First Cousins marrying

In the previous newsletter it was asked if we had any first cousins marrying in our trees. I was pretty sure my husband did so just checked and found two occasions where first cousins married. Ellen McKeage married David Stevens in 1885 - they had five children, two of whom did not marry and one died in infancy. One died in 1942 in Hong Kong and I have no further information on him. The two married. One had four children and there are children and grandchildren from those - I expect that a lot of little Stevens' running around are distantly related. LOL

The other cousins were Robert Stevens and Susannah McKeage, married in 1873; they had seven children and I have no further information on any of them.

Most of these families - McKeage, Stevens, Suitors, etc., emigrated from Ireland in the early-to-mid 1800's and settled in the same parts of Quebec; I find their names many times in my husband's tree. Now a lot of the McKeage's, (although one branch slightly changed the spelling of the surname) Stevens' and Suitors are here in southern Alberta

 

There are a bunch of cousins marrying in my family tree, one set within my own direct ancestral line.
A lot of it is within my Dutch Jewish line (which I still can't quite figure out if they Ashkenazi or not) - two of my 5th great grandmothers were sisters and their children got married - so my 4th great grandparents had 6 children, the youngest of which died at the age of 42. (My great-great grandmother from that line had 13 children, losing only 3 in infancy. Most of them also made it to a ripe old age, except when they lost 3 family members in a week to the Spanish Flu - by that time family name had been anglicised - Collins from Van Kollem - and she was born in London and I was still sitting around thinking my ancestry was purely from the British Isles)
- Most notably, the most DNA matches I get on Ancestry is from this particular set of 4th, 5th and 6th great grandparents (sometimes I get two hints because some people don't have their trees sorted properly, and I get matched to both of my 4th great grandparents with the other people seemingly unaware that they're descended from the same pair of 6th great grandparents.)

There are two sets of first cousins who married in my Cambridgeshire ancestors (they also had a habit of marrying within the same families as well). The first set of first cousins had 7 children and lost 3 in childhood and infancy, and the other set had two children with about 6 or so grandchildren.

I have no knowledge about any inherited conditions from that side of the family.

 

I was fairly sure that there was a marriage in my other half's line between first cousins. I recently found the baptism record of the wife which confirmed this from a transcript but when I saw the original there was a note in the margin added by the priest, "She has been sleeping with soldiers while her husband was travelling, he is not the father." I am now not sure what to believe as I had assumed all the end of line people in the family were caused by this marriage, the Swiss line died out this century, the US and Nederland lines will die out within 50 years or less leaving about 20 people in Germany with the family name.

 

OH my goodness !!

 

Similar story. My husband's g.g.grandmother was married to a soldier who spent many years in Nova Scotia. She was resident of a workhouse and had three children while there. The Vicar noted on the Baptism Register that "the whereabouts of the father is unknown". The two girls were known under their mother's married name while the boy (my husband's g.grandfather) was known under his biological father's name. Untangling this family has been a long and interesting journey and the details of his arrival and history in Australia I will save for another day. Oh, and he eventually married his first cousin, too.