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Edwynn -> RE: What is the most surprising thing you have ever learned? (3/28/2011 10:58:17 PM)
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Not the most surprising but one of the more interesting things I learned is what a 3/4 sibling is.
Scenario:
Man-woman marry, have at least one child; one spouse, let's say the husband in this example, dies some time later; the woman then marries the husband's brother, they later have at least one child; children having one parent in common and the other one different are normally half siblings, but if the non-common parents are themselves brothers in this case, then the kids of the different fathers are 3/4 siblings. Same situation of course if the man is the constant and he marries the sister of deceased first wife.
Though it was not exactly common, this was certainly not an unheard of occurrence in times past. A single parent mother having much fewer options than exist now, it was that much more important to re-marry, and sometimes, in some areas, the choices might have been few or possibly dangerous. The brother of the deceased husband was sometimes the safer bet.
What was surprising is that I only learned about this ~ 2 years after my grandmother died when other family members did a serious genealogical search and found out that she was the youngest child in just such a family, having a 3/4 brother and sister from the prior marriage. (The mother died when my g'mother was two, then her father at age three , ==> orphanage, hence the mystery for all those years).
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