Self-Ancestors

A 1907 magazine reports two curiously ingrown family trees. The first is that of an alleged Neapolitan sailor:

I married a widow. She had by her first husband a handsome girl named Silvietta, with whom my father fell in love and who became his second wife. Thus my father became my son-in-law and my stepdaughter became my mother, since she had married my father. Soon afterward my wife gave birth to a son, who became my father’s stepbrother and at the same time my uncle, since he was my stepmother’s brother.

But that was not all, for in due time my father’s wife also gave birth to a boy, who was my brother and also my stepson [grandson?], since he was the son of my daughter. My wife was also my grandmother, for she was the mother of my mother, and thus I was my wife’s husband and at the same time her grandson. Finally, as the husband of a person’s grandmother is naturally that person’s grandfather, I am forced to the conclusion that I am my own grandfather.

We’ve seen that before, but the second story describes a more complicated route to the same outcome. Fifteen-year-old Ida Kriebel of Pennsylvania married 60-year-old Jacob Doney and became her own grandmother:

Domey’s first wife was the widow of John Wieden. She had three more children by Doney. One of her children married Samuel Kriebel, and a year later died. The widower married again. From this second union came Ida Kriebel. By this arrangement Doney became the stepgrandfather of his own child [wife?].

“The second Mrs. Doney also became stepgrandmother of twenty-five men and women, and stepgreat-grandmother of a lot of boys and girls of about her own age.”