I Married My Cousin

Last year I was updating information on my husband’s (James Robert Oliver) family tree. I kept coming across familiar names, and I just knew that these names were also in one of the other four trees on which I work. Not one to let a mystery stare me in the face, I started going through those other trees looking for those familiar names: Brewer, Morse, Perkins, Sargent. Bingo! I found the connection – my adoptive mother’s family. 

Florence - 1943

It turns out that John Perkins (1583-1654) and Judith Gater Perkins (1588-1654) are the primary connection. John and Judith Perkins are my mother’s (Florence Marie Swinburne Newhouse, 1907-1997) 9th great-grandparents, and my husband’s 10th great-grandparents. I told my husband about this discovery that he and my mother are 10th cousins, which made us, husband and wife, 10th cousins 1x removed. He certainly was not sure what to make about this. I thought it not only interesting, but funny – I had married my cousin! 

It turns out this Perkins family is well-documented. I had not really

Jim 2014

bothered to pursue this line, but I needed to find out more. I found I could go backward from John to William Perkins (1380-1451) where my mother and husband shared common “great-grandparents.”

John Perkins, along with his wife and children, left Bristol, England, on December 1, 1630, aboard the ship Lyon. He arrived in Boston on February 6, 1631. John’s children are where the relationship between my mother and my husband becomes less direct. John’s daughter, Elizabeth Perkins (1611-abt 1670) is my mother’s 8th great-grandmother; John’s son Jacob Perkins (1624-1400), is my husband’s 9th great-grandfather. From there forward, the relationship between my mother and husband becomes one of cousins, aunts, and uncles. 

This just goes to show if we go back in time, we are probably all related.