I too do not wish to be contentious, but I think there's a very important point lurking here. Legal marriage and actual kinship were/are two different things, as we all know. Genealogy concerns itself largely with the legal, documented relationships. The problem arises when we allow ourselves to think that the documents define reality. I would suggest that if a person suddenly had a life-and-death need to locate blood relatives, that person would be extremely interested in identifying and finding the "side family" his grandfather had. So then, in that case, what is the genealogical "reality"--the documented family or the undocumented family? Historians and biographers are interested in kinships that may have been extra-legal or illegal, because these kinships illuminate our understanding of the past. It is fascinating to find evidence of 18th-century people being aware of their extra-legal kin and acting on that knowledge. Thus, did so-and-so bequeath land to so-and-so because they were secretly father and son, or uncle and nephew, or cousins, or nothing at all to each other? Some folks--and I do not mean to include Ms. Holland here--have tried to shut down research along such lines by saying "there's no documentation for that; you have no basis for saying that." In some cases, the people of the 18th century had a more flexible definition of "family" than the definitions established by law. The laws enable us to deny the existence of family connections which the people of the past may have honored and acted upon; so by adhering strictly to the rules we risk misunderstanding the past. HW To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html