Never assume that once you’ve figured out one relationship between two individuals that there could not be another.
A man named Rolf married the sister of my ancestor and that was the first relationship I learned about. Later I discovered that years before he married the ancestor’s sister, he had been married to the ancestor’s aunt.
Sometimes there is more than one connection.
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Sometimes you just cannot make up this kind of family connection! If we saw it in a movie or book, we’d think it was a ridiculous idea… but I’ve seen similar interconnections in several ancestors.
Oh, my gosh. That sounds oddly familiar. I’m trying to sort out a particular family line of mine. Most of the trees I’ve seen have the one ancestor married to a particular woman, who was also married to two of his brothers at some point. It’s very confusing. I can’t find any sort of bond or marriage registry for John, but there is one for Jacob. Not sure about Thomas. One of them is the father of my fifth great-grandfather! I was led to think it was John, but the only bond/marriage registry for him I can find is NOT the same woman. I worked on this for HOURS just yesterday.
It was generally expected of a man to take care of his deceased brother’s widow and would marry the widow if he wasn’t already married.
There’s truth in that, but in some cultures marrying the widow was not viewed favorably and not encouraged.
I have a lot of those. The first one I found was a couple who married and her grandfather married his grandmother as 2nd and 3rd marriages. And then there’s my great grandparents who were uncle and niece. That made her mother my great grandaunt and my great grandmother. It makes a terrible mess of my tree. Showing it in pedigree form, it looks like I made a terrible mistake entering information.
My great-great-grandparents were step-siblings before they were married.