Intermarrying.

[ElizabethHerts]

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.

[Shona]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

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 Simile of the week prize, Phoenix.

[Olde Crone]

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

[Shona]

Originally Posted by Asa

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?

[Shona]

Originally Posted by Olde Crone

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]

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

[Asa]

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...

[Asa]

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]

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.

[Merry]

So, did some farmers sons dump their girlfriend/fiancee because she hadn't managed to get pregnant within an acceptable time?