First let me say, it's not as bad as it sounds. We don't share a grandparent or great grandparent or even great great great grandparent!
I have written before about several of my ancestors that married cousins. I understand it's not terribly uncommon for most people to find married cousins among their ancestors-- especially those marriages of the early colonial era. Some cultures, even today, encourage marriage among cousins. Wiki says 10 percent of the world's married people are married to a 1st or 2nd cousin.
I'm not sure where I would draw a line, but it would definitely not include 1st or 2nd cousins. I'm thinking I'm ok with 5th, 6th or 7th cousin marriage relationships. I'm reminded of the "Finding Your Roots" episode where Kyra Sedgwick found out she was 9th cousins once removed with her husband Kevin Bacon. That just doesn't sound like a problem at all. I remember thinking there must be hundreds of thousands of couples related more closely than that who have no idea about their kinship. 9th cousin means you share an 8th great grandparent. That's 10 generations back and around 300 years. There's no way you could have even known any of that grandparent's great great great great grandchildren. The connection is just way back there. Additionally, the odds of sharing DNA with a 9th cousin is incredibly small. Not a problem.
My wife, Karen, and I do not share DNA. I know this because both of her parents have tested at Ancestry as I have. I loaded all of us into GEDmatch. No match between us. But interestingly, I did find a match between her father and my father. A snippet of the report at GEDmatch looks like this...
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| Portion of Gedmatch result |
In this report, GEDmatch shows a little blue area on Chromosome 2. It's 10.4cM long and indicates a match. GEDmatch further estimates the number of generations to the most recent common ancestor between Karen's father and my father is 5.2 generations back. This is very strong evidence that Karen and I are cousins but I have yet to find the connection between the two families in my tree. I don't know what ancestor we share. I have more work to do on Bobby Cochran's ancestors.
Karen and I are a generation removed from this match. If the connection for our fathers is an estimated 5.2 generations back, then my connection with Karen is one generation beyond that at 6.2 generations back. That's closer than 9th cousins! Let's assume Karen and I share an ancestor 6 generations back. That would make us 5th cousins. I think it is more likely the connection is another generation or two back (7 or 8 generations back) just because I know the vast majority of the ancestors at the 5th and 6th generation and none of them match up. So, I'm estimating that we are 6th cousins at the very closest!
I'm fairly confident I will one day know which ancestor our fathers share. It will just take more time and effort searching the records and extending Karen's paternal branches.
Karen's maternal branches in our tree are a bit further along. Many of them are better documented and have fallen right into place. Her Willis line, for instance, was already thoroughly researched. Some of her cousins have carried that line right into the Middle Ages. Instead of searching for each piece of evidence, I only had to verify what was already out there.
Early on, I stumbled on a connection between Karen's mother's tree and my own. Karen has a great great grandmother who was a Fountain. Annie A. Fountain was born in Georgia in 1862 to an Augustus J. Fountain and Louisiana "Lou" Stephens. Augustus died during the Civil War but most interesting to me is that he had a great great grandfather named Francis Fontaine Sr. from County Cork, Ireland who died in Virginia in 1749. Francis is in my tree. He is a son of a relatively famous Huguenot, Jacques Fontaine, my 8th great grandfather. Consequently, he is also Karen's 8th great grandfather. Karen and I share Francis Fountaine Sr., making us straight up 8th cousins. Jacques wrote a memoir for his children, some of whom immigrated to America. His descendants, it is said, are extrememly numerous and cover the globe. My connection to Jacques comes through my mother's Kuykendall and Goza lines. My mother and Karen's mother are therefore, 7th cousins, though they do not share DNA.
But wait! That's not all. Karen's great great grandfather, Augustus J. Fountain, had a great grandmother named Mary Hardin from Virginia. When I found that she passed away in North Carolina in 1796, I began to suspect she belonged to my Hardin's of the same area and time. Well, yes. Yes she did. Digging a bit deeper, I found that Mary's grandfather, Marcus, was the brother of my 7th great grandfather Benjamin B. Hardin whose children would migrate through Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee making names for themselves during the American Revolution and beyond. Karen and I share Martin Hardewyn of Rouen, France. Martin, like Jacques Fontaine, was a French Protestant, a Huguenot. He is my 10th great grandfather and Karen's 11th great grandfather making us cousins, yet again, at
9th cousins once removed just like Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon.
Martin died in Prince William County, Virginia in 1709 making him a very early colonist in the Americas. There are some early histories written of the Hardin family. They tend to vaguely describe the "Hardewyn's" moving from Rouen, France to Holland and then to New York. There in the 1670's they joined the Dutch Church and eventually moved to Staten Island. Most of the family is then found moving south to Virginia by way of New Jersey.
So, Karen and I are cousins three times over. I find it interesting that both of our known common ancestors are Huguenots. I only know of one other Huguenot besides Hardewyn and Fontaine in my tree. He is Benois Brashear.
Brashear is on my father's side. If Brashear turns out to be the progenitor of the common DNA my father and Karen's father share, we will have a story indeed!
