August 8, 2025
I’ve always known there were lots of cousins on my Fernelius side of the family. As it turns out, I don’t have a huge number of first cousins on this side – only seven.
However, when I researched an earlier generation the number of cousins exploded. My dad was one of sixty-seven first cousins. They were all the grandchildren of Charles and Mary Fernelius, my great grandparents. Charles and Mary had eleven children, and all of them had children of their own.
In addition to these first cousins, my dad also had another set of close Fernelius cousins. These were the children of my grandfather’s double cousins. My great grandfather and his older brother married sisters.
The two families lived next to each other, and the children of the two couples grew up as if they were all siblings. These double cousins produced an astounding sixty-nine children who my father was also close to (they were double second cousins).
Although I wasn’t as close to these more distant cousins as I was to my first cousins, my dad kept in loose contact with many of them. I grew up knowing or at least acquainted with most of them. As an adult I lost contact with nearly all of them.
Genealogy has brought me back to all these cousins. They feature in dozens of trees all over the internet. Many of their names show up as the owners of the various trees or as people who submitted documents and other information to them.
My DNA matches are peppered with the same names. Almost every time I get a new DNA match, I can trace it back to one branch or another of the Fernelius family.
This week I decided to update my own tree to help keep track of some of the more recent generations of the family. It’s been interesting to learn about these more distant but still close distant cousins. It’s been even more interesting to find out how many Fernelius cousins there really are.
My dad’s generation had over a hundred members. I haven’t had the energy to track down all my own generation yet, but I know there are lots of them. I’m sure I’ll be seeing more of them as I continue my genealogy journey.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society