Extended family relationships

[rlw254]

I'm curious to hear the extent of relationships people have with their extended family before starting genealogical research. Personally I've only met a 2nd cousin once and 1C1R only very occasionally at large family events such as weddings or funerals. On the other hand a good friend of mine has a strong relationship with their third cousins because her family all stayed in the same area.

Whose family maintains relationships with distant cousins not related to family research?

[philipsearching]

My great-aunt's Christmas card list was passed down through her descendants who dutifully kept it going.  As a result, my mum still exchanges cards with distant relatives she has never met.

[Top-of-the-hill]

   I knew all my cousins despite them being scattered around the country, because they came back to visit us in the family home. There was also a family of second cousins in the village, but there seems to be a gulf between second and third cousins. There were undoubtedly 3rd and 4th cousins around, but even my grandfather did not seem to be aware of them. In fact I have discovered that I was at the local primary school with a 4th cousin and at secondary school several miles away with a 3rd cousin. In both cases, once removed as I am descended from a line of later children.

[Jomot]

Our family has always remained in close contact - in fact my 1st cousin twice removed has just invited me to a party next month 

Some relationships I cant even explain.. my mother's cousin's son considers my father's niece's daughter to be a relative!

[iolaus]

Mine - barely, more so due to face book now, part of it is just the geographically spread (miltary families

Husband, he sees more of his extended family than of his immediate family, because we live in the same town.  So my kids have gone to the same school as their cousins - but it's a very distant cousin (their grandfather is my kids greatgrandmothers first cousin, but they all just count each other as cousins.
Only one of their first cousins lives in the same town (actually in the same country)

[LizzieW]

My great-aunt's Christmas card list was passed down through her descendants who dutifully kept it going.  As a result, my mum still exchanges cards with distant relatives she has never met.

I have my mother's Christmas card list of names and addresses, one of the people on it was her father's 1st cousin once removed.  As her father died in 1922 when my mum was 11, I assume that her mother kept in touch with this lady who was nearer to my mum in age than my grandfather was.  I may have met this lady I can't remember but I used to hear my mum and gran talking about her.  I wrote to her when my mum died to let her know and also ask if she had any photographs she could let me have to copy and then return to her.  Unfortunately, she'd moved to live with her niece and hadn't kept many but she did send me a photograph of her own father, brother to my g.grandfather so I've some idea what my g.grandfather might have looked like.  She was going to see what else she could find but sadly died only a few months after my mother which I only found out some months later.  I did think of writing to the niece but never got round to it. 

There was also someone else in my mother's address book, who I wrote to.  He turned out to be the husband of a lady who was taken in by my gran when she was a teenager and had nowhere else to go.  As my gran already had 10 children, I guess another one didn't make much difference.  I definitely met that couple but had no idea what the connection was until the man told me.  Being much older than me, he too has died now.  He had moved to a home and I was in touch for some time, then nothing.  I assumed he'd died but when I wrote to the home they wouldn't tell me anything.  However, I found his will so that proved his death for me.

[eadaoin]

I'm curious to hear the extent of relationships people have with their extended family before starting genealogical research. . . .

Whose family maintains relationships with distant cousins not related to family research?

It partly depends on two things, I think
 - whether the 2nd cousins etc live nearby, and are of a suitable age
 - which first cousins your parents/aunts/uncles were closest to

most of my parents extended families lived in Dublin
my father had many first cousins, but his mother was closest to his her sister and her family, so we went on zoo visits, beach holidays etc with those 2nd cousins - we still meet one of them every st Patrick's day and we're in touch with some of the others - one of them taught my son in school.
My brother was in touch with another branch . . .
(but others we never heard about, perhaps because the children were much older than we were)

I was at school with 3 of my second cousins on my mother's side - still intermittently meet up with one for reunions. My 5th birthday photo shows me with 2 of them, whose parents my mother used to visit and phone.

[BattyB]

I get confused.  When I was young I knew all my cousins as we were all born around the same time and only meet 2nd cousins at funerals these days.

I have two great nieces and three grandsons so what relation are they to each other ? Ought to know but seem to have senior moments when trying to explain to them!

[Andrew Tarr]

I have two great nieces and three grandsons so what relation are they to each other ? Ought to know but seem to have senior moments when trying to explain to them!

Not another one ...    It's quite simple: count back to a common ancestor - first cousins have a common grandparent, second cousins a common gt-grandparent.  If they are of different generations, they will be 'removed'- once if they are one generation 'out of step', and so on.