Monday, November 24, 2014

15th Cousins? I have a few.

I recently posted a question on Facebook inviting people to make a guess.

"If two people share the same parents, they are siblings. If they share the same grandparents, they are 1st cousins. If they share the same great-grandparents, they are 2nd cousins. If we assume that everyone has 2 children, how many 15th cousins could I have?"

Unfortunately, no one offered a guess, but you could imagine there would be guesses ranging from 1,000 to 100,000. The correct answer is that I would have 32,768 15th cousins. To give you some prospective, there are about 34,000 people living in Butte, Montana.
Butte, Montana: Pop. =33,854 (2013)
Now, this is also in addition to the 16,384 14th cousins, 8,192 13th cousins, 4,096 12th cousins, 2,048 11th cousins, 1,024 10th cousins, 512 9th cousins, 256 8th cousins, 128 7th cousins, 64 6th cousins, 32 5th cousins, 16 4th cousins, 8 3rd cousins, 4 2nd cousins, 2 first cousins, 1 sibling and a partridge in a pear tree! If we add these all up (including myself) there would be a total of 65,536 living descendants of my 14th great-grandfather who was born around 1500 AD in Schweicheln, Germany. That's about the same as the population of Missoula, Montana. 
Missoula, Montana: Pop.=69,122 (2013)
Now, that would only be for my generation when in reality we would need to include my living nieces/nephew's generation, my parent's generation, my grandparent's generation, and even some of my great-grandparent's generation. This number of living descendants very well could be upwards of 100,000 which is about the population of the state of Montana. 
Montana, USA: Pop.=1,015,165 (2013)
Now, that's assuming that everyone had exactly 2 children who survived to adulthood and had 2 children of their own. In reality many descendants did not live to adulthood, marry, or have children. Many others had up to 12 children! To allow for comparison, if we assume that everyone had exactly 5 children, my 14th great-grandfather would have 30,517,578,125 descendants! That's a little over 4 times the current world population! 

Earth (x4): Pop.=7,276,626,200 (4:14 PM)
Pop. x 4 =29,106,504,800
Perhaps 2 is a better estimate of the average descendants per person on our family tree. 3 would give 14,348,907 (about the size of Illinois) and 4 would give 1,073,741,824 (about the size of India). 

So, why is any of this important? Because with numbers like these, there's bound to be other cousins out there who have done research on their little branch of the family which I could never have hoped to find out myself. I haven't yet determined how much of the family tree I will cover in my book. I've contemplated writing several volumes; one for every major branch since 1700 on my side of the family and have a similar chapter in each about the "ancient" Holzgrafe family from 1500-1700. 

Monday, November 17, 2014

Did you marry your 8th cousin?

In a recent post I explained that there is a Holtgraefe family from Joellenbeck and Enger which might be a branch off of the Schweicheln Holtzgraefe tree which is known back to 1500 AD. Where that connection may be is still a mystery and might not be solved for some time as it may require a visit to Germany. Since that post was...posted, I have done a bit more research on this family. The furthest back I was able to get was to a Cord Holtgraeve who was born in Oldinghausen, Enger in 1627 AD.

I then lined him up next to the Schweicheln family tree to see where he could possibly fit in (see image below). He could be a nephew of Jasper Holtzgrafe (1603-1672), or a distant cousin, but he would be in the same generation as Heinrich Holzgraefe (1645-1708). Since he was born in Enger, he is most likely a second, third or even a fourth cousin of Heinrich.

Click to enlarge
Since I was unable to determine the exact relation right away, I turned to the descendants of Cord in both Oldinghausen and Joellenbeck and where ever else the family ended up. Several of his descendants came to America including the Holtzgrafes of Warrick, Indiana and their cousins who ended up in Minnesota. As far as I know, the Holtzgrafe name does not continue from this line in America. There are, however, many cousins by different surnames who came to America including the Harland, the Fehring, Hachmeister, Schmidt, and Merhoff families.

Then I stumbled upon the Wittland family, a very large branch of Cord's tree. While some of these Wittland descendants (the Fehring and Hachmeister families) moved to America, others stayed including Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Wittland (1859-1930) who in 1888 married his 8th cousin (at least), Johanne Wilhelmine Holzgraefe (1868-????) who was the daughter of Caspar Heinrich Holzgraefe (1836-????) and Catharine Marie Klussmann (1838-????). This is an estimate based on the scenario described above where Cord is a nephew of Jasper.

We can all agree that marrying a sibling or cousin is a big no-no, but when it comes down to it, we're all cousins. Geneticists have learned over the years that marrying a close relative can cause severe handicaps in children born to that marriage. I found it interesting that all states in the United States allow marriage of 2nd cousins and some will even allow the marriage of 1st cousins! Here is a list of states that actually allow 1st cousins to marry.

My wife and I found that we're related, but we're 10th cousins twice removed, so I think we're good. You too may have married your 8th cousin without even realizing it! Here's a neat little chart that I find helpful when determining how you're related to distant cousins.

Canon law relationship chart.svg

Monday, November 10, 2014

Lloyd R. Holzgrafe: A Tribute

Lloyd R Holzgrafe (Holzgraf) was born 29 April 1931 to Harold Talmage Holzgrafe and Edna M Kuechel in Santa Ana, California. He passed away 13 years ago today (10 November 2001). This is a lovely tribute to his amazing career as a professional organist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2A8xxzwiZM).



My most favorite organ song ever as played by my second cousin twice removed, Lloyd Holzgrafe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0bETda5uM).
 

Lloyd had no children, but his memory lives on through his Holzgrafe cousins and all those influenced by his music and spirit. Please comment if you have any memories of Lloyd which you'd like to share.

                         Lloyd R. Holzgrafe