Although heredity societies such as DAR or SAR are not of interest to everyone, if you're doing research on your very early American roots in Colonial times, you may still want to see what information that DAR or SAR holds that may be applicable to your search. You may be surprised. Both have libraries of their own. Some of their membership and past applications can be found on certain databases. If you're starting to loose a trail. I would certainly look to see who may have applied for membership and the lineage they are reporting.
Talking to someone the other day about PEDIGREE COLLAPSE and how interrelated humans are, I suggested that DNA results would probably lead to an affirmation that a person is genetically linked to dozens of ancestors in a small town in Europe.
Basically, as we go back in time there were less people on earth than there are now. And people died younger. And remarried quickly. So while today there are blended families because of divorce, not so long ago the death of a spouse a - until the mid 1800's in Colonial America - common for people to marry a cousin. Not a first cousin but someone related. In Europe concerns and understandings about land ownership and inheritance also encouraged interrelated and local marriages. It was not until massive immigration, travel and transportation ease, and the move from country to cities that people started having an opportunity to meet people who would otherwise be strangers to them, and to choose their own partners, really mixing up that DNA. So, be it a royal family or you and me, we are likely to discover that some of the same people appear on our charts in more than one of our lines. What might appear as a fan chart -that looks like an inverted pyramid may just collapse.
