No, no, NO, not in that way!! Seriously, get your mind out of the gutters. Okay, there are some cousins marrying cousins in my family tree. But, to the best of my knowledge, no first cousins married each other. I can't say the same about second or third. Ha!
The one thing I've learned while dancing with the ancestors is that siblings from one family often married siblings from another family.
On my fathers side, five of the Halterman siblings married five of the Lane siblings. Talk about your double cousins. Then, three of the Smith siblings married three of the Gribble siblings, while one Smith sibling married a Gribble cousin.
Then, flip over to my maternal side, and the the Johnsons and Ballards, not to mention three of the Johnson children married Mastersons (two of the Johnsons married siblings, and one Johnson married a cousin of those siblings).
Then, you have the Hagan connection which . . . is way too convoluted to go into on this blog. Heck, I had to create an Excel chart to keep track of all the Hagans. Geesh.
The main point I'm getting at here, is with siblings marrying siblings, you can often discover a bit more information about the family tree. Why? Well, women are better record keepers than men in 99% of cases.
I have actually been able to find out more information about direct ancestors parents, by researching the siblings, especially the sisters, since they are the keepers of knowledge.
For example, when my grandfather's brother died, the names of his parents on his death certificate were indicated as "don't know" and yet when his sister died, the names of her parents on her death certificate were listed as Alexander Sweat and Catherine Langdon. In fact, when Catherine died, her daughter provided the information about Catherine's parents for the death certificate, which matched up with what I already found.
So, don't discount the siblings, or the information you might find when researching them as you go dancing with the ancestors.
S
