Intermarrying

[Asa]

Lindsay, my Londoners did a lot of marrying connections. It's like London was full of little villages :-)

Poor Beattie indeed, OC lol

[Lindsay]

Lol OC!

I think you've hit the nail on the head, Asa, and London was a collection of villages. Many of my east enders lived in the same small number of streets for generations.

[Janet]

Very interesting thread. By the way, New York City is still to this day a collection of villages. Outsiders tend not to recognize that, but it's oh so true.

[Kit]

Originally Posted by Asa

I'm fascinated and astounded that one great x 4 grandfather is descended from three daughters of a Berkshire yeoman (his 3 x great grandfather in every case) as well as from their maternal aunt.

Can you please explain using names? The first read did not make any sense, the second one maybe, but I'm still not sure. I'm having a bad day so I can't decide if I should understand or not.

You don't have to use real names if you don't want to.

[Nell]

London ancestors seem particularly keen to keep things in the family, I have lots of instances of sets of sisters marrying sets of brothers (and then one of the widowed sisters marrying one of the widowed brothers, just to keep it tidy!).

In villages, the same names crop up all the time - so Mary Brewer marries Mr Eplett and their daughter Honor marries a Mr Brewer and has a daughter called Honor Brewer who marries a Mr Eplett etc etc. I am sure the Brewers in my Cornish tree are all connected but have not been able to sort it out.

I also have in my Warwickshire line a woman whose mother and father were sister and brother to the parents of her husband, so she and her husband were double cousins.

[marquette]

When I discovered that my 5g grandfather who lived in Berkshire had been born in Sparsholt Hampshire, I looked at his siblings and aunts, cousins etc and found a whole lot of names I already had in the tree. There's a whole bunch of tradespeople from around the area, and slightly wider afield, who seemed to "keep it in the family" - cousins, in-laws, step children, round and round.

My 3 great grandparents from Somerset were 2nd cousins once removed, their ancestor being the oldest and youngest daughters of a large family, nearly 20 years age difference. They also had two lots of first cousins who married each other and the same names keep cropping up, so I have this huge tree of inter-related people who are only vaguely related to me really, but when you go up the tree it crosses back over to the other side.