cousins marrying cousins

Does anyone think its too much of a coincidence that so many of my uncles and aunts married their 1st cousins. Like Uncle Morrie and Aunt Goldie, Uncle Sam and Aunt Jennie, Uncle Al and Aunt Ann and Uncle Morris married his 2nd cousin Aunt Celia.. Are there any others I missed? Is this normal for a Jewish family? Just wondering. Gerry Rowan

my father used to say 'marry the girl next door to you rather than the one across the street', ie, the closer they are to you in culture, thinking, the fewer problems you'll have later on. he wasn't a proponent on cousins intermarrying, but that could be the answer to your question

I have a great uncle who married his niece. Talk about scandal!
That was on the Serphadic side of the family. I haven't found any on the Askenazi side ....yet

That was the standard practice in my family and other Jewish families in Eastern Europe for centuries it seems. If not first cousin, then some sort of cousin. It continued when they came to America, albeit less.

My great grandfather was the son of Chava Margolis. He married the granddaughter of Issac Margolis, Chava Margolis' brother.

Chava Margolis' cousin Hinde Bernstein married her first cousin Issac Margolis (another Issac Margolis). Hinde's mother was Kaila Margolis, sister to Issac's father, Elijah Margolis. You stumble over cousin marriages left and right in a Margolis family tree.

Not only the Jewish culture had/has a substantial amount of cousin marriage.

For example, my Swiss-American side had four or five different families in one area of Ohio for a hundred or so years, and there is more cousin marriage than I can count.

Yes, also true for my early American WASP ancestors that they married cousins. Private User and I have been talking about the intermarriages in Connecticut / Massachusetts in the small settlements.

I found an instance of cousins marrying cousins on one side of my family many generations back. The families lived in a remote area in the Northeast, so I guess there was 'slim pickings'.

And we didn't even mention my Appalachian mountains ancestors!

If I am following migration patterns correctly -- small groups of families would settle an area. If they were geographically isolated (islands, mountains, valleys) of course the available population for marriage would be limited.

Parallel cousin, also called ortho-cousin is in this link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_and_cross_cousins

you'll see it was common pratice

I have several instances of cousins marrying cousins. The families tended to travel together from the east coast to Arkansas and Missouri. It was probably a matter of availability more than anything else.

I also have a case of one man marrying two sisters, not unusual except he married them the same day then they lived in different towns.

It happens alot in Royalty I understand, and as I have apparently discovered in my own roots, I believe they were first cousins in England.

Well, cousin marriage was fairly normal in most families back in the day--we had enough examples of such in our own family. Mind you, they had no idea about the genetic dangers of marrying "too close" in the family--though God knows they had enough examples of what could go wrong. Degenerative interbreeding is fairly obvious in small, isolated communities and has been going on since the year dot. Still is in a lot of places, even though we now have a much greater understanding of the dangers involved.

@Eldon I have a couple instances of one guy marrying sisters. To be fair, most of the time it is due to the death of the first sister.

@Peter From what I've read the offspring of two first-cousins has negligibly higher chances of genetic diseases. From my understanding, it isn't really a problem in practice.

Robert, I know the usual reason for a man to marry sisters is because of the death of one of the sisters. The case I was talking about was a lot different.

It isn't really a problem in practice, as I know from studies in genetics. I might be a fourth German, a fourth French, a fourth English, and a fourth Scottish which my pedigree indicates, which is pretty close to reality. But, my DNA may be representative in various characteristics, but I am not wholly like one of them. So if I married a cousin with very few or none of the family characteristics, future genetic problems will be nill. I had only one female cousin I would marry. The rest, no way.

How do you join this group?

It's a problem if there are cousin marriages for generations, as there are in my family and in two branches we have very high incidence of specific medical issues (deafness / hearing loss in one branch and auto-immune / chronic fatigue in another). One branch has been studied and we're hoping to have the second branch studied. Of my female cousins and siblings, a large number are affected with similar auto-immune problems. If I had not been doing genealogy, I would not know about the generations of cousin marriage, nor would I have met all my cousins.

In my family there are quite a few instances of men marrying a sister of their deceased wife.

Cousins marrying cousins was more popular prior to 1700 in Europe and South of the Border in North and South America. In my family, my father's side, several times, second cousins and other distant relatives married, and once on my mother's side, first cousins married. DNA usually drops out after 4 generations, sometimes sooner.

This is an interesting topic, and is of particular interest in Australia right now.

Certain ethnic groups will only marry first cousins, to the point where when they are born it is known with reasonable certainty who their spouse will be.

As this is repeated through generations, the serious (and expensive) health consequences are becoming very apparent. Both Australia and Britain have proposals to make such marriage illegal for these reasons.

In my own tree, my ancestors in Cornwall were already closely related seven times over when they got married. I guess it's a consequence of living in a small village. Cousin-cousin marriage is more the rule than the exception in the older parts of my tree.

My wife says it explains a lot.

Private User you've joined the discussion!

Yes, in the Jewish communities of Lithuania and especially among the rabbinical families, there were not that many choices -- they lived in small villages often and of course could only marriage those who were Jewish and from a suitable family -- and hence there were a lot of cousin marriages. This continued through the 19th century and into the 20th century and into the countries they immigrated to as well. My great grandparents' mother (him) and grandfather (her) were siblings for instance.

After having studied the course on The Ancient Egyptians given by Professor Robert Brier (Jewish) of Long Island University, I have discovered numerous new information on this subject in relation to my family history.
1. The Jewish rabbis might have descended from the ancient Egyptian Priests. All of the Pharaoahs married sisters and daughters.

2. I feel that there may have been some insest marriages in my family tree going back many generations. My MT DNA is Haplogroup "T2". My Y DNA for the male line descendents in my family is "I1". When I pray or look within myself for answers I discovered that not only does it weaken a bodies immune system but it also weakens parts of the mind. This might be why we have so many people that do not have high intelligence ratings.
I am not the most intelligent woman on this planet. It is a struggle for many people to find jobs that will fit in with their capacity for learning and the ability to comprehend and the subject matter given in colleges. Everyone learns at a different rate and in different ways.
In-breeding makes the children more of what each parent is.
All the bad traits are multiplied and all the good traits are multiplied.
I look at incest this way:
A lake without fresh water flowing into it becomes stagnant and does not give life. Eventually these families will become sterile.
LindaLea

From the royal houses of Europe the effects became obvious.

Under Salic Law, a monarch could only marry a cousin. The gene pool became smaller with the catholic/protestant divide, and produced either insanity or sterility in all royal houses. Charles II of Spain was probably the height of the Hapsburg inbreeding, and was described as barely recognisable as human.

The Wittelbach's of Bavaria spread their insanity through the Austro-Hungarian empire. Queen Victoria was the carrier of haemophilia through nearly all royal houses.

This 'rule' was only broken when our late Queen Mother married, but even that was only because her husband was not expected to be king. That's several centuries of cousin-cousin marriages. It seems that nature eventually stops the process.

In my own tree, I'm wondering if this is a factor in the many infant deaths in the 19th century.