What cousin's related where?

[Alan SHARP]

Greetings Shelia.

Our lot, down under, were so Protestant that I have never given a Catholic influence a thought. Our 200 year oral history was quite happy to lump all the "close" marriages down to "cousins" marrying. However those 1780 - 1790 birth and christening records have been so elusive to find. Especially when so many OPR's have survived in good order.

The rural communities were so tight; hard working as labourers; and moving to seek work, that possibly quite a few just shifted camp and started up their relationship without paying their dues, to marry, and or to register their offspring, and fudging their true relationship.

I find it interesting, when I come across a family I'm researching having settled into a new community, and church and Christening their newest born, also have siblings born years before in another community, noted on the next line of the OPR as having been baptised "soon after birth" etc at a different place and shire. Yet search as I might, at their previous residence, I can not find all the hard evidence.

Happy hunting,

Alan SHARP.