Many of us will come across times when your family tree becomes All Mixed Up, a complex web of intertwining relationships. Mine has several instances when the mix of names and relationships produces a tangled tree indeed, and impacts on my research as well.
In my Irish ancestry, along the Mulholland line, I find myself All Mixed Up due to names. As was a common custom at the time, all four surviving sons of my ancestor James Mulholland named their first son James after their paternal grandfather. As the family all lived close, this results in me having 4 men names James Mulholland, all born within a few miles of each other and within a five year timeframe. And two of them married women named Mary! Trying to work out which James Mulholland each record I find is sometimes just imposssible!
A complex Step relationship I have is that of Thomas May, my 3xGreat Grandfather. Thomas married a total of 4 times, losing his first three wives in childbirth. Each time, he remarried within a year of his spouse's death. It is his 4th wife, Susannah Balls (nee Hart), where the relationships become truly convoluted. Susannah's daughter (also Susannah) was married to Thomas's second son William. So Thomas became not only father-in-law but also step-father to Susannah Jr, and his new wife Susannah became mother-in-law and step-mother to William.
Then there is the relationship of my Aunt, Mavis Pummeroy, and Great Aunt Thelma Clark. Mavis, born in 1924, married Ernest Horton on the 15th of September 1947. Her Aunt Thelma, born in 1914, had married Clarence Horton, Ernest’s brother, on the 6th of April 1935. Thus these two women were not only aunt and niece, but also sisters-in-law.
'All Mixed Up' indeed!
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