Wednesday, March 18, 2015

I'm Seeing Double (Double/Double)!

OK - this is going to get a little complicated...

Second-cousin marriages aren't that uncommon, and they're easy to comprehend:  two people get married and they share a common ancestor, specifically a great-grandparent and usually a great-grandfather and great-grandmother.   That's consanguinity of the third degree.


Today, I found a weird situation where a married couple's marriage certificate mentioned a third-degree consanguinity which I followed-up, but then noticed that they actually shared TWO sets of great-grandparents.   In other words, they're double second cousins.  (They're also my 5th great-grand aunt and uncle.)

Weird...

Then I got to the next marriage in their family tree.   The bride and groom have the same sets of parents as the previous couple: a brother+sister marrying a sister+brother.  Again, that's not THAT uncommon, but then it hit me:  you have two siblings each marrying their double second cousin. 

It's a "double" double second-cousin marriage!





So, each of these couples' children (my 1st cousins 6x removed) only have 12 great-great grandparents instead of the usual 16. 

It gets WEIRDER.  

In 1773, Marie-Angélique Grenier (1729-?), my 6th great-grandmother, remarried after Joseph-Gaspard Choret passed away in 1768 to Jean-François Sévigny who was recently widowed from Marie-Anne Croteau (1719-1772).  


This sets up another "Greg and Marcia Brady" situation as my last posting.   Fifteen months later, Angélique's daughter Geneviève (1756-1824) who was 17 at the time of the re-marriage, marries her 22-year old step-brother Pierre Sévigny (1752-1828).   They're my 5th great-grandparents.  


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