GENMSC-L Archives

From: Tom Lincoln <>
Subject: Re: Same sex "marriage,"
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 23:34:02 GMT

In article <50vcgq$>,
Leonard M. Keane <> wrote:
>In <50v7em$> (Tom Lincoln) writes:
>>
>>In article <>,
>>David Olson <> wrote:
>>> Tom Lincoln
>>>
>Tom:
>
>My thoughts on your response to David Olsen:
>
>As late as the early 18th century, among rural farm families, you will
>often find the first child born before nine months of the marriage
>ceremony. There was a very sound reason for this, namely to insure
>fertility before marriage was contracted. This was to be certain the
>spouse was capable of providing an heir to inherit the property and
>children to work the property in the parents' old age. It may not have
>been openly condoned, but was well recognized. The reason itself
>refutes your inference that the woman was probably fooling around with
>someone other than her eventual husband!

Well.. the LINCOLNs were largely town folk, with the usual distribution of
farm families for (as I noted) a rather upscale lot. Youth has its ways and
early births surely does not always indicate other partners... But
rationalizations do not refute it.

>As for the study you cite - <<"Landsteiner's initial investigations of
>the Mendelian classification of blood groups in Germany (admittedly
>Hamburg, which is a large port) in the 1930s.. 30% of the alleged
>fathers had to be thrown out to make the match... now clearly correct
>... but it was a very hard thing to do, as it was not intuitive.">>
>
>I can't quite follow this. 30% of *what* fathers had to be thrown out
>to make *what* match? I suspect there might have been some political
>agenda involved here?? There may have been some good genetic studies
>(and genealogical research too) performed in Nazi Germany, but if
>Hitler had stuck with legitimate research he might not have set the
>science of genetics back 50 years.

Landsteiner, not being welcome in Nazi Germany, finished his work in the
United States, identifying the Rh blood group system here in 1940. His
original work goes back to 1900, but in the late 1920s and early 1930s
he was looking at such things as the M MN an N blood group system for
straight Mendelian relationships with animal produced antibodies. At the
time, you had always to decide whether your biological test products were
at fault, or the clinical report of fatherhood was in error. The more
minor blood groups you add, the more specific the parental relationships
have to be. The *match* is when the blood groups of the father and the
mother are possible in the child.

For example, for this system alone:

Genotype: fatherxmother children
MMxMM All MM
MMxMN 1/2 MM 1/2 MN (but no NN)
MMxNN All MN
MNxMN 1/4 MM 1/2 MN 1/4 NN
MNxNN 1/2 MN 1/2 NN
NNxNN All NN

This should be easy to follow for any genealogist.

By this time (since 1911) one knew that there were A1 and A2, so there
were 9 genotypes that could be identified in that system. The P
system was also already known by the end of the 20s.

This is not too difficult after the fact, but hard to unravel when you are
unsure of your hypotheses. Every false father appeared to refute the
actual blood group relationships. This did not mean that 30% of the
putative father's blood specimens had to be disregarded, but it DID mean
that when certain ones were disregarded (and the calculation was made about
the liklihood on probabilities alone that another man might be the father,
and still match... then the numbers looked very high.. but true..

Admitedly this was a turbulent city with many sailors in a very trubulent
time in Germany, but the fact of nature still holds. One estimate is 5%
per generation, but in many communities it will be lower.

>What David says about children born out of wedlock is true, in my
>experience of reviewing many dozens of parish registers. If the fact is
>not stated outright, there are some not too subtle hints to suggest it.
>Just one of the things a genealogist learns with experience.

Out of wedlock births are generally pretty evident. In France and elsewhere
they have a complex legal means of recognizing children so born, if the
father wishes to. There is sometimes a race to the court house, because the
first one there has claim to the child.

>Len.
>
This whole issue comes around about every year like hurricanes and spins
its way through the landscape...

There are few conversions of viewpoint. Just as there are flatlanders who
believe that the world cannot be round, because "it is said" that there
are "four corners to the earth," there are also those who observe
otherwise.

o
< ' .
/ >
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• Re: Same sex "marriage," by Tom Lincoln <>