When I took the Ancestry.com autosomal DNA test, I was mostly interested in confirming my genetic ethnicity.  An added bonus was my recent connection to a distant cousin – my first definite DNA match.

While I didn’t learn anything new from my newly found cousin (I was able to fill in quite a few holes in her family tree), I did learn a bit more about DNA testing.  Ancestry had stated with 95% assumed accuracy that we are 4th-6th cousins.  However, after comparing notes, we learned my 9th great grandfather, Philip Stanwood, was our common ancestor.  To put this in perspective, Philip was likely born in the first half of the 17th century, having been a fence-viewer in Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1648, and was deceased 7 August 1672.

Given the science of inheritance, it is really quite fascinating that I was matched to my 10th cousin!