My Grandmother from Carini, Antonina Leone was the child of first cousins, her maternal grandfather and her paternal grandmother were brother and sister. Her mother's parents were 2nd and 3rd cousins as well, all Marciano's. As you go back further in her ancestry you find even more cousins, I am not talking about this uncle married this aunt, or this cousin married that cousin, direct line ancestors marrying their own cousins.

At first I thought, ok it's a smallish town in Sicily, there just were not that many people. But what is remarkable is that if I look at my grandmother's ancestors back to the 1500's I keep seeing one common ancestor over and over again, Biagio Marciano. While i find other ancestors repeated in other lines, it is only maybe once or twice. I descend from Biagio Marciano a total of 13 times!! 13 direct lines of descent is pretty strange, even for Sicily. Like I said there is not other ancestor in Carini I descend from more than twice (and not too often), but with him 13 lines!

I printed out my Grandmother's descent from Biagio and his wife Antonina and highlighted her so you can see the 13 lines of descent (the charts might be hard to read because I took them with my digital camera.)

My Grandmother is in Yellow, 13 times! lol

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

It's kind of cool yet also kind of disturbing!