Lets see who inbreed in your Families!

+10 votes
491 views
Inbreeding, intentonial, or unintentional is a wounderful horrible thing that many of us have to deal with whether we like it or not. So lets put them on the spot, who inbred in your families? I'll put mine below.

My 4x great grandmother Jacobje Ham [Ham-1647] Married Thijmen Buter [Buter-143]. Four generations my grandmother Aaltje Bos [Bos-746] was born.

My 3x great grandmother Geertje Ham [Ham-1358] Married Albert Lucasz Brouwer [Brouwer-909]. Three Generations later my Grandfather Albert Brouwer [Brouwer-896] was born.

Aaltje and Albert got married in 1964 and had my father.

My 4x Great Grandfather Pieter Gerritsz de Boer [De Boer-1024] married Jacobje de Vries [De Vries-1790].

His Sister Naalke de Boer [De Boer-1139] Married Jan Kramer [Kramer-2712].

4 Generations, their Shared Great Granddaughter, and my great grandmother Jannetje de Boer [De Boer-944] was Born.

My mother parents were second cousins (Grandfathers were brothers), thus they both had the same last name.

So let's see who's gotten a bit too close to family in your family
in The Tree House by Sytze Brouwer G2G6 Mach 1 (19.9k points)
edited by Sytze Brouwer
Through my grandmother's line (French-Canadian) I have over 60 families I am descended from more than once. Could be worse, am stuck on my French-Canadian lines in Ontario for my grandfather's line.
I have a French line, a Dutch line, a Scots/Irish line and several others that married cousins (2nd cousins in most cases) . However, that isn't inbreeding. Inbreeding is father to daughter, mother to son or full sibling to full sibling and is illegal. Close marriages were very common. Royalty did it all the time and ended up with a lot of genetic defects.

Inbreeding is the production of offspring from the mating or breeding of individuals or organisms that are closely related genetically. Wikipedia  If I am not mistaken, that includes 2nd cousins.  Don't take it personnel, most of us have some in our history.  As put, father to daughter and mother to son or siblings together is called "incest", and is very illegal, but still happens to this day.

"Closely?" That's not a definition. My definition is both a legal one and a scientific one. I bred horses for many years. Inbreeding is just what I said above. In animal breeding, mating with other close relations are referred to as line breeding and have always been done deliberately to increase the possibility of getting desirable characteristics in the offspring.

I'm not at all offended or sensitive about the cousin marriages in my lineage. I've read that over 90% of people on earth are the result of such marriages somewhere in the past. It makes sense that people had to marry according to availability (the result of small populations, isolated populations, or royalty or nobility wanting to keep their bloodline elite).

10 Answers

+8 votes
 
Best answer
My great-great grandmother, Nancy Anne (Crowe) Pitts was the daughter of first cousins and granddaughter of Daniel Robert Crowe and Anne Susannah Shelton, an obvious example of pedigree collapse.

My great-grandparents, Sarah Elizabeth Pitts and Thomas Eli Profitt, were 13th cousins, once removed, descended from John Trelawney.

My great-great grandparents, Nancy Carolyn Cox and Stephen Sewell Profitt, were 14th cousins, once removed, descended from John Wadham.

I still have to prove if my  4x great grandfather, John Alexander, born about 1774, was descended from two related Alexander lines. as his father John Alexander (descended form John Alexander of Eredy born in Scotland) and his mother Mary Hines (descended from Richard Alexander born in Ulster, Ireland, but supposedly descended from the Alexanders of Menstrie, Clackmannanshire, Scotland).  I have no paper trail on the latter case.

I'm sure that all of us have inbred ancestors at some point in time.
by David Hughey G2G Astronaut (1.7m points)
selected by Jillian Sommer
+8 votes
I hope you are putting them into those categories for things like marrying successive siblings and kissing cousins.

I have a bunch and I suspect anyone with ancestors in the Colonies had first cousin Marriages as there just wasn't a lot of choice and marriages were generally kept within their social status. I have been entering mine in the categories when I find them.
by Gurney Thompson G2G6 Pilot (443k points)
edited by Gurney Thompson
+7 votes
While that may not be the most pleasant thing, that is kind of interesting. I kind of wonder if that is true in my family.
by Jillian Sommer G2G6 Mach 1 (13.2k points)
+7 votes
I don't see it is as such a big deal, it even has a name, Pedigree Collapse.  Gedmatch even has a tool to check for it ;)  I'm related to one of my Revolutionary patriots by two of his daughters.  

My 4th great grandfather married his 1st cousin, who was also named for his mother.  His mother (her aunt) had a different last name, but I am constantly getting them confused!

Several families moved from SC to Alabama in the 1830s.  They married, had children, and those children married each other.  Those cousins end up marrying.  I knew by doing family research that my grandmother and grandfather were descendants of different sons of the same man. My grandfather's parents were also cousins.  So, when I used the tool on my daddy's DNA, it says "yup".
by Amanda Colburn G2G1 (1.6k points)
+10 votes
Inbreeding is extremely common in smaller populations. Examples include the initial settlers in Iceland, French Canada and New England.

If you're interested in a measure of the inbreeding in your family, check out the tool at  https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/nelson3486/brickwalls/ ..

This tool finds brickwalls, but also measures pedigree collapse. Pedigree collapse measures how much inbreeding  reduced the number of distinct ancestors in your family tree.

 For example, in one part of a family I’m researching,  “36.93% of ancestors are duplicates due to pedigree collapse.”

More than one or two cousins had to marry to get a number like that.
by Jim Wiborg G2G6 Mach 7 (75.5k points)
That's true.  For me it starts happening about the 10th generation out. Makes sense. Colonial populations were small in Quebec and in Mass/NH at the time.

I haven't counting all of the collapses. There's a fair bit in Quebec. But you know even Einstein married his cousin and it isn't like Game of Thrones. At least I hope not.
+8 votes
As an interesting twist:  sisters and brothers marry sisters and brothers.  

William m. Sophia B. his sister Anne m. Sophia's brother James;

Eliza Jane m. Ezekial Day; her sister Hanna m. Ezekial's brother Daniel;

Maybe people met at a wedding or dance?  Who knows?
by Janine Barber G2G6 Pilot (227k points)
That happened a lot in my early ancestors, too.
I have several cases of that in my family. My grandfather, Robert Franklin, his brother (William Edward), and a half-uncle (Robert T.) married the Profitt sisters.

My 3x grandfather and his brother married the Gorman sisters.  Eventually, the double first cousins, William and Malinda Alexander, married each other.

In the Hughey family, Christopher and his brother Allen married the Stinson sisters--Martha Jane and Sarah Ann.  Christopher's son Frederick married Allen's daughter, Sarah, about 1908.

Much earlier four of Robert Hugheys children married four of Martin Waggoner's children.
+6 votes
I have way too many, my family on Saint-Barthélemy married cousins all the time since there was only a few families that migrated there.

We have a saying on my Island back in the US Virgin Islands, if you have French roots you are cousins. Needless to say we do not date other people of French descent.
by Lynnette LaPlace G2G6 Mach 2 (24.1k points)
+4 votes
My dads parents are second cousins. My dad always told me all the Moore's in Kentucky are related. lol

My mom and her sister married brothers. I always thought that was interesting. I just wish I knew how they met.
by Dallace Moore G2G6 Pilot (154k points)
edited by Dallace Moore
+5 votes
My Grandfather Ruurd de Graaf  [[de Graaf-188| Ruurd de Graaf]] and  my Grandmother [[de Graaf-189|Antje de Graaf]].Ruurd and Antje were first cousins  there fathers [[[de Graaf-190|Hendrik de Graaf]] and [[de Graaf-191-Sjoerd de Graaf ]] were sibblins,most of the children of Ruurd and Antje were physically and mentally not very strong
by Enoch Stuivenberg G2G6 Mach 6 (68.0k points)
edited by Enoch Stuivenberg
+1 vote
For anyone fascinated by this topic, check out the Royal Egyptian Genealogy website, an exhaustively complete work on the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt (the family the famous Cleopatra was from): http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptolemies/ptolemies.htm

Any given member of this dynasty must surely have been among the most inbred individuals for whom good documentation exists. Ptolemy XI, for example, was the product of brother-sister incest, so instead of 4 grandparents he had two. Those two grandparents were themselves uncle and niece. Not only that, but Cleopatra III (Ptolemy XI's grandmother) was the product of yet another brother-sister marriage, and her husband, who was her uncle, was therefore the brother of BOTH her mother and father. So really, Ptolemy XI's entire ancestry stems from his great-great-grandparents, Ptolemy V and Cleopatra I. This makes the Spanish Habsburgs seem downright diverse.
by Jessica Key G2G6 Pilot (310k points)
Well now I’ve heard everything! I can’t help but wonder when and where in time things changed. Seems like a bizarre practice to us now, but I can only surmise it wasn’t at one time.
Egyptians practiced incest for a LONG time. A good friend of mine is an Egyptologist, but his focus is Roman Egypt (ie after Cleopatra, and waaaaaay after King Tut. As he puts it, he reads Greek and Latin, not heiroglyphics). Anyway, he told me about some ancient Egyptian court documents he was studying. Some Egyptian Joe Schmo had married his sister, divorced her, and then his sister/ex-wife and their kids continued living in the house with him and his new (unrelated) wife. I think the court case was over property or something. Just imagine how nasty and emotionally fraught a REGULAR divorce is, and then imagine it's your sibling you just divorced AND they're still living in your house. Awkward.

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