[snowman]

My question, who did you marry, is based on my own experience. What is truly amazing is WHO you married! The person I married was in a state several states removed from my own (NY vs MI), yet the person I married is somehow related to me in ways I had no way of knowing. I had no information in advance that this person was somehow involved with my family many generations before I met her. In fact some of the founding fathers of her community are also related to me. What is truly amazing is the close relationship of the people involved. People that had no pre conceived organization in mind when they did what they did.

My personal ancestry can be traced back about 1500 years, 375 years in this country. What is amazing is that the people my family is associated with also tracks for almost all of the same time. What that means is that if you take a snapshot at any time in history of the names of the families very closely related, ie no more than 2nd cousins, they are all the SAME! This makes sense back in the early years, but when we get the the 1800's it starts to seem sort of spooky. When it extends to the 1970's its down right spooky. No one introduced us formally, in fact we were several states removed and total strangers introduced us.

How and why does this happen??? Total strangers, yet related by blood, at least by 4th cousins.

This is more than some kind of intentional inbreeding, its some kind of unintentional genetic inbreeding.

It turns out that not only MY marriage, but the marriage of my father, grandfather, gg grandfather, and ggg grandfather, and even gggg grandfather follows this pattern.

There is no apparent significance in this pattern, other than real Americans breed true Americans. Even if you do not agree with this statement, its truly an interesting phenomenon.

Just why do closely related people tend to marry people with closely related ideas and historical connections? And Yes I am related to president Bush, very remotely. But thats why I love him!

And before you do protest to loud, both GW Bush and I are related to George Washington! Think about this before responding.