Back to the original topic (cousins), it's important to remember that the ancients - meaning in the colonial period - often used "cousin" to mean "nephew" or "niece", and sometimes other more distant relatives. One has to be careful in interpreting wills, lest become befuddled. John "Mary Lou Swank" <mlscpa@epix.net> wrote: >As for cousin relationships, there is a great chart at the following web >site:  http://www.cousincouples.com/?page=relation >I printed this out a while back and have found it invaluable when asked how >I fit into someone else's family.  It helps to go back through the >generations, too, but this chart is quite helpful in determining the cousin >relationships.

John wrote: >>> Back to the original topic (cousins), it's important to remember that the ancients - meaning in the colonial period - often used "cousin" to mean "nephew" or "niece", and sometimes other more distant relatives. One has to be careful in interpreting wills, lest become befuddled.<<< _______ Speakers/writers also sometimes use "cousin" to refer to non-blood relatives, certainly including individuals related by marriage but not by blood (for instance, a spouse of a "true cousin"), and even to individuals of more obscure or uncertain family connection to the writer/speaker, although I don't know how often such usage might be found in documents dating to the colonial period in our geographic area of interest. Dave K