Thursday, June 17, 2021

Twins in the Terry Lines

 In my own family line there were numerous twins down through several generations. This was sometimes discovered when too many people had the same birthday and then someone would recall, ' oh yes, they were twins."

I thought of that as perhaps a way of connecting families since having twins can be a genetically inherited trait.  I had that in mind when doing research a decade ago for my book of family history. 

" Many of the children of William TERRY (1785-1869) had multiple births (twins).  Since this tendency to have twins is inherited, it could be interesting to look into the twins Joseph and Thomas TERRY, b. 27 July 1761 in Chesterfield Co., VA.  They were the sons of a John TERRY of Buckingham and Chesterfield Co., Virginia."  This was, of course, before DNA studies. The source for the Terry twins of Chesterfield Co., Va was  Terry Family Historian, June ’83 and Sept ’82.

The recent DNA has clearly indicated many lines of the eastern VA, NC, and SC Terry can be catalogued in the I-01 Haplogroup.  Descendants of William Terry and wife Rachel in Botetourt fall , so far, into the I-02 group as does the line of Jasper Terry who md Mary Hart and the Bucks Co., PA Terry's from which he descends.

So, it was interesting to read that Mary Hart had twin brothers Aaron and Miles Hart.

Identical twins are not, so I understand, inherited but fraternal (non-identical) twins are. So, when looking at trees you see same year births, consider they may be twins and not just faulty memories or poor math skills in computing age.

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