An Unusual Name Leads to the Discovery of Kissin’ Cousins

One of the first family lines that I was able to research and work my way through was my paternal grandfather's mother's line. My great-grandmother was named Irene Lucile Stephens (b. 1909 d. 1996). I have memories of visiting her at her house when I was little. We called her Granny Irene and she lived down the road from my grandfather so we would often visit them both on the same day since they lived about an hour away from us.

Granny Irene with my Uncle Hoss in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s.

Happily, the Stephens line has been very well researched by my distant cousin, Clyde S. Stephens, who wrote the family history entitled "Stephens Ancestors and Pioneer Relatives." in 1982. I was able to confirm my portion of the Stephens line through my 4th great-grandparents, Benjamin Stephens and Silence Davenport, who migrated from Alabama down to central Florida along with most of their family in the mid-1800s before the Civil War.

Front cover of “Stephens Ancestors and Pioneer Relatives” written by Clyde S Stephens in 1982.

I believe that there is still much to learn about Benjamin and Silence Stephens' time in Montgomery, Alabama, but as of the time of this writing, I'm still waiting for the digitized images of the microfilm to be released by the Family History Library. The Image Group Numbers (DGS) are there on familysearch.org, but I keep checking back hoping that the film reel icon has been changed to the camera icon. My fingers are crossed that it happens soon for these records!

Fast forward to a few months later when I was exploring the family tree of my cousin Connie on Ancestry. Connie is my mom's first cousin: Connie's mom, Vivian, and my maternal grandmother, Iris, were sisters. Great Aunt Vivian had been the family historian and genealogist on that side of the family. In fact, Aunt Vivian had written a family history of our Croy and Taylor relatives and ancestors, which I was methodically reviewing and adding to my tree but it was slow going as I was sourcing each relative and verifying that the information and relationships determined and reported by Aunt Vivian were, in fact, correct.

Letter inserted at the front of Aunt Vivian’s family history dated 1988.

I clicked on Connie's tree as it had over 500 people in it just to see how many generations it went back on the Croy and Taylor lines. Within a short time, I saw that she had listed one of my 4th great grandmothers as a woman named "Nancy Mary Ann Davenport." The surname "Davenport" caught my attention immediately. As noted above, I had been researching my 4th great-grandmother on my father's side and she was "Silence Davenport." That surname was not common in my research. I wondered…

Screenshot from ancestry.com of my cousin Connie’s family tree.

I expanded Connie's tree to find out who she had listed as Nancy Mary Ann Davenport's parents, but there was no one listed. Quickly, I hit the "search" button near the top right of the screen: I wanted to see who other people listed as Nancy Davenport Pate's parents. Tree after tree listed her father to be a man named Jesse Davenport and her mother to be a woman named Silence Wilson. I had to ask myself: What are the odds?

An immediate search of other trees on ancestry.com noted the likely parents of Nancy Mary Ann Davenport Pate Weeks as Jesse Davenport and Silence Wilson.

I have researched the life and records of Silence Wilson Davenport Stephens and it turns out that she is my 4th great grandmother along one of my paternal lines and my 5th great grandmother along one of my maternal lines. Yep. That means that my folks are "kissing cousins" and never knew it! My mother and father are half 4th cousins, once removed. They do not share any autosomal DNA, but they do share many cousins that they would not both be related to if Silence Wilson was not a common grandmother for both. In fact, for some of those cousins, I share more DNA with them than either of my parents do because I was passed down a matching piece from both my mom AND my dad.

My father, DM, shares 14 cM across 1 segment of autosomal DNA with our cousin, MS.

My mother, MGM, shares 57 cM across 6 segments of autosomal DNA with our cousin, MS.

Note that I share 59 cM across only 5 segments with our cousin, MS. I share more autosomal DNA in total with MS than either of my parents do individually and it is across less segments than my mother shares with MS. This is because I didn’t inherit all of the shared autosomal DNA from my mom, but also some from my dad.

I know I would have eventually made this discovery at some point, but I was able to come to this conclusion much earlier in my research because I was able to utilize an uncommon surname and a VERY unlikely given name. I have connected many family lines by remembering names (my family tree has many common branches!), but I still find some in my research that I do not immediately connect and it is not until months later that I realize that I have two profiles for a person: often one as a blood-cousin and one as the spouse of a different blood-cousin. This is easy to miss when you are dealing with a Mary or an Elizabeth and a common surname. I also love uncommon names for the search possibilities. I can run newspaper searches much easier for a "Davenport" than for a "Stephens." The results are often fewer, but the matching articles tend to be more pertinent.