View Full Version : Intermarrying.
Does anyone else ever get exhausted by the amount of intermarrying amongst families? I've been working on the Mutter family of Beer, Devon - Abraham and Mary Mutter and their son and eight daughters.
The eldest daughter marries a Woodgate, as did her maternal aunt. Mary Mutter's mother was also a Woodgate. The second daughter married Walter Woodgate Thorn and the third Thomas Loveridge Woodgate - are you spotting a pattern?
The son marries Patience Newton and the fifth daughter marries Robert Fox so they both made a nice change. Until the sixth daughter marries a John Newton and the seventh a Robert Fox Newton!
I know at some point I'm going to have to investigate these spouses' families because I won't be able to help myself but for the moment I'm going to shut that particular lot away.....
By the way, the eighth daughter bucked the trend, bless her, and married into the Bools family (as a maternal aunt had done), in her fifties. What's the betting Mr Bools' mother was a Woodgate or a Newton?
I think I have five Skillings/Codling marriages. And no, I cannot for the life of me remember who is who.
The most mind-numbing, though, is Peternel Adams: both grandfathers are called William Adams and they both married women called Adams. From time to time I think I have sorted out one or two of those lines, but it's like wrestling jelly.
Does anyone else ever get exhausted by the amount of intermarrying amongst families?
lol Yes, but it does seem to be all or nothing in my tree! OH's lot are the most complex - you would think living in the busiest parts of London there would be loads of choice of partner, but even after OH's ancestor had abandoned his London wife and moved to Southampton with another woman, he still sent most of his children back to the original London genepool to claim a spouse!
Phoenix, I have a set of Sullivans like that but luckily the grandchildren of two John Sullivans vanished into the ether rather than marrying other Sullivans;)
Merry, I am always amazed at the intermarrying amongst Londoners lol - the whole of the city to choose from and some of mine keep going back to the same little group of families. I'm connected three times I think to a friend I met via GR. I met up with a second cousin some years ago and his brother married in the 1950s a fourth cousin - all this in Islington. Bizarre.
Most of my ancestors were landless, with only the tools of the trade to pass on, but there are some who do need to keep the wealth in the family, and use surnames as second Christian names as badges of identity. (Besides all my paupers who wish to be remembered by their richer cousins, lol!)
:) I seem to get a lot of surnames as second christian names in Devonshire but nowhere else. No idea why.
I get it in Devon - and Norfolk people just seem bored with ordinary names, so there are Fountain Brown and England Lake and Lee Jarvis, sometimes named after godparents, rather than family, I suspect.
A relative of mine, Emma Oakey Grundy married Richard Grundy Oakey, becoming Emma Oakey Oakey.
:)
Mary from Italy
13-10-12, 17:12
Personally I don't find it exhausting, I think it's fascinating! I've spent ages tracing all the intermarriages between about 3 families in a small Australian outback village, because I was so interested in how they were all connected.
WendyPusey
13-10-12, 17:25
My lot on the Isle of Wight all intermarried, so I have branches going in all directions. I think I must be related in some way to everyone on the Island!
ElizabethHerts
13-10-12, 17:39
Asa, I grew up in Honiton, not far from Beer. My parents were vets there and went to a lot of the farms in the district. They were both amazed at the amount of intermarriage in the farming community and I would think the same would apply for a village like Beer and the surrounding district.
From time to time I think I have sorted out one or two of those lines, but it's like wrestling jelly.
Soooooo very true! I've got just too many Milloy-McLean marriages that I go round circles...while wrestling jelly :confused::confused::confused: Simile of the week prize, Phoenix.
Olde Crone
13-10-12, 18:30
I was astonished at first but I am now so used to it that if they marry a completely unrelated stranger I wonder what was wrong with them that a cousin wouldn't have them!
I am related to everyone in Gawsworth, Cheshire. My 9 x, 7 x, and 6x GGMs are called Mary Robinson. I have Thomas Green as my 2nd, 4th,5th,6th,7th and 8th GGF and they appear in several positions in the tree, doubling and trebling up.
It certainly makes a nonsense of the supposed genetic dangers of inbreeding. It certainly didn't render any of my lot either infertile or of low intelligence.....until the late 1800s, when they all died out alarmingly, either never marrying, or marrying but having only one child.
OC
:) I seem to get a lot of surnames as second christian names in Devonshire but nowhere else. No idea why. Now then, this is a very common thing in Scotland. Maiden names of female relatives get used as middle names. My mum has four surnames as her middle names - all maiden names of her ancestors. Mum's are on her birth certificate, but I know a fair number of people out in the west of Scotland who can go through the generations reciting surnames. Is it a Celtic thing? Does it occur in Cornwall, Ireland and Wales, for example?
I was astonished at first but I am now so used to it that if they marry a completely unrelated stranger I wonder what was wrong with them that a cousin wouldn't have them!
I am related to everyone in Gawsworth, Cheshire. My 9 x, 7 x, and 6x GGMs are called Mary Robinson. I have Thomas Green as my 2nd, 4th,5th,6th,7th and 8th GGF and they appear in several positions in the tree, doubling and trebling up.
It certainly makes a nonsense of the supposed genetic dangers of inbreeding. It certainly didn't render any of my lot either infertile or of low intelligence.....until the late 1800s, when they all died out alarmingly, either never marrying, or marrying but having only one child.
OC That's astounding, OC. I guess if we go back, people had to walk everywhere, so were pretty limited in their choice of mate. All praise ot the bicycle which turned the gene puddle into a gene pool.
Olde Crone
13-10-12, 18:56
I think that, in farming circles, it was partly due to a distrust of strangers. I also noticed that many farmers' daughters - and most of their sons! - didn't marry until at least one child had been born to the union, in order to check that the girl was fertile.
They also seemed willing and able to accommodate their daughters' illegitimate offspring without batting an eyelid and certainly without forcing their daughter to marry some blokey who turned up for haymaking.
Surnames as middle names - yes VERY common on my Scottish side and very very helpful. My grandfather's brother had the middle name of Charles Smith and I was utterly astonished when this turned out to be the name of his 4 x GGF, born in 1699!
I have also seen this in my Lancashire lot, although not to such a great extent, and in Lancashire, they tend to use a surname as a first name, so I have the famous Fish Fish and the even more famous Fish Fish Fish!
I am also wildly impressed by the oral genealogy of these people. They could recite generation after generation of their ancestors and were rarely wrong.
Many of us who have ancestors from Darwen in Lancashire, use the work of one Jeremy Hunt, who was a local oral historian and knew the genealogies of over ten thousand people, going back to pre-1700. He got some of it from his grandmother, born in 1744(?). His memories were written down by a local reporter in the late 1800s and have become the "bible" for local research.
Considering this man dictated from MEMORY, at the age of 87, never having written anything down, his accuracy is just short of miraculous. Unfortunately (?) he was a very moral man and never repeated anything scurrilous, so most of the illegitimate ones are not mentioned!
OC
Shona, I completely forgot about Scotland and surnames as christian names - I've a lot of Scottish ancestry and it always seems to me that they give more importance to the woman's maiden name generally - I have some who appear on census under that rather than their married name. Naming patterns apply more in Scotland than anywhere else too in my experience.
OC, I have long thought that illegitmacy in rural communities wasn't the stigma we've been lead to believe - amongst their own people at any rate. I think people just got on with it, as part of the natural way of things.
I woke up this morning thinking of Woodgates and I'm going to have to investigate...
Elizabeth, I grew up in Berkshire and in my village I can connect most families by marriage who have been there over three or so generations but I suppose in Devon, I notice how much more obvious it is because of things like this - so many surnames repeating time and time again.
Tom, one of the daughters I mentioned was Anna Maria Woodgate Mutter who married a Woodgate :-)
ElizabethHerts
14-10-12, 06:55
Asa, many farmers didn't get married until the girl got pregnant - my Mum said they wanted to ensure that she was "good breeding stock"! I don't think there was much stigma was attached to it, though I suspect the Vicar might have despaired.
So, did some farmers sons dump their girlfriend/fiancee because she hadn't managed to get pregnant within an acceptable time? :(
It doesn't happen like that in the Archers does it :s
Olde Crone
14-10-12, 08:04
Merry
I always have this vision of the farmer's son shouting out to the village girls "Right, who's first?"
My 2 x GGF appears to have put two to the trials and married the one who had the first son. As it turned out, he backed the loser because every child he had with his wife was dead before they reached the age of five, whereas 2 x GGM had four healthy sons.
OC
Nearly all my Suffolk ancestors have the mothers' maiden names as middle names. It's very useful and helps to sort out marriages pre-registration. They also followed the local traditional naming pattern quite strictly which was also very useful.
However as the 19th C drew to a close they threw caution to the wind and called later children whatever took their fancy - after naming two after themselves, of course.
All my maternal side is Scottish and rather than finding the bringing down of surnames as a middle name useful, I find it confusing :)
There also seems to be a dearth of Christian names! I have Mary Gordon, Mary Fraser, Mary Campbell and on the male side all the first sons, for generations are Alexander right back to 1790s :rolleyes: There's Buchanan, Fleming, Mackay, Stuart, Stewart + the ones above all used as middle names - so one way and another I reckon there's a fair scattering of Clans covered.
anne fraser
16-10-12, 17:23
I was always told the Somerset coalminers were a very close knit community and this seems to have been very true even after a lot of the families moved to South Wales. I don't think I have come across any case of a daughter being disowned for having an illegitimate baby. I think in farming communities an extra pair of hands was always useful.
I've a few instances of 2 brothers marrying 2 sisters. There are lots of Brewer marriages in my Cornish branch but I've yet to work out how - if - the various Brewers are connected.
My ex's family provided the most complex marriages though.
His Marsden line has 2 brothers who marry two sisters from the Sellars family. The other 2 Sellars girls marry two Ehn brothers. The widowed Ehn brother then marries a widowed Sellars-Marsden.
He's got a gt x 3 grandfather John Ledger whose 2nd wife Letitia was the aunt of John's son's wife Emily. I had to draw a diagram to work that out!
My gt grandfather Thomas Matthews had 2 brothers Henry and William who married 2 sisters, surname Elsbury on the certs, though they were Aylesbury in the baptism registers. That took a bit of sorting.
My gt grandfather John Smoothy had 2 sisters, Elizabeth and Emily. Elizabeth's daughter Alice married Frank Evans, whose father John Evans took Emily as 2nd wife. I'm not sure how they all met, but Frank is lodging with Alice and her mother in 1911. John & Emily Evans lived next door to John Smoothy for over 20 years.
My ex's family provided the most complex marriages though.
His Marsden line has 2 brothers who marry two sisters from the Sellars family. The other 2 Sellars girls marry two Ehn brothers. The widowed Ehn brother then marries a widowed Sellars-Marsden.
He's got a gt x 3 grandfather John Ledger whose 2nd wife Letitia was the aunt of John's son's wife Emily. I had to draw a diagram to work that out!
He's got a gt x 3 grandfather John Ledger whose 2nd wife Letitia was the aunt of John's son's wife Emily. I had to draw a diagram to work that out!
Nope - can't work that out [head spinning and scribbling furiously].
Like the fact you have a Smoothy as a great grandfather!
I've got 2 sisters marrying a father & son, the 3rd sister married the son's cousin, nephew of the father!
Mary from Italy
17-10-12, 22:06
I've been having fun untangling the Inman, Hutchen and Philp families in NSW, Australia.
Mary Ann Hutchen married John Philp, and her sister Grace married Andrew Inman. Their brother Thomas married Elizabeth Ann Adams, and another brother, Harry, married Sarah Ann Elizabeth Adams.
Grace and Andrew Inman had 8 children, only three of whom married people with a surname other than Hutchen or Philp. Their oldest son Thomas Andrew married twice: his first wife was Alma Hutchen, daughter of Grace's brother Thomas Hutchen and Elizabeth Ann Adams. Alma's brother George Hutchen married Thomas Andrew Inman's sister Mabel. Alma died, and Thomas Andrew Inman married Martha Agnes Philp, the daughter of Grace Inman's sister Mary Ann and her husband John Philp.
Agnes Inman, another daughter of Andrew and Grace, married Daniel Sylvester Philp, brother of Martha Agnes. Martha was Daniel's second wife; by his first wife, Maud, he had a daughter Dulcie Philp, who married William Henry Inman, another son of Andrew and Grace.
Lila, the youngest child of Andrew and Grace, married Reuben Philp, who's no doubt related to the other Philps, but I haven't worked out how yet.
Nope - can't work that out [head spinning and scribbling furiously].
Shona, you make me want to try my 'helpful reminder to myself' on you!! I had to turn the following into a hand drawn tree to make sense of it!
Robert Lewis Packer, the second husband of Mary Bush nee Crawley (mother of Mary Ann Bush) is the brother of Hephzibah Packer, who, at her second marriage became the second wife of James Beard, the father of John Beard (by his first wife), who in turn was the second husband of Mary Ann Bush. Mary Ann was Robert Lewis Packer's stepdaughter and her first husband was Robert William Cotton, son of William Cotton (brushmaker) and Emma Packer. William Cotton and Emma Packer named their second son John Hazel Cotton , so it is probable that Emma was related to Hephzibah, as Hephzibah's father was named Robert Hazel Packer. I believe Hephzibah Packer, Robert Lewis Packer and Emma Packer were all siblings (or half siblings), the children of Robert Hazel Packer.
You're scaring me, the lot of you! :eek: How will I ever get my own family tree straight if this is what a typical one looks like? ;(:d:d
Olde Crone
18-10-12, 16:35
Ha, Merry, thought it was only me who had these tortuous notes!
("He is not however, the son of George Holden - that John married his brother's wife's aunt, who was the grand daughter of John's mother's brother's half sister.....")
OC
Mine are all about the same lines too. Quite contagious! Are yours mainly Holden?
The OH's Irish tree has me going around in circles.
Matthew McCrudden married Ellen Treanor. Their son Matthew married Bridget Murphy and they had a son called Matthew who married Margaret Treanor. Matthew and Bridget's son Michael married Bridget Treanor, while daughters Ann and Kate married Treanors. Two other daughters married Mohans.
Merry's example takes some beating!
Olde Crone
18-10-12, 16:44
Holdens do it in spades but the Greens of Gawsworth are trying very hard too! In fact, whenever a widow opr widower remarries, I look to the other spare widows and widowers and pair them off! I'm often right.
OC
*shuts eyes and puts fingers in ears* *la, la, dee dah* ........*opens one eye*.....
*reaches for a pencil and a large sheet of paper*
But of course, secretly, it's these lines we like the best! (excluding OC's Greens of course!)
What I do find intriguing is that the most complicated inter-marrying in my and ex's trees are Londoners. You'd think there'd be more of it in a small village where there's less choice of spouse, but it appears to be the reverse.
I've found that too, Nell - over several generations too
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