I’m probably related distantly to many of you. In my searches I found that my great-great grandfather married a daughter of a man who had 28 children with two wives. It’s not as bad as it sounds. He adopted several children of his second wife, but he was the father of my great-great grandfather’s wife. My father’s line ancestor arrived about 1633 and owned land in what is now Harvard University, but he left to go with Thomas Hooker to establish what would become New Haven, CT.

But the interesting point for me is that tracing a few of these marriages shows that I am related through DNA in the USA—ever so slightly in most cases—to thousands and thousands of people.