Genealogical Curiosities

[3sillydogs]

Wow Philip that must be some gymnastics to show that on your tree

I had first cousins marrying which at first I thought I had duplicated an entry but on checking it dawned on me that they were 1st cousins.

I have my dad's brother marrying my mum's sister, also turned into quite a challenge to sort out the connections without duplicating parents!!!

[clairec666]

Glancing at this list has revealed a bizarre genealogical curiosity, that I have absolutely no 2nd cousins that share my surname. I have 1st cousins that do and 3rd cousins that do, but no 2nd!

I'm in exactly the same position - my paternal grandfather had no siblings, so there are no second cousins that share my surname. It probably isn't as rare as you think - all it takes is for your paternal grandfather to have no brothers who had children.

[coombs]

I have 3 brothers who married 3 sisters. John, Richard and William Titshall married Louisa, Jane and Deborah Frost.

Allen Taylor wed Ann Stock in 1811. They were first cousins so I have actually duplicated their shared 2 grandparents in my PAF.

[Guyana]

At one time, I had at least 38 first cousins, none of whom shared my surname. The number is decreasing with time. My two sons also have none, but the picture changes with my three grandsons. here are no girls in the three generations of my line, but my only brother has one daughter and two grand-daughters

[bugbear]

The youngest grandchild is younger than 6 of the great grand children.

I suppose this is just a consequence of the niece/nephew older than the aunt/uncle syndrome.

All it take for this to happen is for generation 1 to still be having kids when their generation 2 produces their first child. It doesn't take extreme numbers for this to happen, e.g. first child at 20, still having children at 40, first child also produces children at 20.

 BugBear

[genealogist1000]

I have many cases of inter-marrying between families, sisters to the same man, close cousins, widows etc... but the one that most struck me was one of my 5x g-uncles marrying his niece! They seem to have eloped to the next county to get married (in secret?) but their own sisters were witnesses to the marriage. Then, instead of scarpering off, they went back to live in their home village after the birth of their first illegitimate child and had many other children together. I wonder what the rest of the village thought- and indeed what their parents thought! I can't imagine the two families were very happy with the situation! I wonder how the mother felt about her daughter running off with her own ageing brother!

[coombs]

What is confusing is when 3 brothers, even with a surname like Arbuthnot or Bracegirdle had daughters with the same first names. 3 married brothers each had a daughter called Lutrecia Arbuthnot and you cannot distinguish which one belongs to which brother.

[bugbear]

... 5x g-uncles marrying his niece! ...  but their own sisters were witnesses to the marriage.

You mean sisters of both the uncle AND the niece (so sisters from both generations) ?

 BugBear

[jbml]

My wife's second cousin 3 times removed was my great x3 aunt's servant (or, more probably, a chambermaid in the hotel which my great x3 aunt and her husband ran ... although the distinction between domestic servant and hotel servant was probably not drawn nearly so assiduously as it would be nowadays).

I'm not sure whether this is an indication that her family has been socially climbing or that mine has been in social decline ... but I'm sure that nobody would have dreamed of marrying the servants back then!