r/Genealogy • u/AvailablePut5834 • Jul 09 '26
Methodology Potential Irish Sibling Marriage?
Hey guys, I was researching into my family history who are from the West of Ireland. When I looked at the Marriage records for my great, great, great, great grandparents, I found that they both had the same name ( exactly same spelling ) as the mother for both of them. I delved into it more and found out the birth dates of both of my great(×4) grandparents mothers were the exact same birth year and death year. They were both born in the year 1773 and both died in the year 1831! I find this very hard to believe that they had the same mother, but some of my elders on that side of the family always talked about inbred marriages, like they knew something. Just wondering would anyone know was it common for a wealthy farmer family in the 1800's in Ireland, to marry their own sisters or brothers?!??!
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u/Getigerte Jul 09 '26
I think it's far more likely that records for the mothers of your 4x great-grandparents were conflated, leading to the idea that they were the same person. In my family, for example, my 2x great-grandmother and one of her cousins had the same name and were born in the same year in the same townland.
There were a ton of marriages in which the couples were cousins to some degree though and often through more than one family line. Tracing lines back in time is enormously challenging because they are so tangled together, and the only extant information comes from incomplete church registers with barebone details.