1880 Census- Dennis, Massachusetts

My sister and i have a hypothesis that every person in the Town of Dennis, Cape Cod, in 1880 is related to everyone else in the town.  While it has not been proven yet- we have done a lot of work that you can see at:   http://www.SearsR.com/1880Dennis  where we examine  consanguinity, the cousin factor.

We started by making a tree in Ancestry.com which contains the actual list of 3,292 people living in Dennis at the time.  Then we started looking for their ancestors. I wrote a computer program that searches for a common ancestor between each person and all the other folks in town.  Of course many times there is only one or two degrees of separation as the people are siblings or children but there are more cousin relationships than you  can shake a stick at.

So for example, my great-grandfather Elkanah Howes Sears is a cousin to 1,367 people (over 40% of those in town are his cousins!) The "most related" person at our current analyis is Mercy Baker - a baby when the census taker stopped by- daughter of Wilbur Cornelius Baker(1856-1898) and Mercy Ella Baker(1857-?) [yes her Dad was also a Baker] who is related to 2,355 townfolks - 71% - Has she got a few cousins or what?

My Aunt Marie Sabra Sears was also a Howes on both sides of her lineage.  She told me it's a wonder that we are not all idiots.  In any case this is a project that i plan to continue and if you want to take a look at the tree in Ancestry you can find it at--  https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/32966686/family

Let us know if we have made any ancestral errors or if you have additional information about one of the folks living there in 1880. The "tree" currently has 13,635 people.

Here is a detailed lists of who is related to whom-  please let us know if you see errors-  http://www.searsr.com/1880Dennis/RelatedSummary.htm