First cousin marriages

[tpb]

My FFF and FFM were first cousins. There were 4 or 5 other first cousin marriages in their immediate family. This was not an uncommon event at the time. A book by Adam Kuper (2009), "Incest and Influence: The Private life of Bourgeois England" records that Charles Darwin married a first cousin, but was concerned about the practice and asked his son George to do an analysis. He concluded tat 4.5 percent of marriages in the moneyed classes in the first half of the 19th century were between first cousins.

Does this resonate with the members of this forum?

[Merry]

Well I don't know about in the moneyed classes particularly, but in my tree the branch that were Quakers had lots of cousin marriages, especially before the 1850s when marrying 'out' would get you disowned from the Society.

I'm not surprised by high percentages of cousins marrying in small and/or isolated villages, but OHs ancestors in some of the poor and heavily populated areas of London were still only marrying to a great extent within their circle of blood relatives and their descendants after two small families had moved to the metropolis some 50 years earlier from a small village in Huntingdonshire.

I'm surprised 4.5% isn't more. I suppose I'm including other cousin relationships in my thoughts.

[Olde Crone]

Yes indeed. I have a numbr of first cousin marriages all the way up my tree and many more second cousin marriages. I also have a few instances of double first cousin marriages. At one time, these required a papal dispensation and that caused huge trouble in one branch of the family, resulting in a rift which lasts to this day - one part of the family being Anglican, the other side being RC.

I always say that before about 1900, no one in my family ever married a random stranger. Spouses were always related to some degree and that was due to a number of factors, one being geographical isolation, the other being the caution of landowners, who would want to know whether their assets would be taken care of into the future. Obviously they would have had the measure of their relatives, not so strangers.

OC

[marquette]

I also have a number of first cousin and other cousin marriages in several families.
A couple of groups seem to have married within their "trade"group (ie bricklayers and carpenters) rather than in a small village but the results are the same.

I found one group in Hampshire because I was looking for baptism for a woman and I discovered one baptism where her mothers maiden name turned out to be the same as her husbands; I knew I was on the right track when her sister married into another branch of the same family and then there was several cross marriages in all the families concerned.