At 10:07 AM 10/22/03 -0500, you wrote: >You mention twins. My grandmother said there were lots of twins in the >Sellers side, I know of a set named Houston and Austin/Austen Sellers. Sound like Texans, not Georgians (-;. >She was a bit miffed with me when I told her it was the mother that made >the number, and the father was responsible for the sex of child. Fraternal twins result from the fertilization of two ova shed at (usually) the same time (within a few minutes or hours, although it may rarely be days or even weeks--in which cases the one or both twins often do not survive). Fraternal twinning is a function of the mother alone, since only she "controls" how many eggs are available for fertilization. Identical twinning results from a single ovum that, sometime after fertilization, splits into two (or more: triplets, quads, etc.) zygotes (although not all such splits are complete--conjoined, "Siamese", twins come from such incomplete divisions). This splitting is only partially genetic, but the part that is, is influenced equally by paternal and maternal heritages. Otherwise, identical twinning is "accidental", a product of too many environmental contributions to say who's "responsible". Sometimes the woman sheds two eggs, and one or both will split resulting in both fraternal and identical twins (triplets or quadruplets) in the same gestation/birth. Since all women have only a matched pair of "X" chromosomes, mommy's contribution to the genetic mix that creates the child's body, it make no difference (to the sex of the child) which of her two ends up in the fetal nucleus. Daddy does, of course, supply either the matching "X" chromosome for his daughters, or the complementary "Y" chromosome to his sons. I have heard of (but cannot verify) that some women have ova that "prefer" one type of spermatazoan over the other. It sounds like a folk tale more than medicine, but mothers have been "researching" this for far longer than scientists. Spermal vigor seems to affect the sex of the child more than anything else. "Y"-type sperm are a tad more active than "X"-type, so a few more boys are born than girls on average. But when a couple "try hard" to conceive, and if the first few attempts in a single day do not result in success, and because later ejaculations have somewhat more X-type spermatazoa than Y-types, these couples often have daughters more frequently than sons. Yeah, I know, more than you wanted to know. (-: Lehi Erwin SELLERS son of Cecil Alfred (1917), son of Joseph Lehi (1870) (whose granddaughters include Karma SELLERS Burtenshaw), son of Allen Davenport (1833), son of Thomas (?) and Diadema CURTIS (?). Looking for Thomas's father (possibly Christian or John)