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I do consider them relatives. If you are researching family lines tracing health conditions, it also helps to be aware of these more "distant" connections. It allowed me to trace a rare illness. Even cousins share a common ancestor with you, 15 generations back or not. Where it splits does not seem to matter to me. Its all good!

That is a bit far back, but here is how I could get there. I have always worked at identifying descendants of any of my ancestors. Frankly, I've spent more time on descendants than on going further back. When the further back appears, in my research, I welcome it. However, when I identify each ancestor couple, I want to identify and record all their possible descendants. That is just me. and my approach.

I love to add everyone to my tree too and I do. To me though 15 cousins back 5 x removes. I am thinking the first time I feel down and scrapped my knees as a baby that connection leaked out there & then. Actually this all came about with a request to search a Davy Crockett connection for a client. While I think I have found it. I am afriad it is though a second cousin of Crockett's who married into the family. While they have 3rd & 4th cousins who can claim a tie to the man, their line can not.

Every person I find feels like family to me so I enjoy even the cousins who are far off the beaten path. Someone once shared their vision of genealogy with me and I've taken it to heart since then. She said we tend to think of ourselves as one link in a chain that goes back generation after generation and forward in the same way. She preferred to envision that we are all one link in a piece of chain mail, each link making us stronger and stronger.