Kissing Cousins

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! It all started with a handsome college friend named Newton and a warning from Grandma Beverly: “I hope you're not dating him, Donna, because he's your cousin.” As it turns out, Grandma knew exactly what she was talking about. In this episode of Names We Carry, Donna follows a tangled trail of family connections from Virginia to Kentucky to Missouri, uncovering generations of cousins who married cousins—and sometimes cousins who married cousins who were already cousins several times over. At the center of this genealogical knot are the Trigg and Johns families of Virginia, whose descendants included Revolutionary War veterans, a United States congressman with connections to Thomas Jefferson, and an extraordinary collection of overlapping family lines. One family photograph features five relatives who collectively represented 35 lines of descent from the same Virginia family. Along the way, Donna explores pedigree collapse, the genealogical phenomenon that occurs when the same ancestors appear in multiple branches of a family tree, and asks why cousin marriages were once so common. From colonial Virginia to the Missouri countryside, this is a story about migration, marriage, family connections, and the surprising ways our ancestors keep turning up in our lives. Because sometimes a family tree isn't really a tree. Sometimes it's a crochet project. In This Episode Grandma Beverly's unforgettable warning about Cousin Newton The Trigg and Johns families and their remarkably tangled ancestry Congressman John Johns Trigg and his connections to Thomas Jefferson How five relatives accumulated 35 lines of descent from one family What pedigree collapse means and why it happens Why cousin marriages were common in earlier generations How families carried their relationships westward from Virginia to Kentucky and Missouri Explore More Discover more family history, genealogical mysteries, and the stories behind the names at Names We Carry. Names We Carry is a podcast about the people, places, secrets, and surprises waiting to be discovered in our family trees. Hosted by Donna Miller.