i sent it to help explain some things i was a student of history and a sleep apnea activist i got into geneaology to find out where i got apnea since its very genetic soon it showed up in my devour and Malian lines early deaths strokes diabetes all things derived from apnea this shows what happens but simulair names dont always tell the story because i live in a small 12000 person town. i have learned never to talk about anyone whose a townie because they are all related and thats 20th century jim ps: gentics = geneaology Dear Jim, In our family the Elders 'always married their cousins'. In every generation first and/or second cousins married. The result has not been all that wonderful nor completely disasterous. Frist, there are an unusual number of very small and short people in our family. M Great-Grandmother Josephine Elder Brandon was 4'8". Her mother, who married her first cousin, was also small as were all Josephine's sisters and one of her brothers. When I say small, I mean small. When I was fifteen I could not fit my hand into her shoe and I am 5'1". In addition, we seem to have inbreed a genetic flaw which causes miscarriages of male children. That is why our Inch Island Elder line is extinct in males. None of Elizabeth Sharkey Elder's male descendants bear the name Elder. Also, we have a preponderance of folks in our family who are -- for lack of a better term -- nervous and high-strung. On the bright side. We have an unusually high number of women of letters in the Elder line. Schoolteachers, poets, and authors keep popping up. So it is not all bad. As an avocational genealogist I find this custom of marrying cousins very inconvenient because it drastically reduces the number of names one may investigate in each generation prior to the consanguinous marriage. One last thing. The idea that cousins should not marry is not peculiar to North America. My Great-Grandmother Josephine immigrated from Donegal specifically because she was being courted by a first cousin. The family expected her to marry him and -- even though she was fond of the man -- she felt it was not wise for the daughter of first cousins to marry her own first cousin. She no sooner arrived in the USA than she received a proposal from an American cousin, which prompted her to head west into lands where she had no relatives. Oh, I was born with six toes. Thank you. Best Regards, Tira Brandon-Evans ELDER, MARSHALL, SHARKEY, CRAIG