What's In a Cousin

keep it simple

About 4 1/2 years ago, a relative of mine, a first cousin once removed (1C1R) and I, became partners in a family history project. His name is Jim by the way. I describe my relative as I did to get your mind engaged. One of my observations, over the years, is that many of us, quite specific to either a field of study, an interest, or an occupation, adopt lingo that often raises a barrier to others understanding what we are talking about. I was inspired to consider this topic by one of my sons. My son served on active duty in the Navy a number of years ago and remains in the reserves today. I would imagine he was more extensively exposed to jargon than most anyone I know. His take on one of my stories here was that using a less-used word can make reading inaccessible and I should think about whether a word is necessary rather than just serving my desire to toss out an extra, perhaps unnecessary syllable or two and send folks to the dictionary. This writing thing is going to be hard at times. I imagine that improvement will require being open to criticism and acting on it as necessary.

I think that some of this is necessary in order to be precise. However, I also think that sometimes it becomes an unnecessary barrier and fails the KISS principle. The KISS principle is “keep it simple, stupid”. Today, rather than jumping around to a lot of examples, I am going to focus my discussion as it relates to one of my interests which is family trees aka genealogy.

When my 1C1R and I became partners, we first decided that our focus would be to figure out what became of all of the Dolans of our clan. Our family history is modest. My great grandfather Michael Joseph Dolan traveled to America near the end of the Civil War. He was contracted to take the place of a Union Civil War draftee. This was a common practice by which the affluent could avoid service. Some things never change. It is never lost on me that politically, the biggest hawks are those that ensure their own children rarely, if ever serve. The luck of the Irish expressed itself for my great grandfather as the war came to an end as he was crossing the Atlantic. He would soon instead begin his journey to becoming an American without having to toil in war. While an image from Appomattox would be a nice family heirloom, I am glad he instead developed some farmland, got married, and fathered my grandfather.

I think it is probably the time to explain the first cousin once removed that I started with. Like all things, there is jargon with genealogy. When I first started delving in, I most certainly did not understand what a 2nd or 3rd cousin was. Use of the commercial DNA services might surmise an unknown relative is a 2nd cousin once removed which is not very helpful to the uninitiated. The same is true with removal. A number of years ago, I came upon an explanation that finally made things much clearer for me and hopefully for you as well. Large extended families often go with the shorthand of calling everyone cousin. While convenient it doesn’t help to understand how given people are related.

Let’s begin with cousins and ignore removal to start. The very best way to understand how you are related to someone is to just think about who is your most recent common ancestor (MRCA). Most of us have a group of 1st cousins (1C). All first cousins simply have common grandparents. If you have the same grandparent(s) as another person (beyond your brothers and sisters of course) you are 1st cousins. The easy way to keep it all straight is to count the Gs. The word grandparent has one G in it. While this case is pretty simple you will see the simplicity soon enough. So now, let’s talk about great grandparents. One of my great grandparents, as I mentioned earlier was Michael Joseph Dolan. He and his wife Margaret Allen had 13 children. For anyone in my extended family who has a MRCA of Michael and Margaret, they are 2nd cousins. Just remember that there are 2 Gs in Great Grandparents. The Great-Grandchildren of Michael and Margaret are 2nd cousins (2C). Of course, this applies as we all become more distant. A 3rd cousin just has common ancestors of Great Great Grandparents since there are 3 Gs in the name. I hope that makes sense to you before we continue. If it is not, please leave a comment as I need to work on my clarity.

Removal, in my experience, and trying to explain it to others is also confusing. I think that simplified language can again be of some help. Removal is AKA generation difference. When two people are not in the same generation, they are REMOVED from each other. Once removed is one generation and twice removed is two generations. Imagine a person (my friend Jim) who is a Grandson of Michael and Margaret. His cousins (first cousins) per the rules are also Grandchildren of Michael and Margaret. One of those folks happens to be my Dad. Dad and Jim were 1st cousins. As a son of my Dad, I am Jim’s 1st cousin, once removed.

That brings to an end my simple “lesson” on genealogy for this evening. As always, comments are welcome. The image is an awesome reference and is compliments of the website https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/. Once you get to 7th cousins and removal, you may be related to almost anyone.

As always, comments are graciously appreciated.