genealogy---humour

Why waste your money looking up your family tree?
Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.
Mark Twain

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Can a first cousin, once removed, return?

Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.

I trace my family history so I will know who to blame.

It's hard to be humble with ancestors like mine!

Friends come and go, but relatives tend to accumulate.

Genealogists live in the past lane.

Genealogy: A hay stack full of needles. It's the threads I need.

Genealogy: Collecting dead relatives and sometimes a live cousin!

Genealogy: Where you confuse the dead and irritate the living.

Heredity: Everyone believes in it until their children act like fools!

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

Theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.

A Step backwards is Progress to a Genealogist.

I'd rather be looking for dead people than have them looking for me!

Ever find an ancestor HANGING from the family tree?

Evolution is God's way of issuing updates.

Genealogists are time unravelers.

Old genealogists never die, they just lose their census.

Genealogy...it's not a hobby, it's an obsession.

I think my ancestors had several "bad heir" days.

I'm not stuck, I'm ancestrally challenged.

It is hereditary in my family not to have children.

Only a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.

When marriage is outlawed only outlaws will have in-laws.

Genealogy: Tracing descent from someone who didn't.

I finally got it all together. Now where did I put it?

The black sheep keeps the best info on the family.

Whoever said "seek and ye shall find" was NOT a genealogist

As most of you will know I have been tracing my family history for many years and can go back a good long way on all lines.  It is such an exciting and absorbing hobby and I was even lucky enough to find a “live” cousin once. (Actually they found me)  Hello Dawn and Sam!

Talking of cousins....  this is a much misused word.  I believe that my American friends refer to nearly everyone who isn’t a sibling as a cousin.  But just what is a cousin?  Are you a first, a second, third???  Are you even removed?  What the heck?  It is very confusing and one of the best explanations that I have found is at Wikipedia. COUSIN.

In kinship terminology a cousin is a relative with whom one shares a common ancestor, but in modern usage the term is rarely used when referring to a relative in one's own line of descent, or where there is a more specific term to describe the relationship, e.g., brother, sister, aunt, uncle. The term blood relative can be used synonymously, and underlines the existence of a genetic link.

A system of degrees and removes is used to describe the relationship between the two cousins and the ancestor they have in common. The degree (first, second, third cousin, etc.) indicates the minimum number of generations between either cousin and the nearest common ancestor; the remove (once removed, twice removed, etc.) indicates the number of generations, if any, separating the two cousins from each other.

For example, a person with whom you share a grandparent (but not a parent) is a first cousin; someone with whom you share a great-grandparent (but not a grandparent) is a second cousin; and someone with whom you share a great-great-grandparent (but not a great-grandparent) is a third cousin; and so on. The child of your first cousin is your first cousin once removedbecause the one generation separating you and the child represents one remove. You and the child are still considered first cousins, as your own grandparent (this child's great-grandparent), as the most recent common ancestor, represents one degree.

Non-genealogical usage often eliminates the degrees and removes, and refers to people with common ancestors merely ascousins or distant cousins.

 

Right.... you have it now don’t you!  LOL.  So, let me consider this again, Wendy, who you all know, is obviously my first cousin, which makes her daughter Rebecca, my first cousin once removed. But my Dads cousin Sam (the one who found me) is also my first cousin once removed.  However Sam’s children are my second cousins!  I THINK!!  Family history is such fun.

I originally did this blog late last night.  I had earlier in the evening allowed my doggies to login in to their web site to do a blog. Unfortunately they didn’t log out when they had finished and I typed this all up in my blog page but suddenly realised that I had 2 multiply windows open and yes, I closed down the wrong one so I lost it all. That is the kind of thing that annoys me about blogging..........the dogs get in on the act and everything gets messed up.  See their latest blog here. DOG LOG.

I am having a busy catch up day on housework today.  I have already done a fair amount and I have some bread in the bread maker. I am waiting for the man from Tesco to deliver my shopping and then I shall make some cakes. 

We have decided that for the time being I will do the weekly food shop online to avoid running out of things.  It is difficult now for me to have the car during the week and neither of us really wants to have to do a food shop at the weekend.  So I shall order it on a Friday to be delivered on Monday.  The cost is £4 but Simon says the journey to Tesco would probably cost nearly £2 in petrol anyway, plus I don’t think I am so likely to impulse buy online.

I have got a long day today as Simon goes to his welding course straight from school and doesn’t get in until well gone nine tonight. Saskia should be back early evening, but I already have dinner sorted for us...yesterdays left over stew!  This means that I should be able to get all my jobs done and have some spare “Me” half hours.  Back later.