When I was in Campbeltown last week I was given details of the family of my great-great grandparents. Everyone has 8 sets of g.g.grandparents, but these were my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandparents, who married in 1842. I had no previous knowledge of this couple or their progeny.
The most striking thing about the chart that I have is the size of the families. This couple had ten children who between them produced 81 grandchildren, one of whom was obviously my grandmother.
Families of this size were by no means unique in former times.
My grandmother alone went on to have a family of seven, and it is interesting to speculate as to how many descendants even this Victorian couple alone now have.
It also leads me to think that there is an even higher level of common ancestry and kinship in Kintyre than I already knew about.
I wonder how many forum members are related to each other (albeit distantly) without even knowing it?