On all other web pages, I scaled the diagrams large enough that one can read the text in the boxes. This time, I'm going for a wider perspective. The scale is kept just large enough to see the green ovals.
These ovals indicate there is more than one way to trace ancestry from that individual down to the Modern Butlers. For each green oval -- and most of the ovals come in husband and wife pairs -- one descendent of the pair has married another descendent of the same pair, and the Modern Butlers descend from such pairs.
Most times, there are six or more generations between the common ancestor pair and the distant descendants remarrying. If no attempt were kept to track ancestry, it just would not be known.
To the right, ancestors of Royal Hollis and his wife Sarah Summer Hayden, who mostly lived on the Massachusetts South Shore. To the left, ancestors of William Lang and Sarah Dearborn, most of whom lived in the Hampton New Hampshire area. In both cases, between the English Civil War and the American Revolution, there were few new immigrants, so there was little choice but to marry descendants of the original settlers of the Great Migration. There were few new settlers during this time frame.
The white rectangles indicate descent from John and Priscilla Alden, or marriage with someone so descended. The Blue rectangles are John, Priscilla and Priscilla's parents.
Not only is there more than one way to trace ancestry back to anyone with a green oval, but of course one can also trace multiple ways to anyone to the right of a green oval.
One also finds green ovals that have green ovals as ancestors. This indicates multiple nested cases where descendants married each other within the Modern Butler line.
While one sees a lot of ovals on the left hand side, each oval marked individual appears on the diagram at least twice, while ovals to the right of ovals appear at least three times.
This is not true on the right. While the diagram to the left covers all Hampton NH ancestors, the diagram to the right does not cover all South Shore ancestors of the Modern Butlers. See also the Sara Austin, and James Butler pages.
The Hampton New Hampshire area is both isolated somewhat by mountain and well documented. Hampton's Lane Memorial Library spent the effort to put the region's genealogy data on line as Hampton, New Hampshire, Area Genealogy. Thus, the resultant ancestry tree to the left shows both parents going back many generations, usually all the way to England.
To the right, the tree isn't quite as complete, but quite a few branches do reach to the 10 generation limit of the software making the diagram. I suspect the lack of completeness is due to the larger intermixing population on the South Shore and less integration of the on line data bases. The right side tree borrows from The History of Hingham, Genealogies of Families of Braintree, Quincy, Weymouth, Randolph, Holbrook, Mass. & Others, Mayflower Descendant and other sources, but not all South Shore towns have their information on line, at least that I have found.
Below, we have one of the more concentrated examples of inbreeding at full scale. Primary Source : A History of Hingham
In this generation, we have a two marriages of sister-brother pairs. Each individual only appears once.
In this generation, we have four individuals listed twice each.
This generation, each individual is duplicated, as is true everywhere to the right of this generation.
In this generation, we have people marrying who are cousins on both sides of their family tree. Both individuals have the same four grandparents. Their children, instead of having eight great grandparents, have only four.
The Dunbar -- Gardner example is truly extreme. It is far more common to have five or more generations between a marrying couple and their shared ancestors.
Between 1730 and 1741, Robert Gardner and Sarah Dunbar Gardner had seven children : Sarah, Robert, Elisha, Orpah, Huldah, Miriam and Elisha. I am Robert's six times great grandson.
Elisha's wife was Olive Dunbar. Olive was the great grand daughter of Robert Dunbar and his wife Rose, two of the four double grand parents of her husband. Her father was Solomon Dunbar, her paternal grandfather was Joshua Dunbar.
Mercifully, the History of Hingham does not record if Elisha and Olive had children, or who they married.
The first time I encountered the above, I had imported it from an Ancestry.com family tree. I couldn't make sense of it at first, spent a few hours double checking it against History of Hingham, and still was not sure I had it right. In exasperation, I put it behind me and started looking at the rest of the imported data. Two names stood out: John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. This triggered another round of double checking and can't be right.
Definitely the most interesting night I've had in genealogy.
While the above diagram shows part of the descent to the Modern Butlers through two of John Gardner and Mary Arnold's children -- Christian and Benjamin -- John and Mary had another daughter Deborah. Deborah and her husband Benjamin Tower also have green ovals. Their four times great grandson James Webster Butler has two entirely different ways to trace descent back to John and Mary. Six generations before a merge is far more common than the tight Gardner - Dunbar intermarriages.
John and Mary Gardner's lines through Deborah and through Christian and Benjamin only merge with John and Mary's seven times great grandson Harold Butler, my grandfather.
Finding marriages between such distant cousins would have required considerable digging before computers and internet genealogy. To my knowledge, my father found no examples using the old style paper trails, but they started showing up not long after I took up computerized genealogy.
These marriages between very distant cousins of course continues to this day. My sister's husband has known for quite some time he was descended from John and Pricilla Alden. My sister only recently discovered she was too.
Scroll Right for a Detailed Example