Why you shouldn't do genealogy !

Comment

Comment by Richie C. on October 15, 2009 at 9:34am

Ken,
We know the saying "Warts and all." I guess I find the warts kind of fascinating, as long as they're far enough in the past. There was a time when cousinly marriages were arranged to keep all the money and property in a family. That's another reason besides living in a small/remote community and having to fish from a very small pool.

Comment by Christine Kay Olsen-Needham on October 15, 2009 at 7:20am

I have found this to be true, as well. But I think it is more widespread than just you and your family. I believe it is the same in every family. When I first started doing my family tree, I discovered that I was probably related to almost every boy I dated in my small hometown in Kansas! And then I kept seeing the same family names in both mom and dad's trees. As people came to America, they traveled with others from their homeland. When they arrived on our shores, they lived in the same communities and intermarried. Then, as the people moved west, they traveled the same paths, and stopped in the same places, and so I think it is inevitable that our family trees are a bit tangled. I have Amish and Mennonite and Quaker ancestors, and the Amish still marry family members. They just marry someone from another community, preferably in another state, but still all related. And now some Amish have genetic diseases caused by in breeding, but most people's family lines are not THAT closely related!

Comment by William S Dean on October 11, 2009 at 11:04pm

In-depth studies of genealogy in United States history are replete with cousinly marriages and offspring. In the early days of the Virginia colony, for example, the majority of families were all inter-related and inter-married producing children, many of whom married and produced children etc. ad infinitum.

Except in the most rare cases where a double dose of a particularly injurious gene transferral occured (a weakness relating to disease for example), most of the offspring of married cousins showed no difference from non-cousin marriages. The myths about consanguinity are mostly just that, myths. Some prohibitions and fears were generated either by church or society for reasons having little if anything to do with genetic science or the passing on of DNA.

Within small towns and settlements, such as the among the Quakers, cousinly marriages were quite prominent, without evidence that children were born with webbed hands or any of the other sillinesses propagated. Among my ancestral Californio families, cousinly marriage -- while requiring special dispensation from the Mission padres -- happened often, back and forth through the centuries. Again, no evidence of "transformed" humans among them, just healthy, often long-lived normal people.

Comment by Janet Digryte Appling on October 11, 2009 at 9:11pm

All my relatives are in Lithuania and when you have cousins denying that they even know each other even when they grew up down the road from each other, tracing lineage gets just as confusing. I have one cousin saying that they are in no way related and the other saying " I watched her grow up and her dad was a cousin of mine, and he lived in the same town with me until just before he died." But here we have a lanuage problem, beside the distance problem. I'm sure that many of my relatives intermarried in Lithuania also.
I really haven't worried too much, I've lived a normal life, raised a normal family and have seen normal grandchildren. So Ken, I don't think you have to worry.

Comment by Heather Wilkinson Rojo on October 11, 2009 at 7:36pm

If that's all you've found you're doing well. I've found more than a dozen cousin or second cousin marriages. My family is all colonial New England ancesty, and I just found out I'm descended of one guy in Ipswich, Massachusetts 8 different ways. That is scary! Of course, he lived about 400 years ago, so there are lots of generations and thousands of different people in the family tree by now.

And my parents share several Mayflower ancestors, making them cousins, too (but 12 or 13 generations removed). I said the same thing to my husband: "Am I an idiot?" "Do I have a tail?" but, no, plenty of us have gone on to Harvard and other schools in Boston, so I guess we are OK.

The more you go back, the more connections you will find until, I suppose we are all related to each other.

Comment by Katie Heitert Wilkinson on October 11, 2009 at 7:17pm

Ken, this is hilarious. You've got a great sense of humor. And I totally get your comments about your computer. lol

Comment by Katie Heitert Wilkinson on October 11, 2009 at 7:15pm

This is hilarious, Ken ...... I totally understand your comments about the computer.