Having a child with your uncle by marriage

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

Is this technically incest when there's no blood link and the uncle married into the family? I can imagine raised eyebrows and gossip at the very least.

No it's not me or anyone I know. it's a genealogy puzzle from 1865.

It's not incest. Incest is a relationship with a close blood relative (biological parent, sibling, aunt or uncle).

Incest requires a blood relationship doesn't it? An uncle by marriage is not a blood relative so it wouldn't be incest.
Just really really inappropriate.

Not incest but very messed up and weird!!

You don't know the half of it! I'm enjoying myself immensely with this whole story but it's tragic and sad what ensued.

Sounds intriguing, can you link to the background please? If this happened today tjrn the uncle could be accused of grooming. It's a bit like when woody Allen married his step daughter, not technically incest but a morally inappropriate situation.

genealogy puzzle from 1865

it was much more common 100+ years ago. Even now in some countries, it's the duty of other male relatives to marry their brother's/son's/nephew's widow to look after her, especially if she has children.

I wouldn't call it incest and it wasn't seen as such historically. I have people in my family tree who married wife's niece or cousin, that kind of thing, in 1800s. I'm thinking of Vargas Llosa who married his aunt, causing some scandal. Still just weird, not incest.

I can't really as it's some work I'm doing for someone. Briefly the girl was working at a farm owned by her aunt and husband. She later had a child with someone else and then married and had two children. The husband killed her after years of domestic violence and jealousy. The child with her uncle was six when this happened so would be aware and probably have a hard time growing up. She was brought up by her grandparents, married but her husband died young and she remarried a publican. She drank too much and she and second husband died in their early 50s, this was in the 1920s. One of her sons fathered a son with a local girl. They both married other people and neither seemed to want him so the child was brought up by aunt and uncle and this son grew up damaged, inflicting that on his own wife and kids. One of those kids is my subject's mum.

Sins of the fathers or what!