How your great^n -grandparents met

[Saritaschihuahua]

My grandparents met at a club dance. My great-grandparents met in the town where they lived. They always knew one another.

[Tracysherm]

I think that very few people, even those into genealogy can have info on 10 or more generations!

But looking back at my great-great grandparents:

My one g-g-grandfather was a young man working in a paint factory, renting a room in a nearby farmhouse. He married the oldest daughter of the farmer, who was a year older than him (19). they continued to live with the family, until the young wife died 6 months into the marriage. The young man then married the farmer's younger daughter, who was just 16. She was my great-great grandmother. Evidently they were very happy together all their lives, living into their 80s.

My family line has a lot of these "replacement wives," where a wife dies and the husband marries the wife's sister.

My other great-great grandparents all ended up marrying neighbors, having grown up down the road, or on a neighboring farm from each other.


With my great-grandparents:

My one great grandfather and great grandmother were neighbors who grew up on neighboring farms. they married each other when they both turned 18.

My next great grandfather had come to the US from Sweden at 16, and he met my great grandmother, who had also come to the US from Sweden with her parents when she was young. I don't know for sure, but it seems like her parents wanted her to marry a nice Swedish boy, and he moved in to the same city block they lived on, went to their same church, and I guess he fit the bill, as he was Swedish and gainfully employed.

My next great grandfather and great grandmother met when her father owned a "vaudeville" theater and he got a job there as an electrician. Her father, my g-g-grandfather, was unhappy with the match, so they waited until he died then got married.

The 4th great-grandparents, I don't know how they met.

[cindersslipper]

I've got my family tree back to the Doomsday book.

All compiled in the days BEFORE computers, too, by a woman who travelled all over the world to fact check.

It's because I have an unusual surname and we are all related.

Some of my far flung cousins have done amazing things.

It's wierd but I found a photo of a guy who was a third cousin twice removed and he resembled my own dad.

Another guy who owns a large US website looks just like my oldest brother.

Another interesting fact - I cannot find our name in ANY criminal proceedings, in any court, ever, apart from being a witness or a victim.

Seems our entire family tree is as honest as the day is long.

[ohio_peasant]

Originally Posted by Wmsn4Life

Preserving the bloodline and land-ownership was for the wealthy.

As for the rest of the plebes, starvation can be stressful.

I did not picture you as Asian, OP.

Not Asian; a few time-zones westward, and many hundreds of miles northward. Double-headed eagle, then hammer and sickle (my formative years), now (ironically) back to a combination of red-white-blue. But the latter happened long after I adopted another red-white-blue.