The coexistence of generations and the availability of kin in a rural community at the beginning of the nineteenth century

To identify kinship relations beyond the immediate family requires evidence about a succession of family lines through several generations. To study the influence of the city on the demographic behavior of rural people, family genealogies extending back to the beginning of the eighteenth century were reconstructed for a community near the city of Geneva. All the families present for the census of 1797, including their ascendants, were reconstituted and their descendants were followed. All new couples, whether or not resident in the commune, were followed until they were definitively located outside the canton of Geneva. The article examines kinship relations and kin network in this community at different ages of Ego. The findings reveal a small kinship group surrounding the stable family unit, with generations overlapping sufficiently to assure the transmission of landed property as well as social reproduction without discontinuity and without the need to appeal to collateral kin for help.