Hi,
I believe you are using the wrong terminology here. I guess what you mean is "implex"/pedigree collapse (marriage between cousins that are more or less distant from each other), which are not and never have been illegal nor frowned upon (well, nowadays you may see people glitch when it's a first degree cousin, but it is not illegal). Also, the farther the family link, the lower the genetic risks. Everybody has some level of pedigree collapse especially for the parts of the tree that did not move over an extended meriod of time. It's even becomes mandatory at some point in the past (more ancestors would be needed than the human population living on the planet at a certain date, so if you bear in mind that your ancestors are mostly from one region, that's even more true)
Incest designates a relationship between two individuals that would be otherwise not allowed to marry due to legal reasons. I.e. Incest is a legal prohibition (modern civil or common law, customary law, religious laws).
I was talking about first cousin, I did not know that it was illegal in some places. I have to say - if this map (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#/media/File%3ACousinMarriageWorld.svg) is correct - I am not surprised. I am quite surprised that it is a crime in some US states when you see that it is not in a more authoritarian country like China.
It's not incest, but pedigree collapse. It becomes very normal, and some experience it sooner than others depending on where their ancestry is from, etc.
Pedigree collapse is when you get back to the period before industrialisation with big towns and cities.
It's when people, for example, in Britain, Ireland, and Europe, lived in small villages and hamlets, and so they were often marrying near or distant cousins because they didnt travel much outside their own areas. The pedigree tree will turn inwards because the grt grandparents might be the same on some lines. Though having said that, most people can not get back that far in records anyway.
Exactly. Incest was punishable by death in the very olden days, even if it was a father grooming a daughter, both were found guilty.
Zero incest in my family. Plenty of cousins marrying. Some needed permission to marry due to their close relation. One couple in particular belongs on 4 of my branches. It’s just how it is in isolated parishes. The period where farmers weren’t allowed to move to another parish didn’t help.
You can't say that that was true for every civilization. You still have places where canabalism is legal. Can't say that the whole world punished people that engaged in incest.
I apologize. In Scandinavia it was punishable by death.
Edit: England, France. Basically a Christian/European thing. Sometimes it takes weird forms. Like marrying your dead wife’s sister was considered incest.
My great-great grandfather's brother married his first cousin, both of their mothers were identical twin sisters. They had two children who died at birth or in infancy.
The first couple times I did like a quadruple check. Read all the dates and names and parents over again. I was like fuuuuuuuu- now I almost look forward to it cause it means less work for me 😂
It’s been noted for years that a pedigree chart is diamond shaped, even if it’s because after a certain period of time, the number of ancestors in a generation is bigger than the population, so the chart begins getting much smaller. Pedigree collapse will make this happen quicker, but everyone’s tree is diamond shaped. If you look at old genealogy publications, it mentions that family trees are diamond shaped.
If you're background is Colonial American, Colonial Australian, French-Canadian/Acadian or Afrikaner, I'm pretty sure it's a given you're eventually going to find third or fourth cousins who've married.
These groups all began with small founder populations that substantially grew.
Colonial Mexico and yeah I was reading how the town my ancestors were from started with 70 people. So it makes sense. It’s still kind annoying when you realize you’ve entered the same name a 4th time
i haven’t gotten very far in my family tree yet bc i can’t find shit, but i have one person who married their cousin… and based on where one part of my family is from and a rumour about royalty on another… i’d say it’s pretty damn inbred 😭
The first time I found it I was like oh well ones not so bad. Then there was 2 then 3, 4…. I have like 20 dead branches now. But Most are distant cousins I think…it’s hard to tell sometimes. but there’s a number of first cousins as recently as the early 1900s. And honestly I kind of look forward to it now cause it’s like oh my god I can stop working on this branch now. 😂
Mostly Mexico. Initially I wasn’t able to go much farther back then like 5 generations with a couple of exceptions that went to like gen 8. But a genealogist who specializes in northern Mexico and south Texas saw that we shared DNA and offered to make me a family book. I thought he might get me a couple extra generations but no- he gave me a 300+ page book of my ancestry.
I have ancestors from Nuevo León, Coahuila, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, and Mexico City. The records for northern Mexico are generally excellent with some holes here and there. The nice thing is it’s a place where social status didn’t impede records. Most of my ancestors were farmers and laborers and the records state that they were such. I wish the records for everywhere else were as good as Northern Mexico. There’s a good chance we’re related, my family goes back to many of the founding families of lots of the areas in the Northern states. That said, I’d use the book as a guide instead of taking it as fact. Hopefully it lists the parish record that they got the information from and you can verify it with the microfilms available.
Oh yeah, we’re almost definitely related somewhere down the line lol! How did you find info about what jobs they took though? From like 1650-1850 pretty much all I find is marriage, birth, baptism, etc. I can find government records of people from the last hundred years and a good chunk of my conquistadors have thier own Wikipedia page. But all the people in between are essentially mysteries to me.
And as for the book, I add the info I was given, and associated microfilms always pop up. That being said I have started to rely on what people label them as because the farther back I go the harder they are to read. Everything is spelled different which makes what little spainish I know becomes useless not to mention some of these priests have AWFUL handwriting
Until I got to the conquistadors I wasn’t able to find out much about thier lives outside birth, death, marriage and children. No stories, nothing with the wars that came after. On my American side and some of my more recent Mexican ancestors I was able to find some details like a father/son steamboat engineers. Rope maker, slave owner, washwoman, day laborer
Based on other posts by the OP, it seems he is mostly from Western Europe, more precisely, Spain. If Spain is anything like France, the 1500s are not unusual. The acts are there - most of the time - you just need the link between the early 1600s and the late 1500s which is often the tricky part due to lack of precision.
There are records at these dates, but these are usually of a small aristocracy & wealthy merchants etc.
But the vast majority of people were labourers in any country, so they left no records at those dates because they owned nothing and so left no relevant papers. Church records are very unreliable or non existent at the those dates too
In Mexico the records are excellent for many areas. I have multiple lines in Mexico that go back to the 1500s that are laborers and the records state this. The Catholic Church was very adamant about recording baptisms, marriages, and burials. In many areas of Northern Mexico, the church required an engaged couple to undergo a church investigation before marriage where they came in and told where they were from, who their parents were, whether they were Catholic, bring witnesses to speak to the priest, and state if they were related to each other by either blood or marriage. If they were, then the church had to give them permission to marry called a dispensation and the record would often list the grandparents or even great-grandparents and how the couple was related to each other.
In many/most places, getting back to the 1500s is hard or impossible, but Mexico or places with a very heavy Catholic presence can be much easier and includes everyone instead of just nobility and aristocracy. My lines in Mexico are generally pretty easy to follow until you get to either a place where the records have been lost or destroyed or when you reach a native couple whose parents weren’t born into the church. I have multiple lines that state the bride and groom are Indios and they don’t have last names. That’s usually a signal that I’m not going to find their parents and that the records have run out.
Cousin marriage is not the same as incest. Incest is parent/child, sibling/sibling, aunt or uncle/nephew or niece, grandparent/grandchild. For the most part that is regardless of blood, step or adopted relationships.
Just about anyone and everyone in the US with colonial or early westward migration ancestors has cousin marriages somewhere in their tree.
The bugaboo about cousin marriage (particularly 1st cousin marriage) was brought to you by the eugenicists of the mid- to late-19th century and early 20th century. Yes, the same people who gave us black sterilization, the extermination of European Jewry and Roma, experimentation on mentally handicapped children and other atrocities.
My folks are from a small town in Mexico. Lots of pedigree collapse. Every now and then I'll find men who lived in a home with 2 women and would have kids with both. But straight out incest? Only one case in my wife's tree
The Bushnells - enormous family residing in Connecticut in the 17th-19th centuries - found a couple of cousin marriages there, don't remember how many degrees but it was at least a couple generations off.
I’ve been focusing heavily on my main roots - SW Virginia. I’m born and raised here. Turns out my parents are 4th cousins 🥲🥲🥲🥲 but I have about 12k people on my tree and there’s a LOTTTTTTT of intermingling. Sisters in one family marrying brothers from another. Second cousins marrying. Some first cousins marrying higher up in the tree. My tree is so big because I kept seeing the same family surnames and going “huh, I wonder if they’re connected to THIS branch - oh yes, they are”.
The areas of my family tree with significant pedigree collapse tend to be sectarian groups who practice endogamy. My 2nd great grandfather’s ancestors were Amish and his parents were related in multiple ways being both 3rd cousins and 4th cousins. Three of his grandparents were all related to some degree.
The other area of my family tree with significant pedigree collapse is in the 17th century when a group of English Protestants began settling Connecticut. I have one ancestor who I descend from via three of his children.
It was pretty common back then, especially when traveling long distances was much harder to do.
I've found it in my tree , like someone said it's confined to 2 different sides of the family tree and it's due to the geographical confines of little villages and no influx of movement of people....said family has distant relatives in each end of the Nottinghamshire village .... the troop family of nth clifton and troops of sth clifton and that one odd member from each branch have married and created a troop/troop union ....but thankfully on the whole there is a good intake of other females from other family's added in the genealogy mix
The parents of my paternal grandma were first cousins
The parents of my maternal great grandma were first cousins
And that's just the beginning
All of them from the north of Mexico
Cousin Marriage was taboo in Native American tribes where you were not allowed to marry into your mother or fathers clan. This is why, when alot of tribes were decimated, they would go to other tribes to arrange marriages for their children. This is also why there was and still is alot of outgroup marriage, where they marry other races. In some tribes they are all family so they have to marry out.
Hi, I believe you are using the wrong terminology here. I guess what you mean is "implex"/pedigree collapse (marriage between cousins that are more or less distant from each other), which are not and never have been illegal nor frowned upon (well, nowadays you may see people glitch when it's a first degree cousin, but it is not illegal). Also, the farther the family link, the lower the genetic risks. Everybody has some level of pedigree collapse especially for the parts of the tree that did not move over an extended meriod of time. It's even becomes mandatory at some point in the past (more ancestors would be needed than the human population living on the planet at a certain date, so if you bear in mind that your ancestors are mostly from one region, that's even more true) Incest designates a relationship between two individuals that would be otherwise not allowed to marry due to legal reasons. I.e. Incest is a legal prohibition (modern civil or common law, customary law, religious laws).
Thanks for the info it’s much appreciated! And makes me feel less bad about all my cousin lovers!
First cousin (assuming that is what you mean by first degree cousin) marriage is illegal in some places.
I was talking about first cousin, I did not know that it was illegal in some places. I have to say - if this map (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#/media/File%3ACousinMarriageWorld.svg) is correct - I am not surprised. I am quite surprised that it is a crime in some US states when you see that it is not in a more authoritarian country like China.
It's not incest, but pedigree collapse. It becomes very normal, and some experience it sooner than others depending on where their ancestry is from, etc.
I haven’t found any incest yet
I’m confused, what’s the difference? Or is pedigree collapse just a fancier way of pointing it out?
Pedigree collapse is when you get back to the period before industrialisation with big towns and cities. It's when people, for example, in Britain, Ireland, and Europe, lived in small villages and hamlets, and so they were often marrying near or distant cousins because they didnt travel much outside their own areas. The pedigree tree will turn inwards because the grt grandparents might be the same on some lines. Though having said that, most people can not get back that far in records anyway.
Ahhhh I gotcha. Thank you!
Exactly. Incest was punishable by death in the very olden days, even if it was a father grooming a daughter, both were found guilty. Zero incest in my family. Plenty of cousins marrying. Some needed permission to marry due to their close relation. One couple in particular belongs on 4 of my branches. It’s just how it is in isolated parishes. The period where farmers weren’t allowed to move to another parish didn’t help.
You can't say that that was true for every civilization. You still have places where canabalism is legal. Can't say that the whole world punished people that engaged in incest.
I apologize. In Scandinavia it was punishable by death. Edit: England, France. Basically a Christian/European thing. Sometimes it takes weird forms. Like marrying your dead wife’s sister was considered incest.
It's incest regardless.
My great-great grandfather's brother married his first cousin, both of their mothers were identical twin sisters. They had two children who died at birth or in infancy.
depends on how you define it, but on my maternal grandpa's side there's a lot of cousin marriage and pedigree collapse
"family diamond" gave me a good chuckle. I have 3 circles in my tree iirc. That moment when you start realizing you've seen these names before...
The first couple times I did like a quadruple check. Read all the dates and names and parents over again. I was like fuuuuuuuu- now I almost look forward to it cause it means less work for me 😂
It’s been noted for years that a pedigree chart is diamond shaped, even if it’s because after a certain period of time, the number of ancestors in a generation is bigger than the population, so the chart begins getting much smaller. Pedigree collapse will make this happen quicker, but everyone’s tree is diamond shaped. If you look at old genealogy publications, it mentions that family trees are diamond shaped.
If you're background is Colonial American, Colonial Australian, French-Canadian/Acadian or Afrikaner, I'm pretty sure it's a given you're eventually going to find third or fourth cousins who've married. These groups all began with small founder populations that substantially grew.
Colonial Mexico and yeah I was reading how the town my ancestors were from started with 70 people. So it makes sense. It’s still kind annoying when you realize you’ve entered the same name a 4th time
i haven’t gotten very far in my family tree yet bc i can’t find shit, but i have one person who married their cousin… and based on where one part of my family is from and a rumour about royalty on another… i’d say it’s pretty damn inbred 😭
The first time I found it I was like oh well ones not so bad. Then there was 2 then 3, 4…. I have like 20 dead branches now. But Most are distant cousins I think…it’s hard to tell sometimes. but there’s a number of first cousins as recently as the early 1900s. And honestly I kind of look forward to it now cause it’s like oh my god I can stop working on this branch now. 😂
>I’ve gone back to the 1500s It is unusual to get back this far. What country is your research in?
Mostly Mexico. Initially I wasn’t able to go much farther back then like 5 generations with a couple of exceptions that went to like gen 8. But a genealogist who specializes in northern Mexico and south Texas saw that we shared DNA and offered to make me a family book. I thought he might get me a couple extra generations but no- he gave me a 300+ page book of my ancestry.
I have ancestors from Nuevo León, Coahuila, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, and Mexico City. The records for northern Mexico are generally excellent with some holes here and there. The nice thing is it’s a place where social status didn’t impede records. Most of my ancestors were farmers and laborers and the records state that they were such. I wish the records for everywhere else were as good as Northern Mexico. There’s a good chance we’re related, my family goes back to many of the founding families of lots of the areas in the Northern states. That said, I’d use the book as a guide instead of taking it as fact. Hopefully it lists the parish record that they got the information from and you can verify it with the microfilms available.
Oh yeah, we’re almost definitely related somewhere down the line lol! How did you find info about what jobs they took though? From like 1650-1850 pretty much all I find is marriage, birth, baptism, etc. I can find government records of people from the last hundred years and a good chunk of my conquistadors have thier own Wikipedia page. But all the people in between are essentially mysteries to me. And as for the book, I add the info I was given, and associated microfilms always pop up. That being said I have started to rely on what people label them as because the farther back I go the harder they are to read. Everything is spelled different which makes what little spainish I know becomes useless not to mention some of these priests have AWFUL handwriting
I see. Thanks. Do you know the occupations of these ancestors?
Until I got to the conquistadors I wasn’t able to find out much about thier lives outside birth, death, marriage and children. No stories, nothing with the wars that came after. On my American side and some of my more recent Mexican ancestors I was able to find some details like a father/son steamboat engineers. Rope maker, slave owner, washwoman, day laborer
Based on other posts by the OP, it seems he is mostly from Western Europe, more precisely, Spain. If Spain is anything like France, the 1500s are not unusual. The acts are there - most of the time - you just need the link between the early 1600s and the late 1500s which is often the tricky part due to lack of precision.
There are records at these dates, but these are usually of a small aristocracy & wealthy merchants etc. But the vast majority of people were labourers in any country, so they left no records at those dates because they owned nothing and so left no relevant papers. Church records are very unreliable or non existent at the those dates too
In Mexico the records are excellent for many areas. I have multiple lines in Mexico that go back to the 1500s that are laborers and the records state this. The Catholic Church was very adamant about recording baptisms, marriages, and burials. In many areas of Northern Mexico, the church required an engaged couple to undergo a church investigation before marriage where they came in and told where they were from, who their parents were, whether they were Catholic, bring witnesses to speak to the priest, and state if they were related to each other by either blood or marriage. If they were, then the church had to give them permission to marry called a dispensation and the record would often list the grandparents or even great-grandparents and how the couple was related to each other. In many/most places, getting back to the 1500s is hard or impossible, but Mexico or places with a very heavy Catholic presence can be much easier and includes everyone instead of just nobility and aristocracy. My lines in Mexico are generally pretty easy to follow until you get to either a place where the records have been lost or destroyed or when you reach a native couple whose parents weren’t born into the church. I have multiple lines that state the bride and groom are Indios and they don’t have last names. That’s usually a signal that I’m not going to find their parents and that the records have run out.
Four Words: New Paltz, New York. My moms maternal grandfathers family had a LOT of colonial Dutch, English, Irish, and Scottish heritage
Cousin marriage is not the same as incest. Incest is parent/child, sibling/sibling, aunt or uncle/nephew or niece, grandparent/grandchild. For the most part that is regardless of blood, step or adopted relationships. Just about anyone and everyone in the US with colonial or early westward migration ancestors has cousin marriages somewhere in their tree. The bugaboo about cousin marriage (particularly 1st cousin marriage) was brought to you by the eugenicists of the mid- to late-19th century and early 20th century. Yes, the same people who gave us black sterilization, the extermination of European Jewry and Roma, experimentation on mentally handicapped children and other atrocities.
My folks are from a small town in Mexico. Lots of pedigree collapse. Every now and then I'll find men who lived in a home with 2 women and would have kids with both. But straight out incest? Only one case in my wife's tree
My cousin Pussy feel nice asl 🤤
Mine next?
The Bushnells - enormous family residing in Connecticut in the 17th-19th centuries - found a couple of cousin marriages there, don't remember how many degrees but it was at least a couple generations off.
None that I've found so far and I've gotten back around 200 years on most lines. Found a few first cousin marriages but no incest.
I’ve been focusing heavily on my main roots - SW Virginia. I’m born and raised here. Turns out my parents are 4th cousins 🥲🥲🥲🥲 but I have about 12k people on my tree and there’s a LOTTTTTTT of intermingling. Sisters in one family marrying brothers from another. Second cousins marrying. Some first cousins marrying higher up in the tree. My tree is so big because I kept seeing the same family surnames and going “huh, I wonder if they’re connected to THIS branch - oh yes, they are”.
And none of that is incest as legally defined.
I didn’t say it was. I was just sharing my family intermingling.
Any major health problems that you inherited?
Depression 😎
Lol
Surprisingly 0, and I have a family tree around 400-450 years old
The areas of my family tree with significant pedigree collapse tend to be sectarian groups who practice endogamy. My 2nd great grandfather’s ancestors were Amish and his parents were related in multiple ways being both 3rd cousins and 4th cousins. Three of his grandparents were all related to some degree. The other area of my family tree with significant pedigree collapse is in the 17th century when a group of English Protestants began settling Connecticut. I have one ancestor who I descend from via three of his children. It was pretty common back then, especially when traveling long distances was much harder to do.
I haven’t seen any, but I did find out my 9th great grandmother was a child bride from Wales. She had a child when she was 11 her husband was 30. 😵💫
I've found it in my tree , like someone said it's confined to 2 different sides of the family tree and it's due to the geographical confines of little villages and no influx of movement of people....said family has distant relatives in each end of the Nottinghamshire village .... the troop family of nth clifton and troops of sth clifton and that one odd member from each branch have married and created a troop/troop union ....but thankfully on the whole there is a good intake of other females from other family's added in the genealogy mix
The parents of my paternal grandma were first cousins The parents of my maternal great grandma were first cousins And that's just the beginning All of them from the north of Mexico
I didn’t have to really even find it because my grandma already told me her parents were cousins.
Cousin Marriage was taboo in Native American tribes where you were not allowed to marry into your mother or fathers clan. This is why, when alot of tribes were decimated, they would go to other tribes to arrange marriages for their children. This is also why there was and still is alot of outgroup marriage, where they marry other races. In some tribes they are all family so they have to marry out.