Did it used to be more acceptable to marry your cousin?

Cafe Society
21

My maternal grandparents were first cousins to no ill effect. (Okay, they passed on the gene for depression but they missed me.) Married about 1934.

When I was doing family research, I talked to a woman, a cousin married to another of my cousins but from a different branch, who said that her Husband had found out he was his own cousin.

When my ancestors settled in North Carolina with their large families, the children tended to marry the large family next door. Sometimes that large family were their cousins sometimes they weren’t. But the next generation would be. There are some family names that tend to turn up in almost all branches.

(My Dad used to tell me to be carefull throwing rocks, I might hit a cousin.)

I haven’t checked but I would guess that the taboo about cousins marrying came about at the turn of the century when eugenics was the rage. Some states have laws against it some don’t.

22

Franklin and Eleanor were only distant cousins. She was T.R.‘s niece. I assumed that the OP was talking about first-cousin marriages. Given the nature of lineage and descent, and the limits on the available gene pool, there are probably many, many more marriages at that level of cousinhood, only we’re not aware of most of them because of differences in last names. Most people, after all, know their parents names, and all four of their grandparents’ birth names, and beyond that it gets hazy. I don’t know all my g-gparents names, except their fathers’, and I’m sure that’s true of most people. So anyone could marry someone who shares a common ancestor, and not even know about it.

23

Indeed. Just a few weeks ago, I learned that a guy I went to high school with is my second cousin once removed (near as I can reconstruct, at least: The information came from my dad, who wasn’t too clear on the details). Now, there wasn’t any possibility of a romantic connection there, but it makes such seem very plausible.

24

Up until fairly recently, cousin marriages were quite common in many levels of socity, though nowadays its mostly remembered as a royal practice. Some U.S. states have laws against first-cousin pairings, others don’t. It’s still common practice in many other countries.

Inbreeding was prevalent among almost all the royal dynasties I’m familiar with – European, Hellenistic, Roman, etc. This was for a variety of reasons. One had to marry within one’s own class, and the pool of eligible princesses and princes of the right breeding and religion was small. After a few generations every royal family in Europe was related, and marrying outside that limited gene pool was nearly impossible. Dynastic and political forces often matched young people with very close relatives, up to and including first cousins, double first cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews.

In the Hellenistic dynasties, as well as the ancient Egyptian and several Asian dynasties, even more extreme incest was practiced. Sibling pairings, father/daughter, mother/son, you name it. This was partly because an unmarried princess was a political danger – were she to marry an outsider, their children would have a claim to the throne and civil war could erupt. Kings would often marry their sisters to keep them “off the market” as sexual agents.

Take the example of Demetrios I, King of Syria. His sister, Laodike, had married King Perseus of Macedon, but returned to him as a widow a few years later. He tried to find her a husband, but her political connections made her an unattractive prospect. Finally Demetrios married Laodike himself in 161, and had three sons by her.

The genealogies of the later Seleukid and Ptolemaic monarchs was a tangled and confusing web of incest – for instance, the famous Cleopatra’s mother and father were uncle and niece; her paternal grandparents were siblings, and her maternal grandparents were also uncle and niece. Her maternal grandfather, Ptolemy X, was a brother of her paternal grandparents Ptolemy IX and Kleopatra IV, and her maternal grandmother, Berenike III, was a daughter of Ptolemy IX and his second sister-wife, Kleopatra V Selene. Gets very confusing.

25

Chronos, the genealogist in me wants to respond to your statement about another person being “a second cousin once removed”

Okay, a “cousin” usually refers to the relationship more precisely termed “first cousin”. So if brother Ed has a son named Ned, and Ed’s sister Jane has a daughter named June, then Ned and June are “first cousins”.

So Ned has his own kid Jed. And his first cousin June has a kid named Joan. Jed and Joan, being the offspring of first cousins, are “second cousins”

This could keep going on and on, unto the third and fourth generations, ad infinitum, if you are waxing Biblical.

The term “removed” indicates that the two relatives in question are not on the same generational level as each other. Ned and June were of the same generation, and so were Jed and Joan. They have no “removeds” attached to them. But Ned and his first cousin’s girl Joan, or June and her first cousin’s boy Jed, are “first cousin-once removed” The relationship term applies in either direction, older to younger generation, or vice versa.

A second cousin-once removed, taking the names above, would refer to Jed and any children of his second cousin Joan(or the other way around), and to Joan, and any children of her second cousin Jed(or the other way around. And of course the children of second cousins, as mentioned earlier, are third cousins.

So, Chronos, if you have a second cousin-once removed, that means you and this schoolmate have a common ancestor three and four generations ago. One person is great-great- grandparent to one of you and great-grandparent to the other.

I trust I’ve made myself clear as mud. :stuck_out_tongue: This from a person who once calculated the relationship between herself and an American ambassador from the 19th century as being “third cousins-five times removed” His great-great grandfather, and my (seven greats) grandfather, was the same person.

26

I have a fairly well documented family genealogy and in only one instance did one person who was related to me marry another person who was related to me.

My Family Tree Maker program says that they are 2nd cousins once removed AND 3rd cousins once removed simultaneously.

It’s even weirder for the wife.

And the 9 kids.

27

My aunt married her cousin. Well, it was her third cousin, but still a cousin. Her name never changed, and no one really gave a second thought about it.

28

I can’t resist going back to those hobbit genealogies in the appendices of ROTK.

Frodo and Bilbo were related to each other two ways. They were first cousins once removed.(The Old Took was grandfather to Bilbo and great-grandfather to Frodo) Bilbo and Frodo were also second cousins once removed.(A Balbo Baggins was great-grandfather to Bilbo and great-great grandfather to Frodo.)

Sam Gamgee and Rose Cotton were third cousins, sharing a great-great grandfather.

Frodo and Merry were first cousins once removed. Merry and Perry were first cousins to each other, and first cousins twice removed to Bilbo, and second cousin once removed to Frodo.

29

It’s been a while since I’ve read any of the books referred to in this thread. Do any of them specify the relationship more exactly? I’m wondering if the authors were perhaps using “cousin” as it’s used in my mother’s family. Anyone who is known to be a cousin of any type- including second-cousins once removed , or my great-grandparents sibling’s children (who I think would be third cousins to me) is a cousin.(I actually know some of my second-cousins once removed, and met a third cousin once). I know that now ( at least in the US) “cousin” usually refers to a first cousin, but I don’t know how long that’s been true, and I suspect that those distant cousin marriages were both more common and more easily identified when people moved around less.

30

In the book Jane Eyre the clergyman, St. John E. Rivers, who wanted Jane to marry him was indeed her first cousin. Jane’s father and Rivers’ mother were brother and sister. The “E” in Rivers name stood for Eyre.

31

For example, English common law didn’t prohibit cousins from marrying. Here in Canada, we inherited the English common law and never brought in any statutes barring cousins from marrying.

The English common law on this point was based on the canon law of the Church of England. Here’s a link to the Table of Kindred and Affinity from the Book of Common Prayer. All sorts of prohibitions on marrying up or down one’ own family line, and on marrying uncles/aunts or nephews /neices, but no prohibition on cousins.

32

Thanks for the tutorial, Baker, but I’m already well-versed in the terminology of cousins (when one’s mother is the oldest of eleven and one’s grandmother is the oldest of seven, knowing these things is a survival trait). My confusion with this former classmate is not a matter of knowing the terminology, but rather that I’m not quite sure who our common ancestor is. All I have for sure is that we’re related via my maternal grandfather.

And if we’re going to drag the good Professor’s works into this again, there’s also a closed loop or two in the family trees of some of the First Age humans. Turin and Niena, of course (though that one was without either’s knowledge), but there were a few others at “safe” remove.

Dangit, why don’t I ever read these threads at home, where I have my books?

33

It’s not in the movie, but I remember in the book that Mrs. Tarleton goes off on a long speech about the dangers of intermarrying with cousins, and attributes Melanie’s frailty and the washed-out looks of Ashley’s sisters to that.

34

Then why would Jebediah Springfield be so offended by Old Man Shelbyville’s city planning?

35

Doreen’s family has it basically right. Cousins are people with whom you share a common ancestor, excluding your parents and siblings, and your aunts and uncles in any degree. First cousins share one set of grandparents, second cousins share a set of great-grandparents, and so on. “Removed” in cousin terminology means they are in different generations of the family: your parents first cousins are your first cousins once removed, and your grandparents’ first cousins are your first cousins twice removed. I know the name of a first cousin 11 times removed, who lived in the 17th century.

As for the P.G. Wodehouse stories I quoted, it’s clear that the mothers of the cousins involved are actually sisters, so they are indeed first cousins.

36

So the OP answer is YES, cousin-marriage was and still is “more acceptable” in cultural environments other than American urban industrial.

From earlier threads on this same issue, the basic situation is that early in the 20th Century there was a strong move towards stigmatizing cousin marriage, (1) due to genetics/eugenics – in the “good” sense of the word, that is in order to prevent so-called “degeneracy” of the population and (2) because it was something done in the villages of the Old Country, or by hicks out in the hollers, and now we’re “modern”.