Cousins, In Search of (Day #3 of A to Z Blogging Challenge)

Cousins

Cousins are different beautiful flowers in the same garden. - Unknown

One of my various interests includes genealogy. My interest started pretty young. When I was sixth grade, my teacher said that we had to find out, if we could, where our ancestors came from. My mom told me at the time that I am one-half Dutch, one-eighth Danish, one-eighth English, one-eighth German and one-eighth Swiss. (I found out later that she was mostly right. Mixed into my English line is some German ancestry, and mixed into my Dutch ancestry is probably some French, etc.) She also informed me that my great-great-great-grandfather was a captain for the North in the Civil War.

When I was finishing up my MLIS, my younger brother had to write a paper for his college history class on the reasons why his ancestors immigrated to the United States. I was intrigued (and would have love such an assignment!) and started helping him research. That was when I discovered that there was a very active world out there of people searching for their ancestors online! This was in 1999. A few people put their trees out there - for free - for our (mostly) British line . . . and what intrigued my mother was that she could become a member of the Wintrop Society - for descendants of those who were first settlers of the Massuchusetts Bay Colony! (With the same line that eventually produced not only us, but my brother's future brother-in-law about 12 generations later.) I also emailed with a woman in Arizona (a place I'd never been) who is my 3rd Cousin 2x Removed. She was researching some of the same information I was, and we pooled some of it. The funny thing is, we lost touch after a while - and it was probably due to her health, in retrospect. I also forgot that she lived Tucson! I moved here with my husband for his career while she was still alive. I could have tried to go visit her. As it was, she died a month before my son was born two years ago. I suppose I could look up her family, but that might seem strange to them, unless I make it a point that I was a genealogy contact of hers.

Off and on for years, as I find the time, I look up descendants of various great-great-greats-something grandparents. Most of them had more than one child, and I must admit to like to knowing how many people as possible are related to me, to my son, to my nieces and nephews, etc. So, I am often cousin-hunting online.

One place I do this is the Sheboygan Press (and occasionally other papers) online. The obituaries, and sometimes engagement announcements, are a great place to track down cousins. . . especially if it is a place where it would seem half of the people could be related to you! Sheboygan County is where the majority of my Dutch ancestors settled after their journey from the Netherlands in the mid to late 1800s. This is also the case for a portion of my German ancestors (the other German lines of mine were in Indiana and New York). I check the obituaries for Sheboygan County every few days, and always look at the maiden names of the mothers of the deceased persons as well. Every month or so, I always find at least one distant cousin, if not more.

Recently, one of the young (quite young) couples listed in the Engagements section of the Press stood out - their surnames stood out. I did some investigation, and it turns out that not only are they both my cousins, but they are something like 4th cousins of each other. That is why, when my husband and I got married in Sheboygan County a few years ago, we were asked if we knew we might knowingly be first cousins - before we would be issued a marriage license! Back in the day (in the 1890s on my mom's side in fact), first cousins did marry in the county, and with so many other intermarriages over the years, it could still happen, I suppose! (Legally, now, people must be no closer than second cousins, in Wisconsin. That still seems very strange to me, though. That would be like my son marrying one of his second cousins who live across the country, and it would be very awkward to say the least.)

I have several first cousins . . . and it would have been very strange to marry one of them. I have been trying to understand why, for instance, my great-great-grandmother married her first cousin who was also my great-great-grandfather. They had grandparents in common. I know that it was something that was done in the area they were from in the Netherlands, and maybe it was also done out of convenience, but I would like to hope that there was some love there, too, between them. They had four children (three girls, one boy) who all went on to have quite a number of children, and so on. I know of most of the descendants - 1st cousins once removed, 2nd cousin, 2nd cousins once removed, etc.

As I am in the world, I often look at the people around me, each of us in our own thoughts, and wonder how we might be related.