Quote Originally Posted by warrior View Post
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.