The Hodgens and the LaRues

When I first got a copy of Charles Wintersmith Keith's personal history, I was a little shocked to learn that there were several marriages of cousins. Sarah LaRue married Robert Hodgen. Sarah's half-sister Elizabeth married William Keith. William Keith and Elizabeth LaRue's son Jacob Keith married Robert Hodgen and Sarah LaRue's daughter Rebecca Hodgen.

First cousins marrying each other was taboo, genetically risky, illegal. Whatever.

Fast-forward many decades and I am working at entering information on Keiths and related families into my new software. It's fun and rewarding and I learn something every day. And today I discovered how utterly confusing the cousin marriages in the LaRue-Hodgen-Keith lines really are. The men are all named Jacob and the women are Phebe/Phoebe and Sarah. And everyone has Hodgen or LaRue for a middle name.

I appreciate the work of Otis Mather (what an offbeat name!) in compiling Six Generations of LaRues and Allied Families back in 1921. To say that Isaac LaRue's descendants are "connected by intermarriage" isn't the half of it! Mather's entire book is on Mocavo. So is the Charles Wintersmith Keith work.