Kept in the Family: Remarriage, Siblings, and Consanguinity in the Netherlands

Widowhood involves many practical challenges next to the emotional impact of bereavement. Remarriage to a blood relative of a deceased spouse can often help a bereaved spouse to solve issues related to inheritance, child care, and comfort in a stressful period. A study of 15,540 widowers and 18,837 widows in the Dutch province of Zeeland—of whom about 8,000 men and 5,000 women eventually remarried—which uses genealogical data about their partners and the links family-reconstitution database, finds that the relatively high likelihood of farmers’ widows remarrying and doing so with kin may have been a strategy to prevent property from falling into the hands of other families. Notwithstanding that the attractiveness of a widow or widower could also be a factor in opportunities to remarry, older widows and widows with many young children, whose chances on the remarriage market tended to be poor, did not usually have such recourse to kin in remarriage.

Markers to Emigration from North West Sutherland: The Presbyterian Cemeteries of Lot 21 of Prince Edward Island

A number of studies of emigrant communities in Canada have utilized the evidence from gravemarkers to indicate place of origin. This investigation of gravemarkers from five Presbyterian cemeteries on Lot 21 of Prince Edward Island demonstrates emigration from an area of the north west Highlands of Scotland to a particular community over a period of approximately 50 years. The chronology of emigration as revealed in the gravemarkers is analysed in the light of what is known about tenurial change within the homeland. Emigrant histories of several individuals or families recorded in two of the cemeteries have been compiled to examine their family and communities in the homeland, to set out the circumstances under which they emigrated and to outline the challenges they faced in Canada. An examination of the evidence from gravemarkers alongside a study of extant surnames and family reconstitution suggests that, in this case, gravemarkers provide a valuable but only partial indication of precise origin.

5. Mass population movements and resettlement, 1965 to the present

After immigration law reform in 1965, vast numbers of immigrants, principally from Asia and Latin America, sought entry to the United States. Illegal immigration from Mexico increased dramatically after 1990. Conflicts across the globe increased the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. This chapter compares and contrasts this wave of mass voluntary immigration with past waves. To the extent that mass migratory movements are the result of the spreading of modernizing processes across the globe, the purposes and structures of contemporary voluntary migrations are generally a variation on familiar historical themes, such as the network as the key to the organization of migration, now enhanced by new technologies, especially electronic media and jet air travel. With its laws encouraging family reconstitution, America remains an attractive destination in spite of the relative insecurity of contemporary job markets. To the extent destinations within the United States have proliferated, immigration has been nationalized.

Crossing the Threshold from Adolescence to Adulthood in Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico: The Baptismal Sponsorship of Enslaved Infants in Arecibo, 1735–1772

This study examines godparent selection patterns by the parents of 632 slaves baptized in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, from 1735 to 1772. The article broadens our understanding of baptismal sponsorship by using family reconstitution to re-create demographic patterns of behavior, including age and marital status, associated with godparenthood. Data regarding the godparents revealed considerable diversity in age, but most were under the age of 30. Godparents generally sponsored only one child of a slave parent or parents. There is a correlation between baptismal sponsorship and marriage. Godparents, especially women, often married within three years of the first time they were selected as baptismal sponsors. Serving as a godparent for a child born to at least one slave parent prepared adolescents for adult responsibilities. In agreeing to accept the spiritual and moral obligations associated with godparenthood, females demonstrated the ability to parent children, whereas males asserted their readiness to provide for a family.

Re-introducing the Cambridge Group Family Reconstitutions

English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837 was important both for its scope and its methodology. The volume was based on data from family reconstitutions of 26 parishes carefully selected to represent 250 years of English demographic history. These data remain relevant for new research questions, such as studying the intergenerational inheritance of fertility and mortality. To expand their availability the family reconstitutions have been translated into new formats: a relational database, the Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) and an episode file for fertility analysis. This paper describes that process and examines the impact of methodological decisions on analysis of the data. Wrigley, Davies, Oeppen, and Schofield were sensitive to changes in the quality of the parish registers and cautiously applied the principles of family reconstitution developed by Louis Henry. We examine how these choices affect the measurement of fertility and biases that are introduced when important principles are ignored.

Determinants of the Length of Birth Intervals in the Past and Possibilities for Their Study

Knowledge of the length of birth intervals in the past and factors influencing them could help us to reveal many aspects of reproductive behavior at that time. The aim of this article is to describe the reproductive behavior in families from Jablonec (Czech lands) before the onset of the fertility transition using survival analysis and Cox regression based on individual observations acquired from family reconstitution. A usability description of these methods is the methodological aim of this article. The results show that birth intervals were affected, above all, by the survival of the previous child, birth order, and age of mother.

Smallpox in Oxfordshire, 1700-99, and the Implications of Familial Transmission Routes

This article explores the course of smallpox mortality in Oxfordshire in the eighteenth century and uses family reconstitution with parish register data to reconstruct two catastrophic smallpox epidemics in Banbury, in the north of the county. It makes observations on the nature of familial transmission of the disease through an examination of age incidence and susceptibility and explores the implications of parental immunity. The article concludes that infants and young children were most at risk of smallpox from the home environment and suggests that immunity to the disease in parents and older siblings was a key factor in reducing smallpox and overall infant mortality.