Aberdeenshire Archives

I previously posted about ‘cousin marriage’ and ‘pedigree collapse’ in my tree here.

I had wondered what effect two less ancestors would have on the ancestor count in my family tree. It turned out, two less ancestors meant that in 17 generations I had 254 less ancestors.

I’ve now discovered another cousin marriage in my tree.

My 4th great-grandparents, Arthur Buchan and Agnes Buchan, married at Rathen, Aberdeenshire in 1828. Their fathers were brothers (as shown in the diagram below).

My pedigree is now only typical until the 8th generation, where I lose two 5x great grandparents, which leads to the loss of another 2046 ancestors by the 17th generation.

My ancestor count now looks like this:

Generation	Relationship	Typical Number	My Number	Ancestors Lost
1	Me
2	Parents	2	2
3	Grandparents	4	4
4	1x Great grandparents	8	8
5	2x Great grandparents	16	16
6	3x Great grandparents	32	32
7	4x Great grandparents	64	64
8	5x Great grandparents	128	126	-2
9	6x Great grandparents	256	252	-4
10	7x Great grandparents	512	504	-8
11	8x Great grandparents	1024	1006	-16-2
12	9x Great grandparents	2048	2012	-32-4
13	10x Great grandparents	4096	4024	-64-8
14	11x Great grandparents	8192	8048	-128-16
15	12x Great grandparents	16384	16096	-256-32
16	13x Great grandparents	32768	31562	-512-64
17	14x Great grandparents	65536	64384	-1024-128
TOTAL		131070	128770	-2300

If I find any more, I will make sure to update.

(If you believe that I have actually calculated incorrectly, please let me know!)

PLEASE NOTE: The charts shown on this post have an error. The father of Elisabeth Buchan (b1874) was not a granddaughter of John (Park’s Jockie) Buchan (b1792). Please see the post ‘Five Men Drowned – Connections and Corrections’ for an updated chart and explanation.

In the final post of the series, I mentioned that I had not been able to find any direct link to my family from any of the five men. However, I thought it would probably be a good idea to show the links that are there.

Family chart illustrating the connections between author's family and the victims — How the five men connect to my family (click to enlarge image)

Alexander Ritchie Buchan was my second great-grandfather.

Charles Bruce was the father-in-law of Alexander’s brother Peter.
Andrew Buchan was the cousin of Alexander’s brother-in-law (husband of sister Jessie).
Alexander Strachan and Andrew Strachan were the father-in-law and brother-in-law of Jessie’s husband’s cousin (Elisabeth).
Andrew Bruce does not currently have any known connection to my family.

Please note: these are the closest connections as they currently stand. The families of St Combs were so entwined, there are bound to be other ways they link and less distant connections may be discovered in time.

UPDATE:

Less than a day after posting the above, I was able to connect Andrew Bruce. It turns out that Andrew was actually the nephew of Charles Bruce.

Family chart illustrating the connections between author's family and the victims with new addition — Connection chart updated (click to enlarge)

Apparently though, Andrew is more closely connected to my family via a different route:

This can be expressed in many different ways – none of those being straight forward.

We could say:

My second great grandfather’s uncle married the second cousin of Andrew Bruce.

My third great grandfather’s brother married Andrew Bruce’s second cousin.

Andrew Bruce was the second cousin of my third great grandfather’s sister-in-law.

Andrew Bruce was the second cousin of the wife of Alexander Ritchie Buchan’s uncle.

OR…

… (It could go on and on.)

Whichever way, I’m glad a connection has been made and will be sure to update here when closer ones are found.

Posts in this series:
Five Men Drowned
Five Men Drowned – Two Recovered
Five Men Drowned – Three Buried at Sea
Five Men Drowned – One Survivor