GERMAN-GENEALOGY-L Archives

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Subject: Descendant vs. direct descendant
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:10:37 EDT

I agree with what has been said so far: descendant = direct descendant.
However in some countries, the US included, as a matter of social convention
people will refer to the surname of the father as direct descendants and of the
mother as (just) descendants. Many will not even research the ancestry of
women, which is absurd.
Since the times of ANCIENT Greece we learned we get at least half of the DNA
from maternal lines. Besides, there are times when what was presumed to be
the father just wasn't who one thought--there is less doubt about who the mother
really was.
Jean Wieland Bails

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