How collapsed are your pedigrees?

[777777]

My 32 great-great-great-grandparents were all different people, but I only have (at most) 62 individual great-great-great-great-grandparents due to my mother's paternal grandparents being second cousins. Pedigree is further collapsed back another generation to a maximum of 122 individual great-great-great-great-great-grandparents thanks to my paternal grandmother's maternal grandmother being the product of a first-cousin marriage. I then have a set of great-great-great-great-grandparents on my maternal grandmother's side who were half-first-cousins, causing a duplicated 6x great-grandfather. And that's just in the lines I've managed to research that far back! Once my family hits nobility it seems everyone's marrying their cousin, and that's only through one of my 8,192 11x great-grandparents (I have no idea who the other 8,191 are). Aside from that, four of my dad's sixteen great-great-grandparents have the surname Murphy. I haven't proven a relationship between any of them, but I'm sure there is plenty more pedigree collapse back there.

I'd love to hear about other people's pedigree collapses. It's something I find really interesting. I wish those involved in racially motivated crimes could understand that we're all descended from the same bunch of people when you go back far enough, that by the "one-drop rule" of the Jim Crowe laws none of the segregationists of the Deep South were totally 'white'. I also find myself needing to reassure my relatives that we're all a little bit inbred when they find out about these cousin marriages, some of them freak out a little bit...

[iolaus]

So far they haven't (which kind of surprised me as my grandmother had the same surname as my grandfather - and when I go back along those lines they are diverging geographically) - I have got one set of siblings marrying siblings but they aren't direct line - there are three siblings and I'm from the one who didn't marry that family)

[jbml]

So far I have found evidence of none ... although there is a hint that I may find a couple of lines reconverging in Huntingdonshire, and another couple in the Cambridgeshire fens.

[777777]

  I'm suddenly feeling extremely inbred! lol

[andrewalston]

One pair of great grandparents turn out to have been 5th cousins, a fact I am certain they were unaware of - their common ancestors lived in the mid 18th century.
I have noticed the same names marrying into both their lineages in the country district they came from. Virtually everyone in the area is related to everyone else. I've ended up with a database containing more than half the population - and some of them are connected by marriage to other parts of my tree. There's at least one case of a man marrying his dead wife's sister in there too, which I think was not allowed at the time.

[777777]

One pair of great grandparents turn out to have been 5th cousins, a fact I am certain they were unaware of - their common ancestors lived in the mid 18th century.
I have noticed the same names marrying into both their lineages in the country district they came from. Virtually everyone in the area is related to everyone else. I've ended up with a database containing more than half the population - and some of them are connected by marriage to other parts of my tree. There's at least one case of a man marrying his dead wife's sister in there too, which I think was not allowed at the time.

My mother's home village is like that. Every family but two on the census is definitely related to us! Forgot to mention as well my paternal grandparents are tenth-cousins once removed but of course had no idea.

[BW252]

I have 2 x maternal great grandparents who were cousins.

[jbml]

Forgot to mention as well my paternal grandparents are tenth-cousins once removed but of course had no idea.

That is to say, two of your ancestors two generations ago, who married one another, have common ancestors thirteen generations ago (over 400 years ago). Well .... big deal. That's not inbreeding. That's statistical inevitability. LOL

[777777]

Forgot to mention as well my paternal grandparents are tenth-cousins once removed but of course had no idea.

That is to say, two of your ancestors two generations ago, who married one another, have common ancestors thirteen generations ago (over 400 years ago). Well .... big deal. That's not inbreeding. That's statistical inevitability. LOL

Indeed. Of course they're probably closer related in some way I haven't found.

While pedigree collapse is of course statistically inevitable, I still find it fascinating to see where and how these collapses occur. Out of curiosity I would love to see the complete picture (i.e. complete pedigree chart going back 500 or so years) but of course that would required a time machine.