How does the math in ethnicity work?

Question

What I mean is, for example...if you find out your grandfather was 1/4 cherokee, does that make you 1/4 too or does it dwindle down to 1/8 for your dad and 1/16 for you or what? I've never been able to find anything out on this and where is a good place to work on your family tree that's not too expensive and accurate?

Answer 1

Yes, if your grandfather was 1/4 and your grandmother did not have any Cherokee then your father will be 1/8.  And then you, if you mother had no Cherokee would be 1/16.  So if you have children with someone with no Cherokee then your children will have even less.  

As far as the family tree, I recently joined a website, www.geni.com.  It's somewhat of a social networking site, but it's for your family, and as you enter people it builds your family tree out for you.  The nice thing is, you can invite your family members to join, and the info that THEY enter will show up on the tree too.  You can keep track of birthday and anniversaries.  It's pretty cool, and it's free.  I'd definitely check it out!  

Answer 2

Yes, it gets diluted. So if your grandfather is 1/4 cherokee and your grandmother has no cherokee blood at all, your dad will be 1/8 cherokee. Then if your mum has no cherokee blood at all you will be 1/16 cherokee.

However, if both your grandparents were 1/4 cherokee then your dad would also be 1/4 cherokee...and then if your mum was then 1/4 cherokee you would be too.

This site is free...

www.genesreunited.com

Answer 3

There are over 400,000 free genealogy sites. I have links to some huge ones, below, but you'll have to wade through some advice and warnings first.

If you didn't mention a country, we can't tell if you are in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia. I'm in the USA and my links are for it.

If you are in the USA,

AND most of your ancestors were in the USA,

AND you can get to a library or FHC with census access,

AND you are white

Then you can get most of your ancestors who were alive in 1850 with 100 - 300 hours of research. You can only get to 1870 if you are black, sadly. Many young people stop reading here and pick another hobby.

No web site is going to tell you how your great grandparents decorated the Christmas tree with ornaments cut from tin foil during the depression, how Great Uncle Elmer wooed his wife with a banjo, or how Uncle John paid his way through college in the 1960's by smuggling herbs. Talk to your living relatives before it is too late.

You won't find living people on genealogy sites. You'll have to get back to people living in 1930 or so by talking to relatives, looking up obituaries and so forth.

Finally, not everything you read on the internet is true. You have to be cautious and look at people's sources. Cross-check and verify.

So much for the warnings. Here is the main link.

http://www.tedpack.org/yagenlinks.html

It has links, plus tips and hints on how to use them, for a dozen huge free sites. Having one link here in the answer and a dozen links on my home site gets around two problems. First, Y!A limits us to 10 links in an answer. Second, if one or more of the links are popular, I get "We're taking a breather" when I try to post the answer. This is a bug introduced sometime in August 2008 with the "new look".