70 degrees in Hotlanta

[warrior]

I was running my route through midtown today enjoying the weather. Evidently the ladies were, too, lots of shorts and tank tops. I got the most pleasant surprise when I happened to spy a lovely young redhead in a box pleated mini kilt in of all things MacLeod of Harris tartan. Made this McLeod proud to see it and that she had the legs to pull it off so well.

[piperdbh]

So you found a cousin, huh?

[Aspiringloser]

Nothing says lovin' like _________ your cousin.

[Steve of Lansing]

WOW!! This got weird quick!

[Aspiringloser]

Totally!!

[warrior]

Nothing says lovin' like _________ your cousin.

AND.............

My paternal grands were second cousins. His paternal grands were first cousins. His sister, my great aunt who was granny to me, married her third by blood and first by marriage cousin.

Back when I was an active coonhunter we had a saying about it when it came to breeding good hound stock (which btw the best crosses were always niece//uncle or grandson/granddam). "If it works it's linebreeding, if it don't it's inbreeding"

[rlloyd]

You're not a MacLeod! You're not Scottish at all! You're obviously a Habsburg displaced in time!

[J_Mimbs]

You're not a MacLeod! You're not Scottish at all! You're obviously a Habsburg displaced in time!

Nah, he's just from Georgia. My family ended up there after leaving the Highlands and I wound up related to myself too (although you have to go back a ways). I'm my own fifth cousin three times removed or something like that.

[warrior]

Actually, I'm an alabamian. Here in the big city to make my fame and fortune ;) . My escape plan calls for me pointing the truck due west and not stopping until I cross the state line, at which point I will pull over step out of the truck and lift the pleats and tell Georgia where they can kiss.
On the cousin part, it would surprise me not to see cousin marriages throughout the highlands or anywhere the general population is basically sedentary. Historically families lived in one geographic area and barring major disruptions such as wars or mass migrations the selection of unrelated mates become slimmer with each passing generation. That is the case in my own line. From the time they settled in Clarke county, AL it was over 150 years before one of mine actually married a partner born outside the county.
My people literally would be born and die and never travel more than twenty miles in their entire life. You can also add in large numbers of offspring into the mix. I once asked the curator of the county museum, also a cousin, a genealogy question. She gave me funny look and asked if I knew of "honest John" Calhoun to which I replied in the affirmative. Well, she said, he had thirteen children and that's how were all related, referring to all the "old families" in the county. BTW, in that county a newcomer is someone from a family that has been there less than a century.
Even the two county historians, Ball and Mathews (D.C. Mathews former president of University of Alabama and a cousin) acknowledge this throughout their writings which read as much like a genealogy as they do a history of the county.

[Lyle1]

On the cousin part, it would surprise me not to see cousin marriages throughout the highlands or anywhere the general population is basically sedentary.

My family lines cross one another a lot, and I have found several occasions of marriages between cousins of some degree in both Scottish and German lines. In more than one instance I am descended from a given ancestor more than once and separated from that ancestor by different numbers of generations in each case. It wasn't always about people being sedentary. Many of the marriages in my tree were made for political, or economic reasons, and brides were not always local or even from the same country. I only really see the sedentary effect in my ancestors during the American colonial period on the frontier where marriages were largely made on the basis of who was available locally. My McDowell ancestors were reduced to marrying Germans when they realized that there were not enough Irvine women available in the colonies for all of them.