If you have ever wondered why your relatives who were first cousins, didn't marry in their home state of Missouri, the following may provide the answer. It may also send you to the state of Kentucky to look for the records. >From "the Higbee News" dated 14 Apr 1899--Missouri lawmakers had a hard fight at the revising session of 1889 enacting a law to prohibit the marriage of first cousins. Public sentiment was then somewhat divided on the question, but has evidently changed to nearly unanimous since for now the Missouri House of Representatives has passed to engrossment, without a word of comment, a bill to prohibit the marriage of second cousins, stepparents and stepchildren. And it seems altogether probably the bill will pass. The marriage of first cousins has almost entirely stopped by prohibitory laws in the Southern and Western states, where such marriages were most common. The State of Kentucky is now the only refuge for loving relatives of that degree. There has always existed a strong sentiment against marriages between stepchildren and there will doubtless be no opposition to a law prohibiting them. But the second cousins question is a new one. People may discuss that at some length, but there doesn't appear to be any reason why, if the marriage of first cousins is wrong, the marriage of second or even third and fourth cousins is not also wrong, to a comparative degree--Moberly Democrat.