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Archiver > NORWAY > 1997-11 > 0878433927


From: Barbara Rodgers <>
Subject: Cousins by the dozens
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 20:25:27 -0500 (EST)


Neil,
The marriages of cousins that you refer to cause what genealogists call
pedigree collapse. If cousins never married, by 10 generations back you'd
have 1,024 ancestors in that generation, and by 40 generations back you'd
have roughly one trillion ancestors in that generation! (And that would
probably only take you to AD 800!) Of course that's impossible, the
population of earth gets smaller as we go back in time, therefore the
farther back you go the more intermarriage of cousins there was.
Most of us don't have to go back too far to find this. My husband's
great-grandparents were first cousins, and both sets of my grandfather's
grandparents were first cousins.
There's a very nice discussion of this in a book called "Applied
Genealogy" by Eugene A. Stratton. Instead of being a how-to book, it
discusses a lot of things about genealogy I had never thought about before.
But you're absolutely right, this happened everywhere on earth, not just in
Årdal.
Unfortunately, I don't know much about computers, but I am most intrigued
by the "Forest" program you mentioned, and the relationship calculator. Is
it for sale? There are so many intermarriages on my grandfather's tree,
some between the likes of second cousins once removed, which puts some
people in two or more generations! I've gone nuts trying to decide the
closest relationship, etc.
I really enjoyed your message!
Barbara
************************************************************
Barbara Rodgers

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