Damn it… I think my parents could be really really distantly related 🤦‍♀️

[Familyhistoryaddict33]

I only met my bio father last year, was never hard to find, just didn’t have a relationship, I took my mother’s name at birth. Parents are both from the same ish sort of area in southwest England. I know little about my fathers family history but the surname is really quite uncommon and originates back to a very small area and they kind of branched out over the decade/centuries.

anyway, I’ve found a 9 times great grandparent who has the same surname as my bio father and comes from the very same area they originate from meaning that it’s probable that there could be a genetic link between them.

I know that this would be very very small connection and pretty much insignificant but it still fascinates me regardless!

to add I have one ‘both sides’ match on ancestry however I have a lot of matches that are labelled maternal or paternal only but share matches on both sides, particularly really distant matches, so this may explain that!

Do you find it expensive buying winter hats for all three of your heads?!

Obviously that was a joke!

According to my uncle who is into genealogy, we have something like that in our family. Iirc it was cousins who moved to the UK from Ireland and didnt really keep in touch. Their kids both went to the same uni and ended up together, similar to the PP above no one realised until the families met pre wedding!

I also know someone who's half sister (same mum) got together with her half brother (same dad). Was quite a complicated way to grow up for her but the sister and brother had never met. They met coincidentally, and when they realised it was a bit weird for my friend but realistically, there was absolutely no problem with them getting together as there was no blood connection between them. She said that she wanted them to get married so she could get a card printed with "To my Brother and Sister on your Wedding Day" at moonpig or similar! We lost touch when she moved so I dont know if they did but the idea of that card really makes me laugh when I think of it!

It’s ok, OP. The parents of two of my cousins are related (third cousins, I think). Everyone knew when they got married.

‘Tis the large farming families, a century ago they were still having loads of kids and people would meet at Young Farmer’s, local dances, etc. and intermarry.

My Granny was told off as she went to university and brought a friend home to stay… and her brother fell for her. The family were concerned that he was marrying a “city girl” who knew nothing about farming.
It all turned out fine, of course, probably a good thing to expand the gene pool tbh. 🤣

I forget the finer details, but my mother is (obviously) my mother - and she's also something like my 2nd cousin X3 removed.

WTF?!!!! Why on earth did the 22 year old single (probably groomed, possibly raped) woman get twice the fine as the 56 year old married fornicator?!

ETA obviously I know why but thats really made me fucking angry.

Second cousins.

C'mon spill the genes

And she is?

This isn't unusual and 9 generations means they are unlikely to share much if any DNA.

Second cousins

I think there are far more very distant connections than you think. No one knows about them unless they go down this route. It's so far off that your grandchildren won't have 13 toes, don't worry!

Second cousins. There's an interesting and easy to understand Youtube video here that explains all the second cousins and once removed thing and how to work it out:

My aunty’s (married to dad’s brother) sister married her first cousin. It really freaks me out but they are still happily married today.
I think that if you go back a couple of generations, a lot of ‘line breeding’ (I’ll use the equestrian term!) occurred.

Oh thanks will check this out!

I found out that my ex mils half brother is my grandfather's nephew making him my second cousin (I think) on his mother's side but my exhs uncle on his father's side. I'm not related to exh at all

Given there are still villages where you can still do the single family tree of much of the village, this isn't very surprising. Going back 9 generations, there probably be loads of us with similar connections.

I can't tell you.

I went to primary school in a very small village v far away from almost anywhere, and my dad said that the names on the WW1 war memorial were the same as the ones on the school register, and I think he was right.

My parents are from neighbouring English counties and are distant cousins.

I very much agree. I did something similar to this for the village that my mother was born in (just outside of Gloucester). There are surnames there from the 1500s and 1600s that were still there in the mid 20th century.

(It's rather different now as there have been a lot of new homes built).

I can't trace any of my own ancestors there back to the 1500s but they were certainly there in the early 1600s (and my mum was born in the same village 300 years later).

In a previous post above I mentioned that I have 23 DNA matches on "Both sides". My Dad was born in Gloucester about 2 miles away from my mum.

When I looked at the parish register (I made a post about it here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/genealogy/5242337-some-more-handwriting-and-learning-not-to-trust-ancestry-transcriptions) the first entry really struck home to me about how long ago this was.

If anyone has seen the BBC show "Upstart Crow" with David Mitchell, this is the time period that we are talking about.

The first entry in the parish register says:

The Register booke of the pirshe [parish] of [Redacted, sorry I don't want to put on the internet where my mum was born] in the Countie of the citie of Glocester of all weddings christenings & burialls doone there from time to tyme seethense the xvii th daye of november in the first yeont [yeonc?] of the Raygne of our[?] Soveraine ladie queen Elizabeth & in anno dni 1558 as followeth
.

Due to my ancestors intermarrying over the generations, both my mum and dad have several DNA matches on Ancestry that are 9th or 10 cousins. The most distantly related cousin is an 11th cousin (although her side of the family does come from about 20 miles away).

I find genealogy to be very interesting.
It's too bad I'm the only one in my own family , DH & DC's, to be fascinated by it.

My late DM was also very interested, and I learned many years ago that my DM and DF were related.

My DMs great-grandmother was the sister of my DFs grandmother.

So my DPs were related through the two sisters.

On my DFs side I also thought it was interesting that my paternal grandmother and her sister became SILs to one another.

In other words two sisters married two brothers which I don't think is that uncommon.

One of the things I wish I had asked about when I had the chance, was how the two sisters, both from London, happened to get to know and marry two brothers from a family in the West Midlands, bearing in mind this was a quite a long time ago.

I've got so used to doing this, I can generally tell when a new match comes up whether they are British or American just from their name.

I can also tell roughly where many matches are likely to have roots just from the surname.

For example Rossiter is a very south west (Cornwall /Devon area) name. Or Corkhill will generally indicate a link to the Isle of Man. Warburton is an example where it is recognised that pretty much anyone with the surname can be traced back to a single village with the same name eventually.

There's loads of other examples which I find keep cropping up. It's endlessly fascinating imo.

We perhaps know this better with Scottish surnames and clan backgrounds but the same is also very true of more surnames with 'English roots' (I use this loosely because many surnames came across in various waves of migration and settled in small areas before spreading out.more widely).

Over time we are likely to see similar patterns with new surnames that have travelled to the UK and settled in particular small areas.

It's fascinating and I'm expecting this to be largely reflected in the next Ancestry update which is due in the next month.

Do tell!

Thanks, this has been very interesting to read.

"Warburton is an example where it is recognised that pretty much anyone with the surname can be traced back to a single village with the same name eventually."

In a similar vein, my maternal grandmother was a Stinchcombe and, likewise, pretty much everyone with that name can be traced back to the village with the same name which is half way between Gloucester and Bristol.

But I also have other family names that crop up all the time as well, Like Clutterbuck and Rodway. The Clutterbucks originally come from the village of Berkeley, about four miles away from Stinchcombe (although it is also said that the descent is from Dutch immigrants of that name, who were weavers, who settled in the area around Berkeley in the 1400s).
.

"I can generally tell when a new match comes up whether they are British or American just from their name."

Again, that's really interesting to hear. The nearest I can get with that is when there are particular names in their family tree.

For example, overall out of 270 DNA matches that I have traced (for context, both of my parents have their DNA on Ancestry) the split by country was:

UK 60%
USA 16%
Canada 11%
Australia 6.5%
New Zealand 6.5%

However, where I mentioned Stinchcombe above, I've found that if anybody has that name in their tree then it is roughly a 50/50 chance that they are in the USA (even though only 16% of all matches I've traced are in the USA).

This goes back to some distant relations who left Gloucestershire in the 1600s for the sunny climes of Maryland and who later bred like rabbits (and also intermarried a lot as well).

Likewise, my dad had some relations who became Mormons and left Gloucestershire for Utah in the 1860s. Today, if there is anyone who comes up with a particular surname in their tree and/or lives in Utah then I know exactly how we are related.

Oooo interesting to hear you have been tracing back all your matches! I thought I was one of the few doing this.

DH has 320 linked matches. (His mum has 242)
My Mum has 181 and my Dad 389. I've not been able to trace as many for my Mum simply because she has irish ancestry and its not so easy to trace the family.

Its interesting to see the split you have by country. I haven't done that, but I'm intrigued now. I think there's a lot of US and Canadian matches particularly for my Dad.

I've found Mormon connections for all of them, and they are a massive headache to trace!!! There's plenty of Mormon names that are dead easy to spot.

I would if I could but I can't. Don't want the DM on my tail.