Black Folk and Their Kissing Cousins

Keith Josef Adkins, who has researched his family history for seventeen years, shares his discovery of inbreeding among his early ancestors. He writes:

“In my research the Ayers and Lynem families of northern Kentucky married into each other’s clans for a good century. First cousins married second cousins. Uncles married grand-nieces. A young woman, whose parents themselves were second-cousins, married her third cousin [who was related to both of her parents]. And just for the record, the Lynems were the children of the sister and two brothers from Virginia. And the daughter of one of the Lynem brothers married the only freeborn Ayers in northern Kentucky circa 1810. And many of her Ayers offspring married other Lynems. And all of this was happening long before Emancipation.”

Read more of his story here: Black Folk and Their Kissing Cousins

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