Today is Tuesday and it’s bowling night.  Unfortunately, I’m not ready to present my next dead-end ancestor so I thought I’d broach the subject of double cousins.

Double cousins occur when a pair of siblings marries another pair of siblings.  The offspring of both couples are double cousins to each other.  They are cousins through both parents.

So far, I have run into several instances of this in my family tree.

1. My 3rd great grandparents, Isaac and Eliza Reeve DeMoss, and their siblings William and Mary Reeve DeMoss.
2. My 2nd great grandparents, Arley and June Bennett Fielden, along with their sibling couples John and Ethel Bennett Fielden, and Thomas and Sallie Bennett Fielden.
3. My great grandparents Frank and Zeda Mattox Fielden, and their sibling couple Curtis and Pearl Fielden Mattox.

There’s no such thing as triple cousins because a person only has two parents.  For example, Arley and June’s kids are double cousins with both John and Ethel’s kids as well as Thomas and Sallie’s kids, not triple cousins.  In fact, this family’s double cousin situation is not the typical double cousins.  Arley and June’s kids are irregular double cousins with the others.  Why?  It has to do with the fact that Ethel and Sallie are June’s half-sisters, not her whole sisters.  There are websites that get into this whole discussion about different genetic combinations of offspring that completely blew me away.  I was more confused than when I started and had to navigate away, but if you are interested a fairly thorough one is Genetic and Quantitative Aspects of Genealogy.

It’s not as common of an occurrence as it once was.  I’m sure a lot of it had to do with sparsely populated areas.  All three of these instances happened at least 100 years ago.