Husband + Cousin = COUSBAND

So, know that you know that where we were in Utah for the RootsTech conference, you might as well what fun we had at the Family Research Library on Temple Square.

The library building itself is smallish, and frankly outdated, BUT, and that is a BIG BUT, they have modernized the library's welcome center into a multi-media extravaganza for genealogists.

If you have a family tree posted to FamilySearch, which is the LDS Church FREE, wonderful, website (Yes, you have register and sign in, but it is free and amazing), you sign in and you get a smart tablet.  There are stations around the library where you can work with ginormous touch-screens to get basic information on where your surname is from, pose in virtual period clothing for free images of you living as an ancestor of yours would have lived, etc.  You can even record, a la StoryCorps-like answers to questions, etc.

BUT, the most fascinating station is the first one you come to.  Stick your tablet to the giant magnet next to a screen and you and your ancestors come up.  So do your relationships to others who are visiting and uploaded their trees.  And you can select their pictures and see if you are related to them.

This is very cool.  A little loosey goosey, too.  Because in genealogy, it's the *proof* that matters.  And these lineages are based on information submitted by you and augmented by others research as submitted by them.  So it's kind of fun, but you could never submit this to make the DAR, SAR or even most small town genealogy societies.  I mean it's dazzling, but far from the certain truth.

Into this walks Cookie and the Husband.   So we each get signed in, we each get tablets - mine was No. 1 out of the shelves and draws full of these, and off we go.  So I attach my tablet to one large screen monitor, and the husband attaches his and up and we started exploring.  And as each person coming in joins the network you can see who is and who is not related.

Now, I have to confide, almost everyone I connected with was ninth cousin, or beyond, meaning our connections date to the late 17th century or early 18th century at best.  And if you start connecting through with people from the 1400's, well then, you are most certainly related to lots and lots of people because the world was a much small place.

So I choose my Husband's picture.  Why, I don't know, but I do.  Now on Ancestry DNA, we are not related.  There is no way.  Our DNA doesn't match.  But that only goes back eight generations or so.

We, I touched the picture and almost fell off my high heels.

Eleventh cousins, once removed.

Well.  Shit.

This is a relationship that isn't even on the Canon Law chart, which stops at 10th Cousins.   In astronomical terms, our cousin relationship is the genealogical equivalent of Pluto.

Still, this was cause for much fun and merriment.  The line drops for husband on his father's side, and on my side drops through my maternal 2x great grandmother's side.

I am not allowed to call him my "Cousin", but I am allowed to call him my "Cousband".

But never during sex.

And seeing that we are not Snuffy Smith or Little Abner fans, it wouldn't come out during our fantasy roleplayings.  And since neither of us is in to that, well, so much for roleplaying at all.  

Now to prove the lines.

Could be fun, to find out how much of a kissing cousin my husband is.