How Many Cousins Do You Have?

I meant to write and post this weeks ago but am just finally sitting myself down to do it.

I was set on the path of counting cousins with the reunion picture I posted last time of a Denman cousin reunion in October 1945.  The back of the picture, very conveniently, had a list of all of the people in the picture and a note at the beginning about cousins and how many there were.  That note said that there were originally 42 first cousins including my great grandfather F.A. Denman, and that the picture included 9 of them.

I was surprised by the number, having grown up with only three first cousins of my own.  (My father was an only child and my mother had a single brother.)  So I went looking in the family tree to see how many first cousins there were at the generation of F.A..  I was able to create a list of the aunts and uncles, and first cousins and their spouses, for him, including his 3 siblings.  What I hadn’t thought about at first was that his father, John J. Denman, had 13 siblings.  The list of all 14 children of John and Marinda Denman and their spouses and children that I have in my database showed me that there likely were at least 44 original first cousins on the Denman side, although 3 that I know of died about the age of 2.  So either I am still missing at least one that F.A. reported or his count was off by one. There also were at least a couple of first cousins on F.A.’s mother’s side (the Groatt family line) that he may or may not have known or counted.

By the numbers on the picture: number 1 was John E. Denman, son of Edward and Jane Archer Denman; number 2 was younger sister of John E., Jennie A. Marsh; number 3 was Mrs. Frankie Sinclair, youngest daughter of Roxana Denman and Dr. Henry White; number 4 was a neighbor, Mrs. Oliva Bentley; number 5 was Josephine White Beecher, second youngest daughter of Roxana and Henry White; number 6 was Julia Denman Carter, the daughter of William and his second wife Julia Partello; number 7 was my great-grandfather F.A. Denman, the youngest son of John J. Denman and Mary Catherine Groatt; number 8 was F.A.’s younger daughter Doris Graves; number 9 was Claire Beecher Ginste, the daughter of Josephine White Beecher; number 10 was Lester Denman, the first son of William and Julia Partello Denman; number 11 was Lida D. Struble, sister of F.A. and younger daughter of John J. and Mary Catherine Groatt Denman; number 12 was Belle D. Coon, daughter of Edward and Jane Archer Denman; and number 13 was Mrs. Lester Denman or Maude Harper Denman.

In figuring this all out, I have found a couple of inaccuracies (nothing serious!).  The clearest is that the date of the picture couldn’t have been Oct. 1945, since I have an image of a death register for Jennie Marsh dated 1944.  Likewise, John E. Denman was not 90 since he was said to have been born in 1856 (although this is an event I have not seen firm evidence for).   I also learned something.  I was curious about the neighbor, Mrs. Bentley, so I went looking for her.  We have Bentleys marrying into the Denman family and they were a local family.  Familysearch.org showed me that in the 1940 census she was living with her husband Ira Bentley in Norwalk, Ohio (not far from Wakeman) and living with them was Julia Carter, a widow and a  niece.  Looking just a little further at Ira I was able to come up with his marriage to Oliva Partello, who was a younger sister of Julia Carter’s mother, Julia Partello Denman.  Mystery solved!