Cousinship

Yesterday I met some second cousins from my maternal grandmother’s Fisher family. As I get older, it seems that family reunions increasingly occur in connection with the passing of our elders. Mom’s cousin Merilyn Fisher departed this life on Monday, the 16th of November 2015. Merilyn’s father Hazen Fisher was my Grandma Sovereign’s oldest brother. Their family is shown in this picture before Grandma’s younger sister Marge was born. Waldo, on his mother’s lap, was born in November 1913 so this picture was probably taken in about 1914. My grandmother, Marie, would have been about five years old. Arthur and Hazen would have been about seven and nine.

Hazen’s children were Mom’s first cousins. Two daughters, Pat and Donna, are still alive and well. Hazen’s grandchildren are my second cousins.

If you’re scratching your head at this point, it’s probably because you were raised reckoning cousins the same way I was: my mother’s first cousins were my second cousins, and their children were my third cousins. That system works well enough when you’re used to it, but it gets confusing in a hurry when you’re accounting for various cousins of your grandparents and more distant ancestors. It also doesn’t give any hint of what generations these various cousins are in.

So what’s the alternative? The system understood by most genealogists requires some rethinking, but it is actually quite simple and clear:

• The children of siblings are first cousins.
• The children of first cousins are second cousins.
• The children of second cousins are third cousins.
• and so on.

Wait a minute. Then what is my mother’s first cousin Merilyn to me? She was my first cousin once removed, and I was her first cousin once removed.

Removed? What’s that all about? It (one, two, three, four times removed, and so on) tells how many generations apart we are. Mom and her first cousin are in the same generation. I am one generation removed from their generation.

Another way to figure out cousin relationships is to go back to your nearest common ancestors. The number of qualifiers (great and grand) you have in front of the word parents provides a clue. If you and a cousin share grandparents (one qualifier), you are first cousins. If you and your cousin share great-great-grandparents, you are third cousins. If your great-grandparents are your cousin’s great-great-great grandparents, you are second cousins two times (or twice) removed. The lowest number of qualifiers tells whether you are first, second, third or whatever cousins. The difference in the number of qualifiers tells how many generations apart you are.

For Hazen Fisher’s family and me, our nearest common ancestors were Hazen’s parents, Clyde and Idell Fisher. Merilyn Fisher’s daughters’ great-grandparents Clyde and Idell Fisher were also my great-grandparents, making Merilyn’s daughters and me second cousins.

My new-found second cousins, by the way, seemed to be a pretty nice lot. I’m glad some of us finally met. I look forward to getting to know this part of my extended family.