singhals wrote: > > I've stared at this until I've driven myself into a depression. So then > I dragged some good friends into it, and they've gone cross-eyed. > > Now I'm inviting comments from the world-at-large. (g) > > What are the odds of a man b 1833 who, except for his CW service, NEVER > lived more than 27 miles from his birthplace in VA, having married 3 > separate women with the same given names, only the middle of whom left a > death record, and only the first and 2nd left a marriage record? > > There are numerous other details, but that's the broad picture, and what > I'm after here is -- is this a common-as-dirt scenario, or it is a > one-of-a-kind, or is it neither rare nor frequent? > > Thanks. > > Cheryl In my family tree, one branch is Hussite (in my case, Moravian, or officially Unitas Fratrum) who were originally in Switzerland, then most of the community moved to Alsace, then to Pennsylvania, then to North Carolina.) That community, though they made those moves over a 150-year period, stayed together as group. The small number of given names in that group is amazing, looking back from today. One family had three siblings named Maria and two named Johann, with different middle names. Almost every family had at least one of each of these names, and the surnames were naturally small in number. Because of this, I can see that though the odds might seem high, the records could well be correct. Unfortunately, middle names seldom made it into the official records. In the case of my ancestors, the Moravian Church kept the most amazingly detailed records that I have ever seen. In tracking down one of my ancestors, I found on the same page this statement: "Saw a five-foot-long snake today". That certainly makes their records an amazing source of information; would that I could find that sort of info on other branches. Allen