Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population by George B. Louis Arner
page 26 of 115 (22%)
page 26 of 115 (22%)
|
marriage, I estimated in each of sixteen genealogical works, the
number of marriages recorded, and found the total to be 25,200. From these sixteen families I obtained 153 cases of first cousin marriage, or .6 per cent. Allowing for the possible cases of cousin marriage in which the relationship was not given, or which I may have over-looked, the true percentage is probably not far below the 1.12 per cent obtained by the other method. The compiler of the, as yet, unpublished Loomis genealogy writes me that he has the records of 7500 marriages in that family, of which 57 or .8 per cent are same-name marriages. This would indicate that 1.07 per cent were between first cousins. In isolated communities, on islands, among the mountains, families still remain in the same locality for generations, and people are born, marry and die with the same environment. Their circle of acquaintance is very limited, and cousin marriage is therefore more frequent. If we exclude such places, and consider only the more progressive American communities, it is entirely possible that the proportion of first cousin marriages would fall almost if not quite to .5 per cent. So that the estimate of Dr. Dean for Iowa may not be far out of the way. Even for England Mr. Darwin's figures are probably much too large. Applying the corrected formula his table becomes: TABLE VI. ---------------------------------------------------- |Number |Per cent of|Per cent of 1872. |marriages |same-name |first cousin |
|