Some of ya'll can breathe a sign of relief - the National Genealogical
Society Quarterly Vol 84 No. 2 June 1996- has a very interesting study by
John M. Kingsbury, Ph.D on Interconnecting Bloodlines and Genetic Inbreeding
in a Colonial Puritan Community; Eastern Massachusetts, 1630-1885 .
Conclusion:
"Among genealogists, the discovery of "Cousin marriages" in an
ancestral line is sometimes a disturbing experience.
It need not be - as this study demonstrates. In most societies of the past,
settlements were more stable, travel more constrained, and - thus - marital
partners more limited. The Bullard-Kingsbury pedigrees that have been
outlined in this paper are typical of many. Interconnections by marriage
among the early rural families of this one discrete area of easten MA were
numerous, and they repeatedly rejoined the families for more than two and a
half centuries. yet the total genetic inbreeding that resulted from this
extensive practice was minor."
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