Are we all connected or is it just me ?????

[hannahlee]

I read the following post and thought I would see if others had the same thoughts as me or am I just barking up the wrong tree?.
Hi thank for your post
Re: BURT family from Wemyss
« Reply #10 on: Wednesday 30 April 08 04:55 BST (UK) »
Quote
I found it most helpful and also sort of answered a few thoughts I had myself having visited some of there's places recently for the second time (sadly I first time was for the sudden death/funeral of my partners mother) I went to some of the places where my ancestors where born and lived which was mostly or largely on the coast line to mention a few leven, east and west wemyness , dysart, aberdour,  dalgety bay, inverkeithing, dumfermline, culross, ect
These places to me even now aren't large places and if you go back say to 1700 there inhabitants would be much less in some place maybe lease than a thousand people also back then family's where larger to into double figures therefore it is my belief that these small villages towns consisted of not that many surnames possibly as small as ten or even smaller to thirty possibly and of course more in bigger towns (sorry there is a piont to my posting) combined with the face that these places where closes together and that travel was mainly walking horse or horse and cart most marriages would be of localish people cousins marring cousins brothers from one family marrying sisters of a another family so in family searches Similar names cropping up all the time as in surnames.

So my question is as every one is wise knowledgable on roots n ( I know that if you go right back I mean right right back we are all connected ) but if populations where much smaller and family's interconnected that maybe a surname say moodie is more connected with other moodies and may be missing links sorry badly dislexic I hope that you can follow what Iam getting at so my other piont is if this is the case then maybe a pool (of all say as I used moodie as the example all the moodies where put in one pot together with date place of birth parents as long as it was corrected as it can be surely then slowly all the missing links would fall into place?
Sorry for the woffle but thought I would post to see if anyone else shares my thoughts on this and if this is the case is there anything out on the World Wide Web that does this already I understand that it couldn't contain info of living people for dater protection reasons but most people Iam talking about have been long long dead !
Any thoughts on this would be most appesiated I posted in the fife posting as my ansestors on my scotish side come from small villages towns in the fife area as well as other areas in Scotland and the uk
Hannah

[Ruskie]

I tink that with fewer people in tightly knit communities then it would have been inevitable that marriages occurred between cousins. It is possible in some places to put people of the same surname into family groups, and work out who is related to who, and even who was the first person with that surname recorded in a particular area. To some extent surnames can be grouped regionally even in the bigger cities. And we have to keep in mind variations of surnames and their spellings.

I think due to many reasons (social, political etc) that some parts of Scotland are less populated today than they once were. You only have to look at some of the old maps on the NLS site overlaid with a modern maps to see that many small places such as farmsteads and villages which used to exist, and probably thrived in the past, there is no trace of now. I have nothing concrete to back this up, but it's just an observation.

[Ruskie]

I was looking for something which I can't seem to find, but it was similar to this:
http://ideas.4brad.com/everybody-your-16th-cousin


Added:
This is what I was looking for:
http://www.genetic-genealogy.co.uk/supp/ancestor_paradox.html

[DavidG02]

This was one of the first things I looked for when starting my tree and my ex-wifes tree. Just when would our trees coincide!

So far no direct line has met but with a lot of concentration of Wiltshire on both sides around the 1800s I can see it happening.

The only close one looks to be a cousin of my wifes direct ancestor marrying into my side but I haven't confirmed if my side is actually mine

[youngtug]

I think due to many reasons (social, political etc) that some parts of Scotland are less populated today than they once were. You only have to look at some of the old maps on the NLS site overlaid with a modern maps to see that many small places such as farmsteads and villages which used to exist, and probably thrived in the past, there is no trace of now. I have nothing concrete to back this up, but it's just an observation.

 

"In but too many instances the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice which will be one day found to be shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish". - Sir Walter Scott