While thinking of something else, the idea of these cropped up.
I have never really thought about it, but maybe I am at an age when one starts to :D but it must get confusing....
My Grandmother on my Dad's side was the oldest of 7 siblings; her mother was the youngest of 6 - That lead to about 30 odd people being roughly the same age but not "cousins" as such - How does one keep track? And that is only 2 generations!
On my mothers side it would get almost Biblical in who begot who - my grandfathers oldest brother was 25 years older than him :/ so his "niece" was older .......
My mother's uncle is only a couple of years older than her.
My great-grandmother (mother's grandmother, aforementioned uncle's mother) was the youngest of 13 children spread out over the last quarter of the 19th century, though the attrition rate was awful. Had my great-grandmother not had a 40-a-day habit she might have (just about) lived in three different centuries.
I've been doing genealogy for about 15 year now and have my family tree back to the early 1500's but what has amazed me is that I was always taught that life expectancy in "olden" days was very low. I have now come to realise that that is a complete myth, it was just the fact that often at least 50% of children didn't live very long and this pulled the expected average age down considerably.
I have many instances (documented) of my ancestors living into their 80's and 90's so my life expectancy should be reasonably ok. On the other hand, of my great grandfathers 7 children only 3 lived and of my great grandfathers 8 children only 4 made it through. :(
My mum was the youngest of 5, and had me late in life. My cousins had children who were older than me.
Regards,
John P
My Dad's side of the family were rather prolific - despite the childhood deaths, there were enough survivors to field a footie team ::) His youngest sibling is only a few years older than I am ! Really narks her when I call her Aunty :angel: