Someone (not me) figured out in twenty-two generations you would have had 2,097,152 grandparents in
your line. Not even going to bother to
count the collateral kin at an average of three-per children per family or
those that we are "sort of" related to, the latter being related by the
ancestors of marriage partners. Makes
my database of nineteen thousand kin a
mere pittance.
With the Kin number being huge, what's the odds you are related to the person next to you, or
across the bridge table. Not great, you say.
Well, maybe you might be.
I belong to a table of bridge players that meets weekly at a
local church. We've been playing for
nearly a year before I realized that one of the players has a last name of
Rees. For some reason a light bulb went
off and I asked whether or not his Rees kin were Quakers.
Nope. Texans to the
core. Tennesseans before that. Family believed to have originated back in
Wales. Wales was common ground.
Tracing whether we
still might be cousins, my bridge comrade supplied four generations of Rees
ancestors. His second great grandfather, John Bartlett Rees, married Henrietta
Lowrance. Ah, a second light bulb blazed
brightly. I had Lowrances in my database.
I had thought my Rees ancestors were all related to my Ellis
line of Wales Quakers. But the
coincidence of names still bothered me, so I looked them up again in my
database. Lo, I had collateral Lowrance ancestors
from my Sherrill ancestors (not Quakers).
Four of the children of William A. Sherrill, my sixth great grandfather, married Lowrances. These Lowrances had kin
tied to Daniel Lowrance, Henrietta's father. I was beginning to feel "cousinly"
to Henrietta.
But the connections got stranger than that when I traced Henrietta back through
her kin.
To make the story of this search much shorter, through the
Sherrills, I am additionally (sort of) related to the Great Grandfather of Henrietta Lowance's
brother's wife. Goes like this:
Henrietta's
father was Daniel Lowrance.
His son and her brother
Peter Lowrance married Elizabeth Bridges
Elizabeth's
father, John Bridges, married Margaret Perkins
Margaret
Perkins' father Elijah Perkins married Margaret Sherrill
Margaret
Sherrill was the daughter of William Sherrill (the famed Conestoga Fur Trader)
William
Sherrill was the father of William A. Sherrill my sixth G Grandfather**
Ain't genealogy interesting?
You may never know, but maybe the woman who's unloading her shopping
cart ahead of you at the grocery story is your cousin. You might find truth
is stranger than fiction.
________________________
**William A. and Agnes White Sherrill were the parents of
Sarah Sherrill Simpson in my historical novel "Dear Mama, Love
Sarah."
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