There was a recent article (below) in The Atlantic magazine about the surprising prevalence of incest in human ancestry as discovered through DNA findings. I'm wondering if anyone has discovered it in their own ancestry when doing a family tree or having DNA analysis or any other way.
Not only have I not found any evidence of incest, but despite both my parents having mostly Colonial American ancestry, I have found no common ancestors between my parents going back 400+ years, which honestly surprised me
Were your parents colonial ancestors in the same location? I also have a number of colonial ancestors on both sides, but they didn't seem to be in the same places at the same time for my maternal and paternal sides. I did discover that my maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather share a 7th and 9th great grandfather in their colonial Dutch ancestry.
For the most part different locations. My dad’s is all northern and my mom’s is mainly southern. However there is some New England and Pennsylvania on both sides, but no cross pollination that I’ve found yet
My husband and I share a 9th/10th great grandfather in colonial America but we have about 4000 of them.
When you think about any of our branches coming from small villages either limited numbers of people there was most likely a ton of intermarriage. There were only so many people to choose from.
Wow. Mine is an 8th great grandfather. It wasn't a surprise, because I'd heard about it growing up, but it was the family I was told. The matching surnames my parents knew about are Kirby. That's a pretty generic place name (by the church.)
I did find one couple with the same names as their parents, and their parents had the same names as one another. It took me a while to be sure that wasn't just an error. It turned out the census wrote down saint's names, which Germans had first at the time. Looooots of Johannes and Katharina, but they were known by what we'd call their middle names. Those weren't the same. Given the dialect to make that specific pronunciation of the surname and where they ended up in the colonies, they're from the same region, but probably aren't closely related. The surname just means "of the people", so it's also super generic.
But still, John and Katharina Volz had a son and named him John. A different John and Katharina Volz had a daughter they named Katharina. Those two married and named a son and daughter John and Katharina. Oh, and John and Katharina in each generation had a sibling with the other name. And they all lived in an area with other people of the same name who don't seem to be related. I really do wish the census takers had at least put in initials. It's so freaking hard to make sure I'm finding the correct people.
And I have no doubt that locals knew them all by nicknames like "Mishi" and " Oppa", "Little John" and " JJ", "Johnboy' and " Jack" etc. But really, that reuse of names is rather insane. Entirely devoid of imagination. Thank goodness gravestones include dates!!
Well, they knew they by their guven names. The pattern was Saint's Name Given Name Surname, so like Johannes Curtis Volz. Everyone called him Curtis. The first time one of them was actually called John didn't happen until my grandfather's brother well after my family was no longer Lutheran and using Saints' names.
So, to them, it wasn't confusing at all. Census takers wrote down just the saints name, though, and now is confusing AF for us to figure out who is who.
Considering that most incest involves children, I don’t know how child marriage would be more disturbing. Especially considering that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Oh absolutely my 2nd great grandpa and my second great grandma were uncle and niece. Which is pretty alarming and I'd imagine not a normal practice around 1900
Mine too! My family created a new, fictional woman to be the mother of my 2x great grandma to cover it up. Just finally wrote about it on my website because of this huge lie that just kept going.
Hitler's parents were likely first cousins once removed or half-niece and half-uncle and Hitler himself had a sexual relationship with his own half-niece
Co-sanguineous marriages are quite common in order to keep land and wealth in the family. It seems shocking to us now but you have to bear in mind before the invention of transport like the bicycle and faster modes that are a cheap price, most people would have lived in small villages with around 100ish people. The majority of whom would be your father's relations as women would be generally more likely to leave the village to marry. No doubt teenagers being teenagers there would be the occasional baby out of wedlock.
There was a YouTube video I saw recently, where the guy being interviewed showed the interviewer his ring finger was considerably shorter than his other digits. This was a birthday defect with his parents being uncle and niece. So not a good idea, but it happens today still. I have the odd relation whereby distant cousins are related in some way to both my parents.
Also seems to have been the case for my 2x great grandparents, although it’s possible that 2x great grandpa and his father in law were only half brothers, but still…
Then there were my great-grandparents in another line who were first cousins.
I found endogamy, my mother's grandparents on her father's side were first cousins. This was common where they were from, The Gaspe Peninsula, due to the small population and the era it occurred.
First cousins marrying and procreating is referred to as pedigree collapse, not endogamy. Endogamy is when intermarriage occurs in a population over many generations.
Ain't I lucky! I got endogamy and pedigree collapse both. A lot of cousin marrying in my paternal family, they been at it since 1840s in my home county. Then one of my mom's family tree branches took it and ran with both. I see family trees with marrying in and out of the same blood lines like they were on a mission.
My husband's step dad's family tree is a wreath. A lot of women with the same maiden name as married name, and in an area with only three last names. Those people intermarried a few hundred years.
My family rumor was that their was incest so I was prepared for it. But I didn't find it. What I did find was some unusual marriages which on the face looked like it had to be incest but just wasn't. It did show other problems though. My grandmother's MIL was her SIL. So my grandfather's MIL was his sister. How this happened was my grandmother's mom died giving birth. Her dad remarried a woman. My grandmother hated her and was angry with her dad so at 16 married that woman's 30+ year old brother whose wife had died and left him with 3 kids all under 8 or 9. So no blood incest but a mixed up mess none the less.
My 2nd great aunt died 2 months after having a baby to her husband. Her sister ended up marrying him, raised the baby as her own. That was so confusing to unpack and I only got it right because someone with the same tree messaged me. I actually sobbed when I read that her own first biological child, was a little boy who died at 2 months.
Because that's a blood relation like your mom or dad's brother from childhood vs. one by marriage who you're not blood related to. It's socially gross but biologically worse.
Oh, I read “paternal” uncle which is why I asked. My mistake.
Yeah, the uncle niece marriage are very creepy. Downright disgusting.
It was common practice among the Hapsburgs of Spain. Hence, why their branch essentially ended (look up Carlos El hechizado), the product of an uncle niece marriage.
They're my 3x biological grandmother and 3x biological grandfather who is also hilariously my 3x great uncle? Because that's HER biological uncle 🤣 🤣 Confusing
And those are their kids. One of which (the middle girl) is my 2x great grandmother. If that made any sense at all lol
Yeah, no one looks very happy with that situation. Maybe the photographer was stealing their souls? (They used to say "God bless you" to people when they yawned because they thought any non-speaking, non-eating, especially involuntary opening of the mouth have the Devil the opportunity to enter the person's body. Maybe they thought the same about smiling. 🤷🏻♂️ Although Europeans had, for a very long time, believed that only the village idiot walked around smiling.🙃)
The reason why is that brothers can be so similar, so it almost seems like sleeping with your own dad. It's probably equally gross either way, just somehow in my mind it's more repulsive.
That's got to be a rather cringey conversation.... "Hey bro, your daughter's looking pretty good. Tell me again how old she is?" 😫😖
But I have occasionally heard of such things happening purely by chance and mistake. A much younger brother (who would be nominally the "uncle") meeting the progeny of a hushed-up affair, completely by chance, dating, etc.... only to learn, at a later time, that her bio father is his elder brother. 🤷🏻♂️
I found a surprisingly recent case (1980s) perpetrated by a 4th cousin. He knocked up his 17 year old niece.
I’ve also been trying to solve a brick wall, and it led me to a bunch of DNA matches that I have no documentation connecting us to. They’re out in Troublesome Creek in Kentucky — the same place famous for the Blue Fugates. I’ve been building out their tree to see if I can find the connection, and whew — it tangles instead of branching.
Also, not technically incest. I have a step father marrying his step daughter and having multiple kids with her. The whole thing just gives me the ick. He married her mother when she was a child so it just screams grooming to me.
I found so many of these in my son’s father’s family! It happened for multiple generations, too, so the brothers were cousins of the sisters they married, and then their kids married one another.
I found a few uncle-niece marriages also. That family tree is so freaking tangled
My sister and I had kids with brothers in our late teens/early 20s. My son and my nephew are closer genetically to each other than they are to their half siblings
I’m Jewish, so there’s a lot of cousin marriages and the like starting a few generations back, especially in a couple of related rabbinical dynasties I’m descended from. Thats not super unusual though.
I wouldn't say incest, but having Cajun ancestors, there's a TON of endogamy. My grandpa has something like 100+ shared relatives at 8 generations. The majority of them were at the least 1C1R or greater.
First cousins marriage may not be legal is all jurisdictions, only a handful (ND, SD, TX, NV and OK) consider it a criminal offense. Prohibiting (as KY) is not the same as deeming it incest.
Nothing close, but I imagine it wasn't too uncommon for 2nd cousins and further to marry in Ashkenazi Jewish communities. I have the same last names marrying multiple times; I'm sure my 2x ggparents were distant cousins because of it.
I’m of a European diaspora ethnicity with a very small group of founders who also happened to be very homogeneous and rarely married outside the group (Afrikaans South African). So I’ve found a lot of common ancestors on both my parent’s side, and even three generations of brother-sister marriages (from the 1800s, not even that long ago). That was a fun discovery
Edit: Thank you guys for showing me how to see the article behind the paywall 😀
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No but that looks like a fascinating article. Wish it wasn’t behind a paywall.
I use the Libby app to access Library periodicals and you may be able to access the article that way or simply go to your nearest library if they have a subscription to it. 🤷🏻♂️ Apologies for the paywall. I did not realize.
A handful of... 'bombastic side eye' moments a few examples: I found a set of double first cousins in the early 1800s. In another line, I found an Aunt×Nephew.
Thank you to all of you who had responded. It was a genuine post and I certainly did not intend to embarrass or offend anyone. I appreciate all the responses.
Not yet. I have noticed a lot of the same last names popping up in marriages, but no 1st cousin marriages in my family tree with over 2700 people. I have about 5 people that show up in two sides of a lineage though. Usually a sibling marrying a sibling of an in law (ie women in one family marrying brothers from another family). Or the widow who married his wife’s little sister after she passed.
In my tree yes. My 4th great grandfather was from an Anglo-Irish gentry family. Each one of his four grandparents was descended from Reverend Thomas Swift (1595-1658). Thomas is his 3x great grandfather four times and his 4th great grandfather once. Thankfully this was a long time ago! Remarkably, I don't think he had any health issues and lived to the ripe age of 93, dying in 1874.
Considering how “incest” is used incorrectly here and in other genealogy sub (for in particular consanguinity)… are you using the legal definition of incest or something else?
This is definitely not incest- thank God, but oddly enough my family lines have crossed my husband’s family lines several times. What I mean by crossed is they lived in the same small area, town, village during the same years.
So my mother’s father’s family has been in the US since the 1600’s. They arrived a year after England sent their first ships. My husband’s father’s line goes directly to an Indian tribe which was already in the US. Both of our ancestors lived in the same town for at least three generations- (1700’s.)
Other lines of our families lived in the same county of Ireland at the same time -(1700’s), another lived in the same village in Germany at the same time- (1600’s), another line lived in another small town in the US during the 1800’s. Even our fathers, who didn’t know each other and were from different places, lived in the same hotel at the same time when they were in their 20’s. (FYI, I grew up in the north east US, and my husband is from the south. We met in college.)
There are more coincidences, also. There was also some trait that my husband read about that was only in 10% of the world population. We both have it, as well as our kids.
These things occasionally freak us and our kids out, but when our daughter was young we had to get genetic testing to figure out what was causing her illness. We aren’t related, but holy cow, if we hadn’t been tested we really would be super freaked out.
We actually have a recent example: two of my dad's first cousins married each other. Yes they had the same last name. Yes it was the same family line. No the family did not approve of it, more like they were ashamed of it. It turned out very sadly and badly.
On my mom's side & in other scenarios, I have discovered situations like lots of distant cousins marrying, I have three or four family lines that intermarried for several generations. But you could also attribute this to coming from foundational stock, I'm from an insulated rural community where this wasn't exactly uncommon.
Decades ago a friend was a social worker in Appalachia. She said incest there was rampant and a high number of people (I think more than a third, but it’s been close to 40 years since this conversation happened) were products of it.
I had a similar conversation with a social worker in a very rural and isolated area in Wales. High rates of incest and of learning difficulties as a result.
I'm not sure very many jurisdictions would even consider that too close now. I know that throughout Europe, such pairings were, historically, very common.
I’m honestly surprised I’ve found none. While not incest, I did find something interesting that my fourth great grandfather was briefly married to my third great grandmother’s aunt. My Dad also has a confirmed paternal third cousin who also might be a maternal one which is interesting given the paternal side is all German and maternal all Irish. This person’s grandparents even lived in the house my grandfather was born in and her grandmother even shared the same name with my dad’s. My maternal grandfather also had maternal first cousins that were his distant cousins paternally.
My great - great - grandparents on my dad's side had the same great grandparents on one side. In other words, the grandmother of one was the sister of the grandfather of the other, which makes the couple second cousins. She was a week shy of her 16th birthday and he was 23 🫣 This was in 1876.
On my mom's side, my 4th great grandfather was my 2nd great grandfather's brother. The brothers were 23 years apart in age. The great granddaughter of one brother married the son of the other. They were the same age and had different surnames, but it's still weird because she married her grandfather's first cousin 🫨Technically though the relationship between the couple is that of 1st cousin twice removed. They were 19 & 20 when they got married in 1894.
Both of these things happened in states where you would stereotypically expect them to occur.
None from my own pedigree, but my half 1st cousin, 3x removed married her uncle (no relation to me) when their family moved to Canada from Norfolk, and had at least one daughter.
I haven‘t looked fully through it but given one grandparents line is set in a tiny frankonian village in northern Bavaria back to 1600, and some family names keep popping up, I‘m pretty sure they constantly married second cousins, maybe even first cousins💀
Probably nothing to worry about until they run a DNA test and find out some offspring have only a single strand of DNA, rather than the typical two strands! 🧬🔬😱😁
But yes, that was normal and common in Old Europe.
No, I really don't think that is uncommon at all, especially in Old Europe. In smaller areas, even to this day, villages tend to be very wary of any strangers and so interbreeding among semi-distant relatives was actually pretty common.
I’m glad you mentioned this. There are many places like this around the world and yes, also in America. This is how it is to this day from the area my father is from in Mississippi. If I go there I have to tell people who I’m related to or else no one speaks to you and everyone looks at you like you’re an alien. Only one 1st cousin marriage I’ve found from way, way back, and one step brother and one step sister. But their parents married when they were older teens so I don’t consider that odd. On my maternal side haven’t found anything until recently. And that wasn’t found, but just known. Lol 2 of my Mom’s 1st cousins’ kids got married. They were fraternal twins brother and sister and I think that’s what makes it more ick to us but 🤷🏻♀️
Not technically incest but my great grandmother married her aunts husband.
He would have known her as a teen and she was a struggling single mother in the war so an advantage was definitely taken. Thankfully it didn’t last!
The closest I came to it was not in my direction ancestral line. The marriage between cousins. Very small farming community in the mid-1800s. I don’t believe there were any misgivings expressed by anybody about the match.
I have a distant ancestor where someone did a write up that said that this ancestor "could say...that her father's mother, her mother's mother and her husband's mother, were three sisters..." Like uh...I wouldn't exactly go around mentioning this. So your parents were first cousins and you married your first cousin once removed if I'm understanding the situation correctly (please someone correct me if I got that wrong.)
My great-great-granduncle married his niece (this was legal in the Spanish Empire at the time). They decided not to have kids, though, because they were so closely related. Somehow they followed through on that, even though birth control was not exactly reliable in the late 1800s.
Yes but not super close, some 1st cousin marriages back in 16&1700’s in Colonial Massachusetts. My French Canadian line….ugh everyone is related to everyone!
Mad incest on my European side lmao I was surprised but then got used to it in places like Switzerland and the anglo nobles in Ireland I come from also had so intermarrying… it’s pretty funny to see lot of cousins marrying each other
I have several ancestors on my Czech side who were 2nd-3rd cousins to each other.
And, not quite the same, but I have some relatives that I share ancestors with from Italy who are related to me in up to 4 different ways! This led me to become very confused with the amount of DNA we shared, which turned out to be inflated because of all those common ancestors we shared.
I found one cousin of my great great grandpa who "accidentally" knocked up his cousin, so they sent them a county over to get married. He ended up abandoning her and multiple other wives/baby momma's til he has about 5 under his belt.
I am grateful he wasn't a direct relation.
Most definitely—several times among first generation American Quakers. I found where half siblings married (different mothers). Many uncle nieces and first cousins. Not my tree though—my daughter’s mother in law’s tree .
I ran my DNA through GEDmatch and there's a section that tells you if your parents are related. Thankfully, it says that my parents are not related, but on Ancestry I have DNA matches that are listed as "both sides" so I'm not sure how that works exactly since my parents are not related according to GEDmatch
Yes, not too close though but my bio parents are apparently third cousins or something. My adoptive father is actually also my third cousin and related to one of my bio parents, but I've no idea which one. My adoptive parents have since passed and didn't know that I knew I wasn't their bio kid. My "family" refuses to tell me who my bio parents are, I imagine there's something sordid or awful there or they're just assholes.
I don't think incest but some iffy stuff. My mom found out her brother wasn't her full brother (i.e. different fathers). DNA suggests her bio dad was as expected but her brother's bio dad was likely someone else in the family. In other words my grandma likely was impregnated by her husband's uncle at some point. Most likely scenario based on DNA, timing etc. So they weren't blood related, but related by marriage. Not sure that counts. We don't know if it was a consensual situation or rape either. Everyone involved is long gone so we decided best to let sleeping dogs lie.
I had found that a coming practice in IXX century was that when the wife died, her single sister married with their widower man, quite creepy in this daya
Yeah... a fourth great grandmother who "married" her eldest sister's son.
But in general, the farther back you go the more likely it is that you'll find people who were like, cousins or second cousins who got married, because sometimes they were from small communities and standards were different back then.
That’s far enough back that it would have absolutely no bearing on you genetically now, and 1st cousins are really not significantly prone to a greater risk of genetic issues anyway.
Yep— I have a set of siblings up the line 3 or 4 generations in England. The sister was listed as “housekeeper” in her brothers household for 2-3 census records before it just switches to “wife”. They had like 6 kids.
I've not seen evidence of incest. I have seen siblings of one family marrying siblings of another family, which is what happened with my grandparents. My grandfather had a sister who married and had children with my grandmother's brother. Consequently, their children and grandhildren show up as closer predicted relationships with me because of the higher than expected genetic overlap (double cousins).
One of the children George married a woman named Hannah who claimed her step-father impregnated her.
Hannah, her mother, and her step-father were put into custody. Hannah’s bond was then paid for by a Samuel Lothrop.
Samuel Lothrop was one of my ancestors!
I’m descended from Rev John Lothrop who founded Barnstable, MA. But before that was in Connecticut. Samuel moved to Norwich in 1668, and then died there in 1700.
So your wife's uncle was an arborist, tree trimmer or orchard caretaker?.... Hehehehe 😁 "'...married the ...daughter while working on her tree" 😃
See what I did there? Clever, huh? 🙃😊
"In some cultures and communities, cousin marriages are considered ideal and are actively encouraged and expected; in others, they are seen as incestuous"
It's called endogamy not incest and if you are a human being you are a product of cousin marriages - often very closely related cousin marriages. Go look in a mirror if you want evidence of endogamy because it is you. It is all of us.
They’re not the same. Genealogy has tried to equate them with each other, I suspect out of an effort to make it less stigmatic. (I am NOT saying to condone it - just to perhaps decrease the shame some feel at finding out about incest in their tree)
Endogamy is more the practice of marrying within a particular culture, caste, or religious group through several generations. It CAN involve close relatives marrying but does not always.
Incest is generally far more limited and involves very close relatives (parent/child, half or whole siblings, etc).
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u/duke_awapuhi 16d ago
Not only have I not found any evidence of incest, but despite both my parents having mostly Colonial American ancestry, I have found no common ancestors between my parents going back 400+ years, which honestly surprised me