More talk about cousins?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Simpler version:

  1. If two people are of the same generation, then they’re:

First cousins if they have a grandparent in common,
second cousins if they have a great-grandparent in common,
third cousins if they have a great-great-grandparent in common,
etc.

2a) If they’re of different generations, the degree of cousinhood is figured in terms of the one who’s closer to the common ancestor.

If my grandfather is your great-great-great-…-grandfather, we’re first cousins, just with a bunch of removes.*
If my **great-**grandfather is your great-great-great-…-grandfather, we’re second cousins, with a bunch of removes.
If my **great-great-**grandfather is your great-great-great-…-grandfather, we’re third cousins, with a bunch of removes.
Etc.

2b) The number of removes is the difference in the number of generations from the common ancestor.

If my grandfather is your great-great-grandfather, the degree of cousinhood is first cousins per 2a, and since you’re two generations further down the family tree, you’re my first cousin, twice removed.

That’s it.
*As was recently mentioned in a thread around here (Deathpool, perhaps?), John Tyler (President of the U.S., 1841-1845) still has two living grandchildren. (He had some kids very late in life by a second marriage, then one of his youngest sons did the same.) But presumably some of the offspring of his oldest children had kids at a reasonably young age, and some of their older children did, etc., so we’d have people who would be the great-great-great-…-grandsons or -granddaughters of John Tyler, for a fairly large number of greats. Those folks would be the first cousins, N times removed, of John Tyler’s two living grandsons, with N being the number of greats.

Would be interesting to know how large N gets, among the currently living descendants of John Tyler.

22

It’s pointless to bring “generations” into it, because that term has at least two meanings: persons born around the same time, and persons of the same level of descent from a common ancestor. The latter definition is redundant in the scheme I gave, and the former disqualifies persons who are obviously first cousins.

For example: I have three kids under the age of two; all of my nieces are old enough to be their mothers. Not the same generation by the first definition. Nonetheless my nieces are first cousins to my kids.
First cousins if they have a grandparent in common,
second cousins if they have a great-grandparent in common,
third cousins if they have a great-great-grandparent in common,
etc.

Again you don’t need the word “generation.” The second definition is implied in that you’re going back to the closest common ancestor(s).

23

I have zero siblings.
I have 14 first cousins. I have met them all, and am currently in contact with four.
I have zillions of second cousins. As a kid I knew seven or eight second double cousins (children of my mother’s double cousins) and some paternal second cousins. I am in contact with none.
I know a bunch of third cousins, as well. I’m in contact with six, plus one more I’ve met as an adult through Facebook.
I know zero fourth cousins.

I think it’s odd that I’m closer to my third cousins than my first or second cousins combined, but that’s life.

24

I don’t think I can name any. I knew a couple of my father’s first cousins (who would have been my first cousins, once removed) when I was a kid, and I suspect I met one or two of their kids (my second cousins) at some point, but that would have been 30+ years ago.

My mother never really talked about her (first) cousins, and I’m certain that I’e never met any of them (or their children).

Of my 30 first cousins on my mom’s side, at least half live in Wisconsin (which is where her family is from). The others are nearly all somewhere in the Midwest.

My other 8 first cousins (on my father’s side) grew up in Virginia. All of them live on the East Coast, spread out from NYC to Florida.

We don’t have kids; if we did, they would only have four cousins (one on my side, three on my wife’s side), and I’m certain that they would know all of them, as we’re close to both my sister and my wife’s sister.

I’m 48. It’s been 20 years since I lost my last grandparent, and all of my great-grandparents were dead before I was born.

Of my aunts and uncles (by birth, not by marriage), 11 out of the 12 are still alive, as our my parents (and my wife’s parents). We don’t have kids, but both of our sisters do, so I guess the answer to this is “three”.

25

The Carolinas were a major entry point for early colonists, back even to the failed Roanoke settlement.

A “six degrees of separation” experiment ala the six degrees of Kevin Bacon would be interesting. Link for those who don’t understand the Kevin Bacon thing.

You can enter your last name here, and find the distribution and possible origin of the family name. I don’t know how accurate it is, but is correctly shows my paternal family tracking across the continent and back to England.

26

I don’t have much contact with any of my own second cousins. My mother is very friendly with all of her and my father’s first cousins, but I couldn’t possibly name them all, much less their children, and I certainly haven’t met any of them any significant number of times. There’s one second cousin (through my father’s mother) with whom I’m friendly, but our point of contact was unrelated to the fact that we are family.

27

The “second cousin” question made me look it up in the dictionary to see what it is.

My mothers parent were immigrants, so she had no knowledge of the existence of any cousins in the old country, or even aunts or uncles, and therefore I have no known second cousins on my mother’s side. However, I believe I have found the grave of what might be a second cousin, who died in infancy a century ago. My father spoke of a spinster aunt on each side of his family, and an estranged uncle about whom little was known, so I know nothing about any second cousins on my father’s side.

As for my first cousins, I had nine. I have seen only three of them since graduating from high school, and I have sporadic contact with two of them. I believe two more are dead, and my sister has seen a couple of the others.

28

Forgot about the other questions, missed the time limit.

  1. I have one in Israel, one in Chicago, one in Baltimore, one in Atlanta, and all of the others live in New York or its general area.

  2. My children know all of their first cousins, although they don’t get to see them that much, as most of them live in Israel and three live in South Bend, IN, leaving only two local to us.

  3. Four: my grandfather, my mother, myself (and my siblings) and my children (and niblings). When my firstborn was born, he had a living great-great grandmother, but she died when he was a year old.

29

I think I made it pretty clear that I was talking about the latter. And when we’re talking about family trees, that’s the accepted meaning anyway.

At any rate, even though I understood what you were saying, I found it unnecessarily wordy and convoluted. I apologize if you took offense at my providing a simpler version, but I don’t think I need to apologize for providing it.

30

I have an ancestor named Adam Kasson, who emigrated to this continent, with his wife and eight kids, in 1722. I am the descendant of his son Robert Kasson. This man, John Adam Kasson, John A. Kasson - Wikipedia, is the descendant of another son of Adam Kasson. Our sole common ancestor is that emigrant.

Once, with the help a a book written about the Kassons in the 1880’s I worked out the name of the relationship between me and the guy in the link. We are third cousins, five times removed.

31

My family tree is a “banyan tree.” A lot of people are both “X” and “Step-X.” First of all, my paternal grandmother and her sister married two brothers. Then my maternal grandmother died, and my paternal grandfather died. Then, after my parents married, my widowed maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother married.

I have first cousins older than some aunts and uncles. And the age span of all my first cousins is 40 years.

32

I’ve known of several families like that. My brother’s best friend when we were kids was an uncle to a kid three years older than he was.

33

My understanding is that my kids and my brothers kids would be 1st cousins. Their children would be 2nd cousins to each other. His grandchildren and my children would be 1st cousins once removed. At least, that’s the it was explained to me.

34

Yep. My husband is a year older than his uncle, and my mother-in-law is four years older than her stepmother. (And my late grandfather-in-law divorced his wife, and married the nurse who worked in the joint practice he shared with the ex-wife. The new wife was so young that her husband had been the doctor who delivered her, and signed her birth certificate.)

One of my closest childhood friends was also a couple of years older than his aunt, but that was just because the grandparents had about a dozen kids over the course of a couple of dozen years.

And my grandmother was the youngest of her father’s 16 children, three wives. At least one of Grandmother’s sisters had a grandchild before Grandmother’s birth… I seriously have to use a pencil and paper to figure out degrees of kinship on that side of the family.

Fortunately, my maternal Grandmother’s mother didn’t follow through with plans to marry my maternal Grandfather’s father after they were both widowed, or else I’d just totally give up on genealogy!

35

I have 21 second cousins on my mom’s mother’s side, almost all of whom I have met at least once, some of whom I knew pretty well as a kid. I can name them all. I have seen five of them in the past year, a couple more in the last three.

There are several more 2nd cousins on the other sides of the family, but I’m not sure exactly how many–no more than 10, I think. I haven’t met most of them, haven’t seen those I HAVE met in years, and don’t really know what they are up to.

My kids only have three first cousins. They have a whole bunch of second cousins, though, the offspring of my 14 first cousins (nearly all have at least one), and are as connected to many of these as I was and am to their parents. (That is to say, closely connected.) They have met several of their third cousins (my second cousins’ offspring) and are actually quite close to two of them–they (and we) are invited to a third cousin’s wedding this fall. There are second cousins on my wife’s side as well, but my kids don’t actually know them.

My first cousins are spread out over five states and three Canadian provinces. For my second cousins whose whereabouts I know, you’d have to add six states and two countries outside North America.

36

I’ve posted about this before, but I still find it interesting.

Lots of families have an uncle/aunt the same age as a grandchild. We go one generation beyond that. My grandmother had 12 kids in 23 years. One of the oldest (my mom) had kids early, who had kids early, who had kids early. The youngest had her kids late.

The upshot of this is that (counting from my grandmother) have a grandchild who is only 3 years older than the oldest great-grandchild–a two-generation distance in 3 years.

On my mom’s side I have 25 or so first cousins, and 4 first cousins. They have more: my mom is the most prolific, with 6 kids, and between us we have 14 grand kids and one great grand kid. I know almost all of them at least in passing, and I like them a great deal. We are spread out geographically, but my mom and her 12 siblings are remarkably close–11/12, at least, all talk to each other daily. I mean, they don’t all talk to all 12 daily, but I think they all talk to someone, and they have some pattern that basically means everyone knows what is going in in everyone’s life. It’s pretty impressive, actually.

37

Geographically, my most distant first cousin lives in Modesto, CA. I have at least two in the Cincinnati area; the rest are within shouting distance of me.

As far as second and third cousins:

My first cousin in Modesto has two adult sons, who I can name (and with whom I’m Facebook friends).

Another two cousins (twin sisters!) have teenage kids that I’m FB friends with, but I doubt I would recognize them if I ran into them. Ditto for a couple of other first cousins.

I’m Facebook friends with one of my mom’s cousins (so that would be my 2nd cousin?) as well as her daughter (3rd cousin?).

38

:: looks around, puzzled ::

I rarely if ever take offense to anything said or written on the Dope, and certainly not what you wrote. I just disagree about whose explanation is simpler.

Anyway, I’m sorry for giving you the impression I was offended, and in penance I will be loading up the vanilla-cupcake cannon and send you some vanilla cupcakes.

39

One of my uncles had a *great-*aunt (his grandmother’s youngest sibling) who was only four months older than he. :eek: Th

40

Another way to explain it is by saying that first cousins, second cousins, etc. must be from the same generation. Cousins that share grandparents are both from the same generation (first cousins), cousins that share great-grandparents are from the same generation (second cousins), an so forth.

The “X times removed” indicates the number of generations that separate cousins who are not from the same generation. My dad’s 1st cousin is my 1st cousin 1x removed because were are one generation apart.