a round of virtual drinks tomorrow to anyone...

Patty

Patty

Immortal
who can make me understand the following relationships:

1st cousin
1st cousin once removed

2nd cousin
1st cousin once removed.


Obviously I know what a 1st cousin is. It's after that that it gets dicey.

I found an old bible that belonged to my late father's uncle. There are written in pages of names of births, deaths, marriages, and it's kinda cool to see who was related to whom and how they are related to me. I have found several globs of hair pressed in between pages in many places, although this great uncle didn't label whose hair swatches they were. I still am a little freaked out about this--did folks used to do this when a relative died (pressing their hair in the family bible)? I am not going to take it out, but too bad it's not labeled.
 
from my first haircut as a baby and saved it, but in a dresser drawer, not in a Bible. And I don't think there was any hair from dead people around the house. When I visited Holyrood castle in Edinburgh they had an exhibit of artifacts from Mary Queen of Scots that included a lock of her hair. It was white because apparently pigment fades over the centuries.

I think your second cousin is your cousin's child (or, in reverse, one of your parents' cousins). I never have understood "removed", though.

Do I get part of a virtual drink?
 
Your first cousin is your daugter's cousin once removed.

If you have a brother or sister, and s/he has grandchildren, the grandchildren are your Grandpattys' second cousins.

If your mom or dad had a brother or sister with grandchildren, those grandchildren are your Grandpattys' second cousins once removed.

This article has a chart about halfway down the page that explains the whole confusing cousin thing as clearly as I've ever seen it.

If I managed to get this mixed up, feel free to beat me over the head with a large family bible.
 
I'm no closer to understanding the "removed" thing. It is wierd.

These batches of hair are from grown folks--long, and some of them with bits of gray strands (that's why I'm thinking they may be dead.) Kinda eerie...
 
A first cousin is a child of your parent's sibling. A second cousin would be a child of your parent's first cousin, and so on. A grandchild of your parent's sibling would be a first cousin once removed, and that cousin's child would be a first cousin twice removed etc. I once went through the Appendices and calculated that Aragorn is Arwen's first cousin 63 times removed!
 
This has got to be the most confusing thing going in the known world. But I think I've got it. Thanks, Morwen!
 
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If one of your parents and one of Person X's parents were 1st cousins, then Person X is your 2nd cousin.

"Once removed" indicates a different generation. Your 1st cousin's child -- or your parent's 1st cousin -- is your 1st cousin once removed. And your 1st cousin's grandchild is your 1st cousin twice removed, etc.
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My grandmother clipped locks of baby hair from her children and grandchildren, and kept them in various places, including dresser drawers and the family bible (how she knew whose was whose I have no idea) but I've never heard of doing this with adults.

Perhaps in the days when people washed and prepared the dead for burial at home, clipping a lock of hair from the body as a keepsake didn't seem as wierd as it does to us.
 
is not labeling it, in some way--like putting the name on a piece of paper and putting it between those same two pages. Surely even they couldn't keep up with whose it was--there are at least 5 swatches of hair in this bible.

Yes, I have a few curls from my son's first haircut, but it is in an envelop and labeled as such.
But you're probably right about how they came about keeping them. These are probably from some relatives that died prior to the 1950s.
 
I read somewhere that around 100 years ago, it wasn't uncommon for people to have photo albums consisting entirely of pictures of their loved ones in their coffins or (after death) in their beds.
 
... after the shotgun wedding, when the father of the bride finds out the real meaning of "kissing cousins".... then the groom becomes the Black-and-Blue Sheep of the family.
 
is how I usually explain it, also: imaging each generation as a "layer", and being "removed" from that layer.

I like that Wikipedia chart that Morwen linked to!
 
I have to explain this to my kids all the time because of my huge extended family.

Start by thinking of your own first cousins. Stick to one family, so you don't get confused. The kids of my mom's brothers and sisters are my first cousins. They are all in my "generation" even if they are much older or younger than me. Just think of a generation for this purpose as on the same line on a drawn family tree. All the kids of my mom and her siblings are first cousins to each other.

Now, stay on your line and look down at the child of one of your first cousins. That person is your first cousin, once removed. Any "remove" is a movement up or down the family tree.

Now look at the generation that doesn't include you, but includes both your first cousin's kid and your own kid, that generation there below your line. Your kid and your first cousin's kid are second cousins. They aren't FIRST cousins (because they are not children of siblings) and they are not REMOVED (because they are in the same generation). They are children of first cousins, and that makes them second cousins.

If your daughter stands on her family tree line and looks down a generation to her second cousin's child, that child is your daughter's second cousin, once removed.

Your daughter's child and the child of your second cousin, who are in the same generation, are third cousins.

Shall I continue?

It's more confusing when you go UP, so for that, refer to the Wikipedia or other model.

Whew.

a.s.
 
to win the virtual drink. The chart's good, though maybe a bit more complicated than it needs to be to explain the concept. To figure the relationship between any two people, what I like to do is write down the common ancestor at the top of a page, then the line of descent, with the members of each generation side by side, going from siblings to first cousins to second cousins, etc. Then I draw a line between the two people I'm interested in. The "first," "second," or "third" relationship is established by the position of the person highest up the chart (the oldest generation), and the "removed" is how many generations apart they are.

I've been figuring these relationships since I was a kid. Once when I was visiting my grandmother, when I was about 7 or 8, I met a little girl in the neighborhood who told me that she was related to my great-grandmother (who was over 90 years old at the time). I immediately drew a chart and figured out that we were fourth cousins (not removed, though, because we were in the same generation).

Hang on to that bible! Family bibles with genealogical records in them are priceless! I don't know about pressing hair in bibles, specifically, but keeping clippings of hair from the child's first haircut is an old tradition, which my mother kept up. Going through her things, I found hair from several of us (neatly labeled in envelopes, though).

A stranger custom, in Victorian times, was to take a clipping of hair from the deceased and weave it into jewelry items, to be worn during the period of mourning.
 
and yes, as often the hair of the living as the dead. But it was also a custom to keep locks of hair of lovers and men going off to war or away on long journeys so the adult hair you see could have been taken at death, or just as easily it could have been taken from the person while they were still alive. But when you think about it, the person is most likely dead now, so does it make a difference if the hair was from them when they were alive or when they died? [;)]
 
I'd figured out that they were first cousins 62 times removed, but my reckoning of Elendil's ancestry in Númenor is probably off a bit, so 63 may be the more accurate number.
 
My family figuring doesn't agree with the chart. The only first cousins you have are the children of your parents siblings. Any 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., cousins are figured based on your generation's relation to others. Children of your parents' first cousins are 2nd cousins. The removedness is just offset generations. In my family two brothers are ancestors on both sides of my mother's family. Tore and Eric were brothers, their children Siri and Lars were first cousins, their children Elen and Lisa were 2nd cousins, their children Inger and Gurina (my grandmother) were 3rd cousins, their children Thore (my grandfather) and Lillie (my mother) were 4th cousins, Lillie (mother) and I are 5th cousins -- and I am my own 5th cousin once removed!

My husband was the one who got his family bible and in it was baby hair. We think it was from a child who died. I think because it was put in the bible (along with a dried flower and a ribbon) it was from a child's death.
 
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