A Tangled Web, More Interrelationships

In my previous blog posting called A Tangled Web, I describe some of the tangled interrelationships between some of my distant cousins. In this missive, I continue, describing an interesting case of first cousins marrying. All of us necessarily have ancestors who were related. Indeed, if you double the number of your ancestors on each generation going back, you eventually reach a point where the number of ancestors exceeds the total population of the world. Which means that at some point, the rate of increase in the number of ancestors slows down while ancestors marry relatives, close or distant.

That said, in my own pedigree, I've so far not found any cases of ancestors who were related. But I suspect I'll find at least one case of that, since on the German side of my pedigree, I'm a descendant of four separate lines of Wulff's. Mind you, Wulff is a very common name in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

But there are cases of cousins marrying among others in my database, among my distant cousins. In this study, we start with the central person of my previous essay, Willemina Woutrina Moll (1808-1882). In the following drop-chart, most people lived in the village of Velp, east of Arnhem, in the south-eastern corner of Gelderland.

Descendants of Jan WIllem Moll and Neleke Looijse. (Not all children shown)

Consider a niece and a nephew of Willemina. Willemina's nephew Jan Willem Moll (1849-1915) married Willemina's niece, and Jan Willem's first cousin, Catharina Moll (1844-1921). Jan Willem was the son of Willemina's brother Jan Willem Moll (1819-1851) and Geertje Gerritsen. And Catharina was the daughter of Willemina's brother Lubbertus Moll (1812-1877) and Everdina de Roos.

But there's more. Jan Willem and Catharina had a son, Jan Willem Moll (1883-1959) who married his first cousin Johanna Wilhelmina Moll (1883-1955), daughter of Hendrik Moll (1851-1903) and Woutje Snellink. Hendrik was a brother of Catharina Moll.

Now consider the pedigree of the youngest children in this drop-chart: As the children of first cousins, they have six great grandparents, instead of the usual eight. In addition, since one set of grandparents were first cousins, they have just ten great great grandparents, instead of the usual sixteen.

There's one more example of a tangled interrelationship in this chart: Geertje Gerritsen married again after the death of her first husband, to Jan Matser. One of their children, Johanna Matser married another Moll, Jan Willem Moll (1850-1937).