OK - Strap Yourself In - This Gets Complicated

So:  once upon a time there were two people in love:  Michel Lebeuf (c1710-c1764) and my 7th great-grand aunt Madeleine Tessier (1720-1798).   They married in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade in 1739 and had 12 children.  Three died at birth, and 8 of the remaining 9 children married.

The youngest six of them have the most complicated inter-married relationships I have discovered thus far.

(Click to enlarge.)

Madeleine's father, Pierre Tessier (7th great-grandfather, 1698-1727) was a third-generation Québecois.  Three of Madeleine's cousins (of uncle René) among them had 4 children (all second cousins to each other) who each married one of Madeleine's children.

First, Angélique marries second cousin Jean-Baptiste Morand (son of Madeleine's cousin Marie) in 1777.   Just over a year later, younger sister Marie-Joseph marries Pierre Tessier, son of Madeleine's cousin Pierre-René (who is cousin Marie-Joseph's older brother).  Next Alexis marries Madeleine Vallée whose mother is Madeleine's cousin Marguerite, younger sister of Pierre-René and twin sister to Marie-Joseph!  (I find myself VERY curious if they were fraternal or identical twins...).  Finally, youngest daughter Madeleine (1757-1846) marries Basile (son of Pierre-René) in 1782.

So all of them have the common ancestor Édouard Tessier (1677-1750, 8th great-grandfather) in common.

But it gets even more complicated when you add Édouard's father Mathurin Tessier (1630-1703) into the mix.

Édouard has a sister Marie-Jeanne (b. 1685) who is an 9th great-grand aunt.   She marries Jean-Baptiste Gervais in 1700 (at age 14!) and has a son Pierre in 1701 (who is a 1st cousin 9x removed).   He marries Elisabeth Vallée (b. 1703) and through two of their children: Françoise — born 1737 — and Louis-Joachim we reach the two other children of Madeleine Tessier, but in slightly different ways.   Joachim marries Geneviève Lebeuf in 1771, which makes them 2nd cousins 1x removed.  Joachim's sister Françoise marries Louis Maillot (1739-) and it's their daughter Françoise (1762-) who marries Pierre(her 3rd cousin) in 1780.

Fortunately the eldest two sons, Michel and Joseph didn't marry into this web (that I can tell), and daughter Marie-Joseph (#1, for some reason they named two of their daughters Marie-Joseph) either died young (before Marie-Joseph #2 was born; the recycling of names is common, and to me a very strange custom), or was an old maid.

Nonetheless, if you happen to see this and lean that Madeleine is a direct ancestor of yours, you just might want to do some DNA screening...  Just sayin'.    I have no idea what inter-marrying happens in the NEXT generation (I probably won't get to the second-cousins N times removed until late 2017 at the earliest), but I think I'd be a little "concerned" if history repeats itself.