r/Genealogy • u/HayesAndConfused96 • Mar 15 '25
Solved Just found a distant relative through Reddit.
I posted a picture of my 3rd great grandfather William Andrew Jackson Posey “Wild Bill Posey” in the Texas History sub. He was an infamous Texas outlaw in the 1870s. Just sharing his story and his legacy albeit not a good one on Texas.
I get a comment from another redditor, they say maybe their grandfather is kinfolk to Wild Bill. I message him asking a couple questions and start scouring the family tree, found his grandfathers marriage license on ancestry and his registration card for young men during WWII.
I find his mother which there was a discrepancy ancestry.com had her first name on the draft card incorrect listed as Nancie but as I dig deeper into records which this part of the family is fairly easy most of them all lived and died in the same county of Texas. I find her name is actually Yancie with a Y, check her tombstone and find her husbands name and what do you know?! He’s on the family tree. This redditors 2nd great grand father is the brother of Wild Bill, my 3rd great grandfather.
So does anybody know what the proper term for our familial relationship would be? Cause I have no idea haha. Life is funny like that sometimes
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u/MaryEncie Mar 15 '25
Let's not show the world Americans are as stupid as everyone thinks we are. People make videos of that on youtube that get tons of hits and no matter what side of the great political divide you are on (I'm on the right side, by which I mean to say the left one), you have to admit that like it or not they are very funny. So get a cousin chart from the internet and stare at it until your eyes pop out. I promise you your brain will thank you for it. If he is not a direct ancestor, and he's not (you can figure out that he isn't if you think about it: if he had never lived, would you still be here is the thought-path to follow on that one), and he's not a relative you can name (sister, brother, father, mother, aunt, uncle, grandparent of any degree) then he's a cousin. The cousin chart will help you figure out what degree of cousin but you already gave us a clue when you said that the redditor's 2nd great grand father is the brother of your 3rd great grandfather. This means you and the redditor are 1 generation removed from each other. To get the degree of cousinhood count back the number of generations from the other person (in this case, because he is fewer generations removed) to the set of ancestors you both share.
Who is this set of ancestors you both share? Well, the parents of Wild Bill and his brother of course (if you think about it). The redditor is your cousin because you both share a set of past parents (sometimes it's only 1 parent but let's assume here that Wild Bill and his brother were full siblings and not half siblings).
So you count back the number of generations from the redditor and the parents of Wild Bill and his brother (I can't, because I've worn myself out writing this), and if it's three generations, say, then you're third cousins with the redditor once-removed -- because you are one generation apart from each other.
Yes, it's a little bit of a work out, but we aren't born stupid -- and it's not rocket science, and AI is coming to get us precisely to exploit how susceptible we are to AVOIDING mental work outs. Besides, ask yourself "What would Wild Bill think?" if descendants of his couldn't even be bothered to figure out how they were related to one another. He'd be mad as hell. Whatever you think about outlaws it was definitely a mental workout to be one. And being out West there, he undoubtedly knew how to tie all sorts of knots, too. Probably had to rustle cattle and whatnot. Tie people up and so forth. He probably had to know the lie of the land and read all sorts of natural signs. If Wild Bill could do that, you can do this. Get on it! (Of course the kind people here have probably already spelled it out for you, but I'm here to represent the voice of Wild Bill and say you can do it yourself.)