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Archiver > NORWAY > 1997-11 > 0878428709


From: "Vidar Holum" <>
Subject: SV: Cousins by the Dozens
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 00:58:29 +0100


Hello
Very interesting. How long did it take to go through the 1000 pages?
Do you have the result presented on a web page?

Vidar Holum
Landingsvn.132.
0767 Oslo Norway
Phone. 47 22149307 Beeper/Personsøker: 47 96721663
New E-mail:
URL: http://home.sol.no/~holum/
Searching: CHRYSTIE AND CHRISTIE IN UK, DOROTHEA PEDERSON / OLSSON AND
NIELSEN NELSON IN AUSTRALIA&NZ, HANS PEDERSEN HOLT IN USA, BERNT
KRISTOFFERSEN IN USA, ANKER LJUNGREN IN CANADA, STØHRMANN AND STOERMANN IN
GERMANY, MURRAY AND NIELSEN IN NORTHUMBERLAND UK,

----------
> Fra:
> Til:
> Emne: Cousins by the Dozens
> Dato: 1. november 1997 22:59
>
> Hi All,
>
> Steven Moen's message about all the Leikanger relatives he has found
prompts
> me to report on a phenomenon that occurs in Ärdal, which is the kommune
of my
> father's family.
>
> As some of you may know (if you have been to
www.sffarkiv.no/test/neil.htm),
> I constructed a PAF data base containing the entire contents of the Årdal
> bygdebok. This means that I have every known person who ever lived there
> before there were any towns (or villages, cities, townships, thorps, or
> whatever. I don't want to start anything with anybody anywhere!) and all
of
> their known descendants living any place in Norway. When I finished I
had
> about 16,500 individuals, including the American descendants of my 4
emigrant
> ancestors. I had no idea how many family trees I had created because I
built
> the data base in a manner different than one normally does.
>
> In the normal case you start with your parents, add grandparents, great
> grandparents, etc. and pick up all the brother and sister, or cousin,
lines
> that you can find. But you are building one family tree.
>
> I built the Årdal data base by opening up the bygdebok to page one and
> entering everyone on that page, then page 2, then 3, and so on until I
got to
> page 971, which was the end. This was not straight forward data entry.
In
> order to prevent duplicate entry of individuals, after I entered a name
for
> the first time I had to find every other occurrence of that name any
where in
> the book and annotate it with the Record Identification Number of the
> individual. This enabled me to know who had been previously entered when
I
> got to them again. Normally this was limited to where the individual was
> listed as somebody's spouse, or the father or mother of an illegitimate
> child, of which there were plenty.
>
> By the time I finished I had done enough rather tedious cross-referencing
to
> know there was a lot of intermarriage, but I had no idea how many family
> trees I had created.
>
> I have a nifty little program written by Ann Turner called "Forest". It
> analyzes PAF data bases to determine how many "trees" are in your
"forest."
> The normal reason to run the program is to find out if you have
individuals
> or families that are not linked to your tree. If you do, you have made
some
> kind of mistake and need to fix it because you only want one tree.
>
> Sadly, this dandy program won't work on PAF 3.0 data. I am hoping that
Ann
> writes a new version.
>
> This program follows each and every line of all generations back in time
to
> the earliest ancestor and then turns around and comes forward picking up
all
> brother and sister, or cousin, lines of every family. Every one in the
> resulting tree is related by either blood or marriage.
>
> I ran Forest on my 16,500 individuals and found out I had only created 7
> trees. However all but 71 individuals were in one really big tree!! I
> thought Ann's program was goofy until I started thinking about it. Now I
am
> convinced the program works just fine.
>
> Årdal was really remote. In the 1801 census there were only a little
over
> 800 individuals living on about 32 gards spread over essentially one
narrow
> valley about 15 miles long. People did not move around or travel far
from
> home. From the furtherest west gard it was still about 10 to 15 miles by
boat
> to the next inhabited spot. To go anywhere east, north, or south you had
to
> be a mountain goat. While many of my Årdal ancestors practiced animal
> husbandry, sexual activity was strictly limited to local humans or those
> coming in from the west. Any being showing up from the east, north, or
south
> was suspected as being at least part goat and were not welcomed into the
fun
> loving milieu of intermarriage that was going on. Those coming in from
the
> west and marrying someone become a member of the family and all their
> descendants are as well. Once you are related to someone you are always
> related to someone, and so are all of your descendants. Given a couple
> hundred years or so, it is almost inevitable that all the locals will be
> related somehow.
>
> When I first revealed my finding it was greeted with jaundiced skepticism
in
> America and a certain amount of embarrassed squeamishness by those in
Årdal.
> Upon reasoned reflection by intelligent individuals, they soon agree
with
> me. Those that don't are obviously mentally deranged or just plain
> meatheads. I feel certain I will not have to suffer any doubting
Thomases on
> the NORWAY List.
>
> There are 2 reasons this phenomenon has not been discovered before.
First,
> only a computer could track all the various relationships in a large
group of
> people. Doing it by hand would be impossible. Second, I don't think any
one
> has every been nutty enough to build a data base containing everyone who
ever
> lived in a kommune. If there is another please tell me about it. I
would
> like to analyze it with Ann's program.
>
> PAF has a relationship calculator in it. You enter any 2 people and the
> program displays the closest relationship between the 2 and their common
> ancestor. It tracks out to 10th cousins and as many generations removed
as
> necessary. If you punch the function button again, it displays the next
> closest relationship, and so on, and so on. Most people descended from
old
> Årdal are related in many ways. I found one person who is related to me
368
> different ways!
>
> I do not think this phenomenon is limited to Årdal. I think that it
exists
> to a large degree in all the kommunes in Norway, at least those of
western
> Norway. Årdal was particularily remote, but there were a lot of other
places
> that weren't exactly on the Interstate. I think the real key to it is
that
> people didn't move around in past centuries. They tended to say put and
> marry those from the local area.
>
> I don't even think this is a Norwegian or any other national phenomenon.
I
> think it applies to most places in the last century and earlier. Ann
Turner
> reported to me that she and some others are building a data base of all
of
> the people who lived in some county in Kentucky. They are finding much
> larger trees of extended families than they expected. Remember, when you
> have 2 families with 100 people each and any 2 people intermarry, you
have
> one family with 200 people in it, and so on, and so on. Carrying this to
the
> end, I think everybody winds up being related to everybody. I find this
> disturbing because there are people I definately do not want to be
related
> to.
>
> The message is that if you really start digging around in your kommune of
> choice, don't be surprised to find lots more cousins than you thought
> possible. You will probably be related some way to almost everyone. So
your
> extended family tree can be as big as you have time to fertilize it with
new
> lines.
>
> All this thinking has given me a headache and the thought that I might be
> related to a couple of people I know is making me nauseous. By now many
of
> you may also have a headache and fell nauseous for different reasons, so
I
> will stop.
>
> As usual this got longer than I planned.
>
> Neil

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