Why would siblings marry members of the same family?

[geneee]

I have four siblings in my family tree who each marry members of the same family. Two girls marry two brothers. Then the other two girls marry first cousins of those brothers. This is about 1800, lower middle class family.

All those years ago, it could have been to do with ensuring that land or property stayed in the family, or if they lived in a very rural area with a small population, a shortage of other potential spouses. Also possible that many young women didn't necessarily get much choice in the matter.

Probably to keep the money in the families, if they had any money

If you are back to the 1820s - 1890s it is really quite commonplace for first cousins to marry, especially amongst families that emigrated (I have one instance of this) also it is normalish to have a man marry a girl, and his sister to marry his wife's brother. It causes a bit of head-scratching on the family tree (ancestry) front as ALL of their children from both marriages have half the normal number of grandparents (and probably gene pool) but it happens. What makes it more infuriating (ancestry) is if your ancestors have 7 or 8 children each in the same-ish period and call them all the same names - mine is an absolute buggers muddle in this regard. Reasons given above are logical - keeping their land, limited choice. HTH

I don't thtink the OP was talking about first cousin marriage. She was talking about siblings from one family marrying siblings or cousins (not their own) from another.

Maybe they thought they were good looking
Why does anyone marry anyone?

(I do see your point but... Maybe the second sister just liked the second brother)

My husband's family has this in the 1900s. It was in London so don't think it was a small population thing.
On one side of that line there are a few cousin marriages too. Still in London and no obvious reasons - just more socially acceptable back then I guess?

I don't think it's that uncommon. My Gran's sister married my Grandad's brother - so two sisters married two brothers. I think people tended to stay in one place more often in the past and so the amount of people they met and socialised with was limited. My Grandparents came from a very small village in N Ireland and were very poor - they didn't travel at all until they emigrated to England as adults.

This.
Nobody is talking about marrying someone you are a blood relative of - that is a VERY different scenario.

My mother knows a brother and sister who married a sister and brother. It wouldn't suit me, I don't think.

Met them at the wedding and liked them? Two of my siblings are married to siblings, and another is married to my husband’s sibling.

In the 1800's the marriage pool would have been geographically limited and based on who was unmarried.

Cities weren't the size they are and many didn't exist yet.

Siblings who were close in age probably had a better chance of marriage if they found another set of siblings close in age as more likely to be single

Thank god for transport,the internet and large cities.

Isn't it acceptable now? First cousin marriage is perfectly legal in the UK, and not exactly unknown, I'd have thought. That being said, I was talking to a Sikh woman I work with, and said 'I wouldn't fancy marrying my cousin because my uncle and aunt would become my in-laws' and she said 'This conversation is making me uncomfortable'. Albert Einstein married Elsa Lowenthal, who was his first cousin on his mother's side as well as his second cousin on his father's side. Just Googled, and was surprised to see that (Carl) Giles, the cartoonist. married his first cousin. Also Christopher Robin Milne.

It was common practice for young ladies not to go out on a date without a chaperone and often a sister would accompany them and then she would be introduced to the brother of her sisters date and they would go out as a foursome.

In 1800, a lower middle class woman would rarely, if ever, journey further than a mile or two away from home. There weren't any trains. They wouldn't have been able to afford travel by horse / carts, plus mostly no reason to go anywhere else. So, the options for potential husbands were limited to whoever lived nearby.

I had to abandon tracing a couple of branches of my family history in the early 1800s when my research had got me a far as Church records and I discovered literally dozens of families with the same surname and the same few first names as the family I was following, all living in quite a small geographical area. I had absolutely no way of knowing which of the multiple James and Hannah Bloggs' were my James and Hannah but I presume they were all related in some way anyway as their world was so much smaller than ours and inter marriage much commoner.
I would imagine that for better off families there was even less choice of suitable partners than for my farm labourer ancestors as there would be not only geographical limitations but class restrictions too. At least there were plenty of farm workers! I would guess that if say the doctor and the vicar in an area had children of marriageable age then they'd best hope they liked each other as there probably weren't a lot more options for what would be considered a suitable match.

I have quite a few cases in my tree of two or three sisters marrying brothers from another family.

And I found an even odder one recently: two step-siblings who married.

They weren't blood relations: the wife was the child of her father's first marriage (her mother died), and the husband was the child of his mother's first marriage (his father died). They would have been brought up together, though, which makes it seem a bit icky.

Could be worse my grandads sister married a man and had several children, but when that man died she then married his brother....

It used to be quite common for a widower to marry his sister-in-law, because he'd be looking for someone to bring up his children while he was at work.

At one time there was a law that said a man couldn't marry his deceased wife's sister, but it was eventually repealed; not till 1907 though.

Two of my great aunts married two brothers in the seventies. My dgm also has a double cousin and they were born in the thirties. Just in the same social circle I assume and nothing odd about it.

One of my ancestors married his deceased wife's sister. It was a church but not legal marriage.

I know siblings who have done this a few years back.

So siblings A and B, have married siblings C and D. There is a 10 year age gap between the couples though. The younger sibling couple say that they were introduced by the older sibling couple.

I think in rural areas with a small population women had to marry, Couldn’t earn enough money on their own. I suppose you married the person in your social class that you liked or at least disliked the least!

in Pride & Prejudice, Lizzy is encouraged to marry her cousin as he’ll inherit the estate on her fathers death.

Siblings marrying siblings is possibly more common than one might initially think, for reasons outlined by pp.

It might be 'messier' in terms of knowing each other's business or if you split up, but it will have it's plus sides too.

It's entirely different than first cousins marrying each other, often a risky business in terms of increased likelihood of inherited conditions/disabilities.

"At one time there was a law that said a man couldn't marry his deceased wife's sister, but it was eventually repealed; not till 1907 though."

It's a bit more nuanced than that. The Marriage Act 1835 said that a marriage of close relatives was automatically "void" and not just "voidable". Also, it only applied to England & Wales - not Scotland.

Before 1835, if there was a marriage of close relatives then the case would have to go to the Ecclesiastical Court who would decide on the matter. They would decide if the marriage should be voided (ie was not legally binding). But this often took a long time.

So, in 1835 Parliament decided that every marriage of close relatives would automatically be "void". What this means is that the marriage is not legally binding and is treated as though it never happened:

"And be it further enacted, That all Marriages which shall hereafter be celebrated between Persons within the prohibited Degrees of Consanguinity or Affinity shall be absolutely null and void to all Intents and Purposes whatsoever."

So, they could choose to marry if they wish, but the wedding would be meaningless from any legal or church point of view.

"...a man couldn't marry his deceased wife's sister ...not till 1907 though."

The opposite of this, that a woman couldn't marry her deceased husband's brother was only altered in 1921. The Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act 1921 was a response to all the deaths in the First World War to encourage remarriages - also, incidentally, reducing the war widows pensions and seeking to increase the birth rate.

I will say no more on my thoughts about that!

These two Acts (the brother's and sister's acts) were then repealed by the Marriage Act 1949.

That had a whole long list of rules about which marriages were void and which weren't.

For example, whilst marrying your first cousin was (and is) fine, it was "void" if you married your FIL or your daughter's husband (presumably ex-husband?) or if your DM remarried and then after that you married that guy that would also be void.

This has been updated by various Acts since then and it was only in 2007 that the whole thing about not getting married to your FIL or son in law got repealed.

My fathers little sister married my.mothers big brother.

When their sons had their children genetically I have as much in common with their children as I do with my niece. However they are my cousins once removed.