Get the joke in the picture? It's actually my family tree. My father-in-law/step third cousin once removed was actually the first to tip me off. On my first trip to my wife's home in Odessa (Florida), her father casually asked me my last name. I told him the distinctive and unusual last name of Hungarian origin and he responded in peculiar fashion, "Really, (Hungarian last name), like the (Hungarian last name)'s from Nicaragua." I was slightly surprised but not entirely taken aback because our family had achieved some notoriety in small circles (a Canadian librarian later wrote a book which featured some information about a long dead relative named Laszlo). There is no (Hungarian last name, "HLN"), from Nicaragua that I am not related to in some way. The Jewish community of the country had always been and remains, small.
I return to the initial meeting with my wife's father.
After replying that yes, I am one of the HLN's, he promptly revealed that as a teenager he had spent time on a certain "finca" owned by Julio HLN, my great uncle, and that...wait for it...we were all related. He was chuckling, my wife then girlfriend, was not. My wife's grandfather had sent my father-in-law to Nicaragua to learn Spanish and while there he stayed with family, his family and my family.
This is how it goes. My wife's paternal, paternal great grandfather, i.e., my father-in-law's paternal grandfather was a widower. At some point, he decided to remarry. He already had children but desired companionship. Like many people, he sought his companionship from familiar environs. For him, familiar environs meant the people from the same small Hungarian village of Jews that had since dispersed into diaspora from diaspora. While he was in Michigan, he knew the HLN's in Managua and sent for and married Lillian, sister of my paternal grandfather, Morris. We are one family. There is no blood between my wife and I, at least not within the last four generations, but it was always funny to think that my great aunt was my wife's grandfather's stepmother. Had my great aunt actually been my wife's great grandmother, then my wife and I would be third cousins, not exactly a genetic time bomb. In fact just being of European Jewish descent presents far more genetic concerns.
While my wife's grandfather was living I enjoyed hearing him tell stories about the nefarious deeds of my Nicaraguan family. I am slightly dubious that my paternal uncles' remember what a good swimmer my father-in-law was during his visit more than forty years ago though they swear up and down they remember his visit and always refer to him by his nickname.
My wife and I would have been married even if we were third cousins, I would have been game if we were even closer. Apparently cousin love is no big deal. For an understanding of your relationship to others in your extended family, plus an explanation of what it means when someone is "once removed," click this link. For the record, I knew my wife for seven years before we knew our families were intertwined, that "small world" thing can really blow you away sometimes.
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