It is not uncommon to have marriages that link same families at mulitple points in the tree. Just look at the royal lineages sometime to see what I mean - they often only married other nobles, so there was sure to be a common ancestor at some point in the tree. Also, marrying a cousin (even a first cousin) was not as taboo in the 1700th century as it is in modern times.
Another common practice was for a widow or widower to marry the sibling of his/her deceased spouse. I have several individuals in my tree who married the sibling of their deceased spouse. When this occurs in your direct line, it can create unusual multiple relationships in your tree.
I have one direct ancestor who was married three times. After she divorced her second husband, he married her mother. He fathered children from both my great grandmother and my great-great grandmother. The children of these two marriages were both half-siblings and aunts/uncles to each other. Talk about a huge snarl in the tree - it caused all sorts of problems with early genealogy software until the software programs evolved to handle multiple relationships.
You may want to run a report to search for any glaring errors (where you mistakenly connected the wrong "John" or "George" in a branch that had a John and George in every single generation (and in every family in some instances). I found one such mess in one of my trees where I inadvertently connected a father-child relationship to the wrong "George" (one born in 1612, the other born in 1672). Since this was the greatgrandfather instead of the father, it created a whole mess of erroneous relationships in the tree. Once I fixed the relationship between those two individuals, it eliminated a lot of the other weird relationship loops in the tree.
Hope this helped.
Another common practice was for a widow or widower to marry the sibling of his/her deceased spouse. I have several individuals in my tree who married the sibling of their deceased spouse. When this occurs in your direct line, it can create unusual multiple relationships in your tree.
I have one direct ancestor who was married three times. After she divorced her second husband, he married her mother. He fathered children from both my great grandmother and my great-great grandmother. The children of these two marriages were both half-siblings and aunts/uncles to each other. Talk about a huge snarl in the tree - it caused all sorts of problems with early genealogy software until the software programs evolved to handle multiple relationships.
You may want to run a report to search for any glaring errors (where you mistakenly connected the wrong "John" or "George" in a branch that had a John and George in every single generation (and in every family in some instances). I found one such mess in one of my trees where I inadvertently connected a father-child relationship to the wrong "George" (one born in 1612, the other born in 1672). Since this was the greatgrandfather instead of the father, it created a whole mess of erroneous relationships in the tree. Once I fixed the relationship between those two individuals, it eliminated a lot of the other weird relationship loops in the tree.
Hope this helped.