This is the most common technical culprit. For the software to call someone your “13th Great-Grandmother,” there must be a perfect, unbroken chain of “Parent-Child” relationships for 15 generations.
If even one link in that chain is set as “Spouse” instead of “Parent,” or if a link is missing, the software can no longer “see” the direct descent.
It then falls back on the next available connection—which might be a messy, distant cousin circuit.
Update 2 – I compared with Family Historian and it came up with the same first Relationship (cousin over Ancestor)
If what you are getting at if some cases would cousin relationships be close than ancestor that might be true. However what I am getting at
#29264/#29265 are 12x great grandparents and #29262/#29261 are parents of #29264
should we expect the Set Relationships to calculate them as 13x GP vs 1st cousin?
Fortunately the coloring scheme I use made this stand out.
Of all the possible relationships that might be available for the Set Relationships tool to choose, it’s a big mystery to me which one it actually chooses. I think it just starts looking for relationships, and chooses the first one it comes to. I don’t think it’s actually applying any sort of prioritization criterion. But that still begs the question of the order in which it scans looking for relationships. The order in which it searches has the practical effect of inducing a prioritization criterion.
To me, the larger question is not whether it chooses a cousin over an ancestor, it’s whether it chooses a “spouse of” relationship over an actual blood relationship. And ever since the “spouse of” feature was added in RM9 (I think it was), there are cases where “spouse of” relationships are chosen over an actual blood relationship. I totally disagree with that aspect of the new feature. I would rather not have the new feature at all than for “spouse of” relationships to take precedence of actual blood relationships.
I am not sure what logic it uses but it does not always seem to use “Priority” but I have not dug into very case scenarios. Your point about “spouse of” and “flags” is related to the use or priorities. I guess there should be an option for use to choose ‘closest’ or blood as priority would be an appropriate enhancement request
the relationship calculator that will show when two or more relationships (or if only one) seem correct for those people. The SET RELATIONSHIPS seem incorrect however in this case. Unless there was a wrong parent child relationships there are very few cases when a direct ancestor should fall after a cousin relationship. (and of same family)
I know that this doesn’t correct the underlying problem with the classification of the relationships, but there is the error of having Marie Francoise Paignè s parents as the parents of Jacques Jean Boucher
The relationships are set from my Grandson POV (not me but that is not really relevant to the issue). I didnt fix anything . The issue I raised was conerning 29262 who should be prioritized as ancestor NOT cousin despite being both. (I think my presentation of this was likely confusing)
I have seen where a mistaken Parent - Child relationships can cause issues however (usually due to user error)
something to consider since we do not know what criteria RM uses – but as as long as the are Birth Parents it shouldn’t matter if Surnames are “Peter Pan” or “Moby Dick”
interesting! but mathematically more likley than most people realize.
One you pass around 12 generations / 400 years two randomly people (with similar geographical heritage) are more likely than NOT to be related.
Yep, just speaking more to the math around my strong paternal French Canadian heritage intersecting with names in a random problem post by a fellow forum member.
