Word 'cousin' used in relation to half-siblings in 1600's?

[Nick Vogel]

Thanks very much for the replies guys. I haven't seen a copy of the will, but the sites mentioning it say that the handwriting on the back of one of the copies, addressing it to his "cousin" was different from the handwriting used to copy the will itself, implying there were two different people working on writing it. So having said that I don't know if the scribe would have bothered with how close the two of them were, or would have just called the cousins the cousin or the half brother the half brother, regardless, since the will seems to designate George's relationship to everyone mentioned, other than "Mr. Jonathan." Like I said, some people contend that Mr. Jonathan is not the same Jonathan in New England, but I don't know what the point would be in mailing him a copy of the will across the ocean if it weren't.

[pinefamily]

Unfortunately there are some American family historians that will make connections that just aren't there.

[Nick Vogel]

Yes, sometimes it does get frustrating, especially with common names like John, Jonathan, George, etc., and a family like the Fairbanks' of whom there were a lot in the surrounding parishes.

There are two articles I've been looking for online, though with no luck, to compare and contrast the arguments, one from 2012 trying to assert that Jonathan was the half-brother of George of Sowerby, the article is called "Jonathan Fairbank of Dedham, Massachusetts, and his family in the West Riding of Yorkshire," published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, and another older article, written in 1961 by Clarence Almon Torrey titled "The English Ancestry of Jonathan Fairbanks of Dedham, Massachusetts" that says Jonathan's father was a George Fairbanks of the village of Heptonstall a few miles away, and that since Heptonstall's parish registers are missing from something like 1590-1600, that's why his baptism doesn't appear.

[pinefamily]

Missing registers? That's convenient when you're looking to find a connection isn't it?   
It's good that you're not taking their word for it, and checking their work.
I'll see if I can find these articles for you.

[Beeonthebay]

Unfortunately there are some American family historians that will make connections that just aren't there.

Yes I just disproved one quite recently in the Millenium File on Anc which I'd never heard of before but it's about prominent pioneering Mormon families who emigrated to Utah and their connection back to England.  Whilst they had the right fairly common names they'd been linked to the wrong family (mine) as there were two very large families in very similar places, and of course it's been copied multiple times over and over. 

I'm very interested to hear an answer on this the OP's question about cousins/half siblings as I've been looking at a lot of wills lately though none that early.

[Beeonthebay]

**Edited to say I don't think the actual Millenium File went right back to the couple in question it was when other people had added it later to their trees then found what they thought were correct family, so I kept getting multiple shaky leaf tips which led me to them all.  It only takes one person to make a mistake on their tree, then it's copied over and over. 

The Millenium File stopped but others continuued it.

[pinefamily]

As you can see on the first page of this thread, BotB, there is a little doubt about it. I can only comment from my own experience, but have never seen cousin used in the context of half- or step-siblings. Just about every other family relationship mind you...... 
The link to the Shakespearean quotes is interesting, but it is a generation or two before the time of the OP's will. Unless there has been an academic study done on the usage of the word "cousin", I guess we will never know definitively.

[bugbear]

Cousin could be used to imply a relationship of any sort
As could the term "in-law"

So if the half-brothers were not particularly close, either through age, distance or any other reason, then describing him as a cousin is certainly feasible

Even in the modern age the terms Uncle and Aunt can be used to mean "close friend of the family, roughly the same age as the parents".

And the qualifiers "in-law" and "step-" are often (period-dependant) optional.

(side-bar; are step-relationships more common today than they used to be? Today people remarry after divorce, but I hadn't realised 'til I started this hobby just how very common remarriage after the partner's death was, pre 1900)

 BugBear

[bugbear]

Unless there has been an academic study done on the usage of the word "cousin", I guess we will never know definitively.

Speaking as one who (when I'd done less genealogy) was fooled by a "brother" (in an old document) who was a "brother-in-law" (modern parlance), is there an information anywhere describing the various usages, and how they varied over time (and/or place) ?

 BugBear