Drew Genealogy
Can My Father Also Be My Cousin?
This is weird. I just drew up a genealogy chart and going from two different directions, it looks like my father is also my cousin. How can that be? Can it?
This is not a joke question.
Yeah, this was a sort-of joke question. My paternal great-grandmother was her husband’s first cousin once removed. So I traced backwards and the lines suggest my father is also a cousin. He’s generation 5 from his grandmother and generation 4 from his grandfather. I am generation 5 from one paternal ancestor and generation six from the other. But I guess he’d only be a real cousin if the common ancestors were from my mom’s family and my dad’s family. But I think this “first cousin once removed” business explains why the ears are so large and stick out so much in my branch of the family! Good thing I missed out on the ears. Genealogy is so much fun!
Sure. We hope not a first cousin, but second or third, and removed once or twice is fine.
To take the simplest case of “My {relative} is also my {nth} cousin {x} times removed”, a man marries his first cousin. Their children will be brothers and sisters, BUT they will also be second cousins, since children of first cousins are second cousins.
Before 1860, in the counties where my Pack ancestors came from – Monroe, Va (Now WV), if you wanted to marry a woman of your own race and religion, it was a cousin or nothing.
Small religions – the Amish and Mennonites in particular – still marry their cousins, out of necessity.
There is a line in “Gone With the Wind” where someone says some family or other always marries their cousins. It was accepted in the 1800′s; and not just in the south or hillbilly counties. Many of my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors married their cousins, 30 miles outside of Philadelphia.
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