I’ve been surprised several times to learn that a longtime friend or acquaintance is also a cousin (usually fairly distant, but no moreso than FDR & Eleanor), due usually to some 19th century ancestors who produced a new baby every third Wednesday. (The record in my family for the same parents is 17 children, though one fertile old man [my g-g-grandfather] had 24 children with 4 consecutive wives, which peoples up a tri-state area with cousins fairly quickly.)
Dopers who are so inclined- share some of your ancestral surnames. You don’t have to say how they’re connected and you can delete any you want to if you don’t want to reveal your identity. A few of my own (alphabetized) that I’m curious if anybody else is related to (most of my families came to America in the 18th century and settled on the southern Atlantic seaboard, though a few came from Ireland much later):
Caton*, Cotton, Darby, DeRamus, Golson, Milner, Rawlinson, Rumph, Trawick**
Does anybody have any of the same surnames among their direct ancestors? (If you don’t but would like to see if you have any shared surnames with other Dopers, feel free to post anyway)
*sometimes spelled Catton (even in the same family)
**sometimes spelled Traywick and Trawik; by some accounts the name was originally Trawisky and was a Polish Jewish family that emigrated to Ireland in the 18th century, though I don’t know the reliability of those claims
Saunders, Gray, Bradford, Brewster, Fanning, Colegrove (or Colgrove), Carner, Sarles (or Sarlls, Searles, etc.), Boardman (originally Boreman), Cooper, Millard, and many others that don’t come to mind without my database at hand.
Reyes, Santiago, Rivera, De la O Millan, Cortes, Martinez, Rodriguez, Morales, Rosado, Hernandez.
That’s mom’s side only, and I didn’t combine them, as most of them are (Morales-Rosado, Martinez-Cortes, etc., for example.)
McHenry was from Nova Scotia, Willden was from Sheffield, England; I’m not sure where Beebe was from. Johnson was from Denmark. Copenhagen, to be precise, then moved to Utah, then Chatsworth, California.
It’ll be dang near useless, as my family names are pretty generic.
The grandparents were Murphy & Murphy (not related prior to marriage), and McGrath & Oak. Lynn MA origins, though I understand both sides (except for Oak) came to the US via Portland ME, and moved down to MA.
My paternal grandmother was McDonald and my maternal was MacDonald. My maternal grandfather was a Leslie, his mother was a Hood as in Hood Canal, part of Puget Sound. My grandfather’s grandfather was one of the early settlers of the west side of Puget Sound, including the name Bremer of which Bremerton got it’s name. My paternal grandfather came to the US from England as a young boy and his family settled in SE Pennsylvania. I learned recently I still have distant cousins in southern England with the names Hastings, Bonney, and Gordon.
