It is a census entry which usually sparks the question. You wonder exactly what it means when the record shows a resident of a household as a cousin, or niece, or sister-in-law or any one of the many relationship terms in the English language.

Old Usage
Cousin was taken to mean a collateral relation more distant than a brother or sister, which leaves scope for the word referring to just about anyone who is not a sibling or in the direct blood line. Similarly, the word niece was not always so precise in meaning; back in the 1500s it referred to any female relative outside the immediate family. It could have been used to refer to a granddaughter.

Have you wondered about the use of the term "step?” This word is derived from Old English (OE), arising from a root that appears in OE for bereaved and orphan. That makes sense, for the situation arises from second marriages, often due to the death of a parent. My mother was brought up by her father and step-mother because her own mother died when my mother was six years old. This second union produced one child, my mother’s half-brother. Had her stepmother had a child by a previous marriage this would have been my mother’s step-brother or step-sister.

The census is unlikely to show such distinctions as “step” or “half”; in other words, what appears as the son of the head of the household may be a son by a previous marriage or a step-son. Be prepared to find kinship terms like cousin and in-law used for situations other than what we assume by these words today. In older documents you may see the term “cousin-german.” People with this relationship had a common grandparent, what we know as first cousins.

The Blood Connection May Not Be There
Kinship terms are used now and were...

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