Wow, hard to believe that it’s the penultimate week of Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge!
This week we’ve been challenged with the theme “Cousin”. As stated by Amy, “The neat thing about this theme is that we genealogists know that everyone is our cousin! That definitely opens up the possibilities for who to write about!” Thus, no cousin is too distant!
So what do a sixth cousin, ninth cousin, tenth cousin, and fourteenth cousin in my family tree all have in common? They’re all me!
Being one’s own cousin is not unique to me. Most genealogists have seen the posts, memes, and graphics showing how many ancestors we have:
While technically correct – you need all these ancestors to have been born – it gives the impression that these are all separate unique individuals. However, the truth is that somewhere along the line two great x n ancestors are the same person. Otherwise, the math simply does not work out. It would mean that you have 67,108,864 individual great x 25 grandparents, which would have exceeded the population of the Earth at the time they lived. Robin Fox, an anthropology professor at Rutgers estimated that 80% of marriages in history were between second or closer cousins. The resulting phenomenon is referred to as “pedigree collapse“, although I was amused by the term “genealogical shrinkage“.
It’s well-known that the aristocracy and nobility have had marriages between close relations for diplomatic, political, and financial reasons. However, this practice also occurred at the lower end of the social ladder (here’s an extreme example from Yvette Hoitink, a Dutch genealogist). It’s inevitable to find first, second, and third cousins who are married living in small and isolated communities, and not just in colonial times. Moreover, once you get to a more distant relationship – who really knows (other than genealogists) who their fifth cousins might be – couples might not have even been aware that they were cousins.
A considerable example might be Iceland, a country of fewer than 400,000 people, with a relatively stable population of few immigrants over 1,000 years. Icelanders concerned about their consanguinity can consult an app that helps identify how closely they might be related to a potential partner.
My closest relationship to myself is through my father’s paternal grandparents, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit and Theresia “Teetje” Pater, who were third cousins. They were born in raised in nearby villages in the Netherlands that are less than two kilometers apart. They married on July 20, 1917.
Johannis and Teetje are both descendants of Cornelis Klaasz de Groot and Geertje Jans de Wit, their great great grandparents and my G x 5 grandparents. Teetje is descended from their eldest son, Jan, while Johannis is descended from their youngest daughter, Elisabeth. Johannis and Teetje would have had to have known the surnames of their great grandparents to even have a clue that they might have been related. I doubt they did.
My grandfather is his own fourth cousin, and fourth cousin with his siblings. My father is his own fifth cousin, and fifth cousin with his siblings. I am my own sixth cousin, and sixth cousin with my siblings.
I can hold a family reunion anytime I want, even if I’m the only one there!
A Deck of Ancestors 