I have not read the article and I cannot speak for Dale but my opinion is that when groups live in isolation they tend to marry within their community. Therefore, even if one marries a distant cousin, they are related. In the case of my maternal grandparents, the Meyers and Koonces lived across the river from each other, just a short wade apart. Four Meyer siblings married four Koonce siblings. Though they were not genetically related beforehand they produced a swarm of first cousins and consequently uncles and aunts, etc. My husband and I recently attended a wedding in the town near where my mother grew up. About 1000 people were invited and I believe we were the only ones not related to the bride or groom....or were we? It also seems that when a new girl moves into town biology takes over and the boys (or vice versa) are ready to dilute the gene pool :Q Gwen Boucher ‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰‰ Boucher Y-DNA Surname Project https://www.familytreedna.com/public/boucher/ > From: Wolf Seelentag <wolf.seelentag@swissonline.ch> > Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:51:45 +0200 > To: SWITZERLAND-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: AW: [SWITZ] Article - why some Swiss families in certain villages > have more North American cousins than other families in other villages do > Resent-From: SWITZERLAND-L@rootsweb.com > Resent-Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:06:32 -0600 > >> Von: dbricker@cyburban.com [mailto:dbricker@cyburban.com] >> Gesendet: Dienstag, 26. Juli 2005 20:06 >> [...] >> What follows is the summary of an article. >> [...] >> The gist of this is that the authors of the article found that the >> population in places such as Frutigen (where my patrilineal line is >> supposed to have come from), Poschiavo, Einsiedeln, Mels, Widnau, and >> Appenzell have relatively few surnames compared with practically all >> other communes of similar population size in Switzerland, which means >> that in-migration from elsewhere has been historically low and >> consequently due to inter-marriage almost everyone there is probably >> related to some extent to everyone else. > > Possibly I shouldn't comment on an article which I haven't read myself - > I hope Dale puts me right if my asumption is incorrect. > > From the above I get the impression, that a genealogical relation is > always assumed for people with the same surname. I often read this > asumption between the lines of queries sent to me - and it's simply > wrong! In German (not sure about Rumantsch) there are several very > common surnames, carried by hundreds (or even thousands) of families > with no genealogical connection whatsoever - just consider all the > Meier, Schmid, Huber, Keller, .... - there are no really equivalent > surnames in French and Italian speaking parts of the world. If this > feeling of mine is correct, this would mean the above study is heavily > biased towards high consanguinuity in the Geramn speaking part of > Switzerland - which in turn renders any conclusion from this study > questionable, to say the least. Conclusions of this kind will be much > less biased when comparing single communities within a common language > reagion, of course. There are several areas (and I guess you can find > these all over the world) where for geographical or religios (and > possibly other) reasons in-migration has been very low - of the above > especially Poschiavo will qualify for geographical reasons, might also > apply to Frutigen and Einsiedeln, I would not necessarily expect Mels > and Widnau here. > > Best regards - Wolf > __________________ > Wolf Seelentag, Ph.D. > Reherstr. 19 > CH - 9016 St.Gallen > +41 (0) 71 - 288 51 21 > wolf.seelentag@swissonline.ch > > > ==== SWITZERLAND Mailing List ==== > Going on vacation? Gone longer than 4 days? Go to > http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/intl/CHE/SWITZERLAND.html > to unsubscribe >