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I've been dabbling in genealogy for years, but just recently I had some extraordinary break-throughs that floored me. Turns out that both of my parents are related to my mother-in-law. Dad and MIL are connected 10 (for him) and 9 (for her) generations back, while Mom and MIL are connected 7 (for MIL) and 6 (for Mom) generations back. What's even more shocking was that my husband was born overseas to American parents. His response: "You mean I was born on the opposite side of the world only to return to the U.S. and marry back into my own darn family?
[quote=randomparent;28934057"You mean I was born on the opposite side of the world only to return to the U.S. and marry back into my own darn family? [/QUOTE]
Now that is funny...
That is quite a small world coincidence you have there. I have thought I was going to find something similar a time or two as my wife's family and my family have branches in the same areas about the same time.
I do have a couple of occasions where 2nd+ cousins married each other but nothing between my family and my wife's.
One thing I find interesting in my tree is that my Maternal Grandmother and Uncle live in a small town (approx 10,000 people today) where my Paternal GG-Grandparents lived 140+ years ago. (2150 people in 1890).
Those are both weird but I bet there's more of that than we know about. If more people did genealogy they'd find things like that. My ex was related to me on our mothers' sides and our grandparents were married in the same tiny village church about 300 miles away from us.
Also, I am living in the town in which a lot of my ancestors lived in the 1600s and I didn't know it. For the last few years I knew that they had lived around here somewhere but I'm not even from here so I moved to this area without knowing it. If that makes sense.
I knew a genealogist whose mother had the relatives who were already related and he remembered her saying at a wedding, "Well, they were already related." Years later when he took up genealogy he saw what she meant.
But it makes you wonder if we are somehow attracted to these people because we are related. They remind us of our own family--LOL--they ARE our own family.
When the Colonies were young and families large, it was common for cousins to marry. My mother had double cousins. and cousins" three ways". I do not have a cousin. I did not understand the word "cousin" until I began investigating my own families. I had a "shirt tail" cousin who said he was his own "grandpa" and he could prove it.
When I was dating in high school mother was nervous as a cat on a tin roof. More than once she said I couldn't date X because "we could be cousins", and cousins don't marry. but she never exactly explained the relationship. I don't think she knew there were cousins two blocks down the street. I didn't learn myself until a couple of years ago.
Say 14 generations back (given 25 years per generation) ...1650...you have 16,384 ancestors living in that generation. The population of the entire U. S. was only 50,000 people. Given that, the odds are extremely high that many, many, many of those ancestors were mutual ones.
My father is descended from the English settlers of Mass, and my mother from the English settlers of Virginia, so any cousinhood must be quite far back. Even their immigrant ancestors were from different walks of life in different parts of England. It was a freak thing that he went to Houston and met her. I haven't found any of the same people in both trees, and they are fairly well fleshed out.
But like PPs have said, it absolutely must be common amongst those who have lived in the same region and whose families are not recent arrivals.
I have the Dutch from the 1500s (NYC), the English from 1600s (BOSTON). and the Scots in the 1700s (NJ) who managaed to marry in the 1900s. Go figure. I have more double cousins on the Dutch-Scot side than on the French-English side primarily, I think, because the Dutch-Scots had much larger families. My 11th g.grandfather had 15 children that included twins and triplets. The 4th g.grandfathers had 30 children with no multiple births; the 3rds had eighteen, the 2nds had ten. the 1sts had four, but two did not have issue. Ergo I have no first cousins. .
There was a passage written in 1880s that explained two large families with many sons. "The sons of A and B are so closely related by blood and marriage that if one sees the ancestry of A, one also see the ancestry of B."
My great grandparents were first cousins, My Aunts husband's parents were first cousins (he always jokes and says thats why he has a pointed head), and a cousin of mine didn't find out her parents were first cousins until she was grown and sorta freaked out haha. My parents have a lot of the same ancestors as well. I guess this just confirms some stereotypes about Virginia lol.
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