Kissing Cousins!

As promised, this week, we are talking about endogamy. You have probably never heard the term before. Basically it means that marrying within your community/family/tribe/clan, including cousins, is a common and accepted practice. This has been historically done by royal families, certain religious communities and in native tribes. The motivations for doing this may be to keep a “bloodline pure”, to keep money within a certain group, or because of views that anyone not in your community is an “outsider.” When this happens repeatedly over generations, it has a variety of impacts on DNA and genetics as well as familial relationships.

When people separate from an endogamous community and begin to view the practice as shameful, they will often lie to hide their connections to one another. Some native communities didn’t want to be associated with free people of color (FPOC) or freedmen. Often a union between an indigenous person and someone with African ancestry would result in a darker, less desirable complexion. A pairing between a mixed race FPOC and a freedman would have the same result. Because of racial issues in society at the time, lighter complexions were valued more highly. Remaining within the clan to find a mate was preferred. Even when there is not an intention to mate within a clan, finding a mate in your community may result in endogamy, simply because everyone in the community comes from a limited number of families.

If a community is started by 4 families that intermarry. With each generation, overlap grows more complicated, because the connections are compounded. Eventually every potential partner within the community is related to some degree. Often the marriages occur between 2nd or more distant cousins. Offspring often marry back into their mother’s family. In a community where names are common, you may have a Mary Catherine Graham Young and also a Mary Catherine Young and also a Mary Catherine Young Graham. This can make research complicated!

One branch of my family has native American tribal roots. Those that left the tribal homestead still remained within the same county and a neighboring county. Endogamy was a standard mating practice. As the years went on and they separated more from their tribal identity, they began to view the practice as shameful. When you are in the confines of the “safe zone” the practices of endogamy are not questioned. Outside of this “safe zone”, pairing with cousins is taboo. As a result, elders often withheld information to downplay their genetic connections. Later generations were strictly warned to avoid dating in certain towns because everyone there is a cousin. This was the case for my grandmother and her siblings. Choosing to remain within the community to find a mate is almost certainly going to result in a union between relatives.

When it comes to DNA, you may find yourself more closely connected or sharing more DNA than anticipated, if endogamy is a part of your family. You have a connection through your mother and another connection through your mother. My grandmother was raised by her stepfather. When I got my DNA results, I saw a number of matches from his family line. How could that be? Her stepfather was biologically her cousin, because their great grandparents were siblings. To cause further confusion, her stepfather and his sister married siblings, making their children double first cousins.

When doing genealogy research, it can be difficult to find relationships that would be unacceptable in present times. It’s important to consider the cultural norms of the community and the time period when trying to understand relationships. Whatever you find is not a reflection of you, its simply a part of your origin story. You are not responsible for the choices your ancestors made, as your descendants will not be responsible for yours. In genealogy, if you do enough digging, you’re bound to get uncomfortable. Don’t let that stop you, keep going, there’s more to be found!

Always Searching,

The Tangled Roots Team