 7/15/2008 6:19:47 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: The minimum number of generations for a 67 marker match would be zero, that is brothers. In the case of Sylvia's great grandfather I'm guessing that the Powell man the Jones boys are living with on the census, sorry I don't remember which year, is either their grandfather or an uncle. I really can't see them being removed from the Powell family by more than three generations. When you know there isn't a connection in three or four generation I would expect to find one within two or three more generation, but that is based on AVERAGE mutations rates and PROBABILITY. If you flip a coin ten times you should get five heads and five tails, but we know this normally doesn't happen. If you repeated this test 1,000 time the AVERAGE would be 5 and 5 but reality won't be. I know this isn't a good answer, but I'm not sure there is a good answer. Jim Barrett [email protected] wrote: what i would really like to know is how "recent" in time it is or the "least" amount of generations i.e. mid 1800's ? maybe 4 generations ? for sylvia's "missing" unknown great grd f ?? ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message **************Get the scoop on last night's hottest shows and the live music scene in your area - Check out TourTracker.com! (http://www.tourtracker.com?NCID=aolmus00050000000112)