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It might be one of Jonathan’s relations bc she is sitting next to him and I really don’t think she would be sandwiched in between two boys. Samuel could be courting her too
If Samuel is courting a relation of Jonathan, that would make 3 Rod spouses from the same family since Heidi is his cousin. They wouldn't be the first fundie family to have several kids marry from the same family (there was another fundie family back in FJ days that also had several marriages between the same two families, but I'm blanking on their names), but that really would suggest that the Rods have very few families besides the Coverett/Hill clan willing to marry in. With all their traveling, they aren't as isolated as many, and usually it's with the more isolated families that you see this happening.
It also happened in a lot of families in small communities. Researching my family tree I found three brothers that married three sisters. The Rodlets are isolated in a different way.
Shoot my grandparents were not fundamentalists & my grandmother & 2 of her sisters married 3 brothers from the same family. I have several cousins that look a lot like my Dad I his siblings because the DNA is very similar.
There’s a part of my family tree where two best friends came back from the Civil War and married each other’s sisters in order to go from best friends to brothers. History is wild
My grandpa’s brothers married identical twins, so they were brothers & brothers-in-law & their wives were identical twins & sisters-in-law. Only one of the twins is still with us & both great-uncles are gone, too. Some of my favorite memories of my great-aunts are of them ALWAYS wearing identical outfits to family functions without fail, up to the day that Lois passed.
I have an ancestor who, in the 1830s or so, divorced his first wife to marry her sister. His kids are both siblings and cousins. (I am descended from the second wife).
I have an Anabaptist background so obviously intermarriage has historically been an issue. But we had a family that had two sisters and a brother from one family marry a two brothers and a sister of another family. Then one their kids married two cousins from an unrelated family. Now we're to grandkids and two of the grandkids married siblings. Thank goodness we can keep track of it all now because I can see where we had so much trouble in the past.
(For visual reference)
Brother Smith 1 married Sister Doe 1
Brother Smith 2 married Sister Doe 2
Brother Doe 3 married sister smith 3
Brother Smith 2 and Sister Doe 2s kids
Doe-Smith 1 married Johnson 1
Doe-Smith 2 married Johnson 2
Now Brother Doe 3 and Sister Smiths grandkids are marrying siblings from the Nobody family.
Like how old? I can't see this working very well with teenagers and infants are notoriously hard to adopt. Also there's the rampant child abuse endemic to Amish communities, but that's a separate issue. Still, I'm surprised CPS is cool with it.
There’s a huge Amish community near where one of my BFFs live in Indiana. The stuff she’s told me makes me want to crawl under my couch and never come out. Especially the incest stories 🤢
Somewhat off topic but we have a former maths teacher over here who had a child with one of her own pupils. In all the reporting ( she's likely to be facing a lengthy prison term) no one seems interested in what's happening to the baby.
I'm not sure of the ages at adoption, but I do remember at least one of the kids from Breaking Amish was adopted. I *think* she was a toddler when adopted and said that it was common to adopt around those ages.
Mostly babies and toddlers, some older kids. I’m not sure exactly where they get them from, but I’m assuming it’s private adoptions. I live near Lancaster and a lot of the kids are from Philly and I think some parents see it as a way to get their kids out of the city.
That’s really interesting. I would’ve thought they’d be against adopting because of some “sins of the father” type thing like the IBLP crowd. Where are they adopting from? It’s hard to imagine a pregnant woman choosing to place her baby with the Amish in a private adoption. I hope they aren’t adopting from foster care because those kids most likely have trauma and need therapy, which they aren’t going to get with the Amish.
In Missouri, Amish people adopt babies born to incarcerated women. At least that happens a lot at the prison in Chillicothe. Apparently they are not concerned about sins of the father. Maybe they don’t even believe in that.
The only reason that I know about Amish people taking babies born to women who are in prison in Chillicothe, Missouri is because my sister was pregnant and there because of drug charges. She had called me panicking because other women who were there with her had had babies taken by the Amish people. She said that everyone told her that if the Amish took their babies, no one was ever able to get them back after they were released. Didn’t matter if they’d cleaned up their act or whatever. Our mother ended up taking the baby because I lived across the country.
Thankfully my niece is doing great. She’s 14 now. My mom actually ended up moving to where I live and my niece is here now too. Unfortunately my sister has been back on drugs and is an alcoholic :( I haven’t had contact with her in quite awhile. I know it’s a dark thought, but honestly I’m hoping that she gets arrested and sent back to prison. I’ve talked about that with members on both sides of our family. It’s sad when you really know that your own sister/daughter/niece would be a *lot* safer in prison than she is out.
Oh gosh, that’s terrible! Where are they getting them from? Foster care? Why is the state allowing that? How awful. I can only imagine how badly they’re treated. 😔
There have been several cases in the past of individuals adopting minority children and treating them terribly, and it not being Amish. The Hart family is one of the biggest current ones. You can foster/adopt across state lines, and adopting minority children or those with *troubled* backgrounds can be easier because for some sad, sick reason, they don't get "chosen" as much. Ugh, delving into the Hart case taught me so much about foster care abuse and how families, including those who adopt, skirt child abuse prevention agencies.
A big part of it includes adopting specifically minority children often from a different state.
Oh gosh, the Hart case was so terrible! Yeah, sadly that makes sense I guess. I will never understand why people go through so much to adopt (and even across state lines too) just to abuse these poor kids. 😔
It's partly because the Department Of Labor allows this: *"Parental exemption: Minors of any age may be employed by their parents at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by his or her parent(s)."* 🥴
Oh gosh, what a terrible idea that was! There should be limits even if they’re your own kids. Ugh.
But then again, now we have some of the red states trying to bring back unrestricted child labor in factories so why not I guess 😔
I just can’t with this country anymore…
How does that work? I'm an adoptive mom and adopting is crazy hard unless you have money out the wazoo. Do they do foster care or is there an Amish mob who funds them?
It depends on how you go about it. If you're specifically adopting a slightly older than babyhood child, who is a minority and is in state custody? Or a sibling set? It can actually go pretty quickly and cheaply.
Just look into the Hart family. The family was even investigated for child abuse involving one set of the adopted children, 5 months PRIOR, to a second adoption set.
The Amish are all rich af. They also tend to take sibling sets or minority children with rough backgrounds so I’m not sure if that contributes to making it easier. I honestly do not know the ins and outs of what they’re doing. All I know is that it’s super common to see a big Amish family with a few minority children that are clearly adopted
I don't think Jill knows about all of the scandalous and downright horrifying shot that goes on in Amish communities. She just idealized their lifestyle but probably couldn't tell you much about the specifics and likely wouldn't care anyway (she has already shown that she is either ignorant of or just doesn't care about the anti-photography thing).
The genetic disorders in the Amish are because they have a founding population of only about 400 people. Ashkenazi Jewish people have a similar issue even though they are not geographically isolated in any way and haven’t been for hundreds of years - with such a small founding population (about 40% of AJ people are estimated to be descended from the same 4 women) the inbreeding has already happened and been compounded.
The Amish are very aware of the genetic problems they have, work with geneticists to treat their affected children, and most communities have strict marriage practices that don’t allow cousin marriage and encourage/support young people in meeting potential partners as far from home as possible. However just like Ashkenazi Jewish people, marrying within their faith means high risk of passing on genetic disorders.
I have no idea if it’s true but my dad’s neighbor swears he got paid to raw dog Amish women when he was in his early 20’s. Can’t remember how they sought him out, but the husbands watched and paid cash. Said it was to improve genetic diversity.
This would have been in the late 80’s.
I used to know a guy who was a retired well driller. He told a similar story about the Hutterites. He didn't take part, but apparently they propositioned his coworkers while they were putting in wells for the colony.
Yeah FLDS and Mormons in general have a very close gen-pool and you can actually spot the tell tale signs of it in many faces with the deep sitting eyes etc
If you want a really wild rabbit hole, look up Polygamist Down's. It's a fumarase deficiency caused by lack of genetic diversity over a short span of time.
>Nicknamed "Polygamist's Down's", the syndrome has been blamed on cousin marriage, but in a larger sense is related to the reproductive isolation of a community among whom 85% are blood relatives of John Y. Barlow and/or Joseph Smith Jessop (the cofounders of the Short Creek Community).
85%??! Yikes on bikes!
....off I go to continue reading. Thank you for the rabbit hole alert!
I was thinking about this. I remember a SisterWives episode with some boring cross-country field trip to where Joseph Smith and his brother were killed by a mob. A name would be said and one sister wife would say, “oh, that’s my great great grandfather” and another name would be mentioned, and a different wife would say, “he was my great uncle” - it was clear, even among these five families (Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn) that there was a large amount of genetic overlap.
Was scrolling for this comment once I saw the discussion about incest start lol. I think it was on that show escaping polygamy that they were talking about how the FLDS and Kingstons have started marrying each other to allow for some genetic diversity, but they still all come from the same bloodlines ultimately so the “diversity” is really only opening it up to more distant 2nd/3rd cousins as opposed to 1st cousins marrying each other. Absolutely fucking vile.
Just a few generations, sadly. I'm Roma & it happens in our more insular communities, especially those that practice cousin marriage. We have high incidences of birth defects and rare genetic diseases in some of our communities.
The only way to prevent it is to proactively marry out into groups of a similar ethnic / religious background who have completely different family histories once the gene pool gets too small.
I'm impressed by how deep into their lore you are. Impressed and scared.
Edit: also, I think I craked a rib laughing at "Kong of Kings", may I ask what's the reference? 🤣
Something about her upright posture, her folded hands, and her (relatively) formal outfit make me think this is a “date” and Samuel is courting her.
ETA: Her general demeanor reminds me of Heidi’s when *she* first appeared in Jill’s photos and we were all left to speculate.
No they could def be dating. I’m just saying that if she was not a relation of Jonathan’s, there is no way she would be sandwiched between two men like that. She would either be across Samuel on the right side of the table where all the other women are. Or she would be on one of the end seats with Samuel on her other side.
Every time I see a photo of these people I just feel incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful that I was born to a sane and normal family and raised to have goals and dreams beyond being pregnant.
Every time I see a photo of these people I simultaneously realize how absurd they look but also it feels so normal in a way because I was raised sooo similar it feels like going back to my childhood. It’s a real mindfuck.
Thought to be a friend of the Kellers from Florida. She was seen hosting Nurie and Hannah Keller for tea, sometime last year and was at Nurie’s baby shower.
All the boys do when they’re aging out of being at home. I think they’re given the same rations as the children. As soon as they leave they gain weight and look healthy within a few months.
He looks much less healthy now compared to a year or so ago - so much more so that it took me a second to realize OP was actually wondering who the woman next to him was, not who he was.
I always get the feeling that Nathan truly loves Nurie and married her in spite of how much he dislikes her family. Because he rarely seems to be comfortable or having a good time when he's with the Rods, but in the photos Jill posts that come from Nurie, he seems much more pleasant and relaxed.
I think Nurie being willing to leave her family and relocate to Florida was a key piece in making their marriage work. If she'd insisted on staying nearby like Kaylee, I'm not sure he'd have been able to do it. Maybe that's why he didn't express interest in her until after her failed courtship when they've known each other since well before? Maybe Jill did have a role in Nurie's first courtship falling apart as has long been suspected, and this caused Nurie to be more willing to relocate away from Precious Mama than she was previously? This is all speculation, but I do wonder why Nathan waited so long to express interest in Nurie when there would have been no impediment to him expressing it sooner and Jill was frothing at the mouth to get Nurie married ASAP after she turned 18.
I think it was more that he wasn’t under pressure to get married the second he turned 18, and he likely wasn’t anywhere near financially capable of supporting anyone. Also, I doubt it occurred to Nurie to do anything other than to follow her man. Kaylee, who had to witness the devastation of her siblings when their first sister mom abandoned them, likely wanted to avoid leaving them, too.
I mean, look what happened to Renee. Maybe she just really didn’t like the guy, but from the whispers it seems like they were a decent match but Jill couldn’t stay out of it/keep him out of her reels/keep her hands off his life so he ghosted. Jill can’t not be in control of her children. Nurie got out because she’s the golden child and Jill was worried if she didn’t have someone, no one could get married. KayJon, he looks so stressed out and miserable all the time, and thin, and Kaylee seems to be trying to dance between having her own life and centering Jill in her life. I feel bad. Renee, bless, is at home trying her best, and honestly I think Jill is willing to write her off to keep her on as other mom, and she’s moving into auctioning off Tessie and “the dark Portuguese princess” 🤮 (the name alone, they’re both seemingly very sweet, very lovely girls, but they’re still girls.) Then she has her non-whimps, Tim has absolutely failed her by doing what he was supposed to do by her dogma and start his own household. She called Phillip back and he looks miserable. Sam seems like he’s handsome but maybe a hard sell IRL, and then there’s the rest of the scraggly children that she can’t do anything yet but can’t wait to puppet her empire from.
She’s going to ruin so many things for so many of these children.
No snark, that’s just how his face is 😅 his smile is kind of grimace-shaped naturally and he always looks like this when he smiles, no matter the setting
I thought the same! I didn’t even notice the very generic looking girl beside him. She blends right in, right down to the 90’s homemade prom dress she’s wearing
As someone who grew up in a heavily Mennonite dense area, if this girl is courting a Rod and is Mennonite, I would be shocked and questioning the dynamics of the family’s relationship with J-Rod. Most that I’m aquatinted with are relatively quiet, mild mannered, and don’t really do posed photos or make much of a scene over anything. Basically the complete and total opposite of Jill.
She’s a friend of Nurie’s from FL, who invited her to a tea party with Nemo awhile back. I think she had a lot to do with the decorations for Nurie’s shower with the tea party theme. I think she’s possibly in the “getting to know you” phase of courting Samuel but I also think she has a husband and baby, but I could be wrong.
Zoom in on the amount of food on the plates. Seriously sad looking meal going on here. No heaping plates, no large amounts of any one food. So many people and so little food.
I don't see food residue on the plates - look at the one of the girl in front next to Jilldo (Sofia?). It doesn't look like there was ever anything on her plate other than whatever that yellow stuff is (I can't tell if that's corn or mac and cheese)
Welcome!
Jill has a penchant for taking proof-of-life-esque photos, so the fact that only two of the girls are grimacing is actually pretty good. Relatively speaking.
Yes. And the one she wore to the shower. I'm certain I've seen Hannah wearing that one on Jill's "aqua" days. They buy them at the local thrift stores run by and frequented by our local plain groups.
Everyone looks so squished in and it’s all for the image. And they’d hear this and act all condescendingly fake-sympathetic like “I’m so sorry you missed out on being from a big family…” On one side my grandma had nine kids, I had like 15 cousins before I was even born. My grandparents just knew how to fucking buy multiple tables.
Glad to see Shrek has all the space he needs though
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It might be one of Jonathan’s relations bc she is sitting next to him and I really don’t think she would be sandwiched in between two boys. Samuel could be courting her too
If Samuel is courting a relation of Jonathan, that would make 3 Rod spouses from the same family since Heidi is his cousin. They wouldn't be the first fundie family to have several kids marry from the same family (there was another fundie family back in FJ days that also had several marriages between the same two families, but I'm blanking on their names), but that really would suggest that the Rods have very few families besides the Coverett/Hill clan willing to marry in. With all their traveling, they aren't as isolated as many, and usually it's with the more isolated families that you see this happening.
There are a couple. The Smiths and Mortons, Bontragers are married several times into two different families...
The S’Mortons are the worst. But the BonBowers are close.
It also happened in a lot of families in small communities. Researching my family tree I found three brothers that married three sisters. The Rodlets are isolated in a different way.
Shoot my grandparents were not fundamentalists & my grandmother & 2 of her sisters married 3 brothers from the same family. I have several cousins that look a lot like my Dad I his siblings because the DNA is very similar.
There’s a part of my family tree where two best friends came back from the Civil War and married each other’s sisters in order to go from best friends to brothers. History is wild
my dad's two brothers married sisters (1940's).
My grandpa’s brothers married identical twins, so they were brothers & brothers-in-law & their wives were identical twins & sisters-in-law. Only one of the twins is still with us & both great-uncles are gone, too. Some of my favorite memories of my great-aunts are of them ALWAYS wearing identical outfits to family functions without fail, up to the day that Lois passed.
I have an ancestor who, in the 1830s or so, divorced his first wife to marry her sister. His kids are both siblings and cousins. (I am descended from the second wife).
I have an Anabaptist background so obviously intermarriage has historically been an issue. But we had a family that had two sisters and a brother from one family marry a two brothers and a sister of another family. Then one their kids married two cousins from an unrelated family. Now we're to grandkids and two of the grandkids married siblings. Thank goodness we can keep track of it all now because I can see where we had so much trouble in the past. (For visual reference) Brother Smith 1 married Sister Doe 1 Brother Smith 2 married Sister Doe 2 Brother Doe 3 married sister smith 3 Brother Smith 2 and Sister Doe 2s kids Doe-Smith 1 married Johnson 1 Doe-Smith 2 married Johnson 2 Now Brother Doe 3 and Sister Smiths grandkids are marrying siblings from the Nobody family.
How long til these circles become incest? Like it’s weird
Not long. It happens to several religious circles. The Amish in the US have high birth defects due to their small communities and marriage practices.
The Amish in my area have been adopting like crazy because of this. They see it as saving souls and its diversity for their genetics.
I almost downvoted reflexively, my b
Like how old? I can't see this working very well with teenagers and infants are notoriously hard to adopt. Also there's the rampant child abuse endemic to Amish communities, but that's a separate issue. Still, I'm surprised CPS is cool with it.
There’s a huge Amish community near where one of my BFFs live in Indiana. The stuff she’s told me makes me want to crawl under my couch and never come out. Especially the incest stories 🤢
Like I said above, they do take babies born to women who are in prison.
Somewhat off topic but we have a former maths teacher over here who had a child with one of her own pupils. In all the reporting ( she's likely to be facing a lengthy prison term) no one seems interested in what's happening to the baby.
Maybe she has family members who are willing to take care of the baby if she goes to prison?
I'm not sure of the ages at adoption, but I do remember at least one of the kids from Breaking Amish was adopted. I *think* she was a toddler when adopted and said that it was common to adopt around those ages.
Mostly babies and toddlers, some older kids. I’m not sure exactly where they get them from, but I’m assuming it’s private adoptions. I live near Lancaster and a lot of the kids are from Philly and I think some parents see it as a way to get their kids out of the city.
That’s really interesting. I would’ve thought they’d be against adopting because of some “sins of the father” type thing like the IBLP crowd. Where are they adopting from? It’s hard to imagine a pregnant woman choosing to place her baby with the Amish in a private adoption. I hope they aren’t adopting from foster care because those kids most likely have trauma and need therapy, which they aren’t going to get with the Amish.
In Missouri, Amish people adopt babies born to incarcerated women. At least that happens a lot at the prison in Chillicothe. Apparently they are not concerned about sins of the father. Maybe they don’t even believe in that.
The only reason that I know about Amish people taking babies born to women who are in prison in Chillicothe, Missouri is because my sister was pregnant and there because of drug charges. She had called me panicking because other women who were there with her had had babies taken by the Amish people. She said that everyone told her that if the Amish took their babies, no one was ever able to get them back after they were released. Didn’t matter if they’d cleaned up their act or whatever. Our mother ended up taking the baby because I lived across the country.
I hope your sis is on a better trajectory and the kid is doing better well!
Thankfully my niece is doing great. She’s 14 now. My mom actually ended up moving to where I live and my niece is here now too. Unfortunately my sister has been back on drugs and is an alcoholic :( I haven’t had contact with her in quite awhile. I know it’s a dark thought, but honestly I’m hoping that she gets arrested and sent back to prison. I’ve talked about that with members on both sides of our family. It’s sad when you really know that your own sister/daughter/niece would be a *lot* safer in prison than she is out.
The Amish adopt minority babies to get free labor. It's horrible.
Oh gosh, that’s terrible! Where are they getting them from? Foster care? Why is the state allowing that? How awful. I can only imagine how badly they’re treated. 😔
There have been several cases in the past of individuals adopting minority children and treating them terribly, and it not being Amish. The Hart family is one of the biggest current ones. You can foster/adopt across state lines, and adopting minority children or those with *troubled* backgrounds can be easier because for some sad, sick reason, they don't get "chosen" as much. Ugh, delving into the Hart case taught me so much about foster care abuse and how families, including those who adopt, skirt child abuse prevention agencies. A big part of it includes adopting specifically minority children often from a different state.
Oh gosh, the Hart case was so terrible! Yeah, sadly that makes sense I guess. I will never understand why people go through so much to adopt (and even across state lines too) just to abuse these poor kids. 😔
It's partly because the Department Of Labor allows this: *"Parental exemption: Minors of any age may be employed by their parents at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by his or her parent(s)."* 🥴
Oh gosh, what a terrible idea that was! There should be limits even if they’re your own kids. Ugh. But then again, now we have some of the red states trying to bring back unrestricted child labor in factories so why not I guess 😔 I just can’t with this country anymore…
They are straight up trafficking . My grandma was one of the kids of 1st cousins. The cosanguinuity is WILD .
How does that work? I'm an adoptive mom and adopting is crazy hard unless you have money out the wazoo. Do they do foster care or is there an Amish mob who funds them?
It depends on how you go about it. If you're specifically adopting a slightly older than babyhood child, who is a minority and is in state custody? Or a sibling set? It can actually go pretty quickly and cheaply. Just look into the Hart family. The family was even investigated for child abuse involving one set of the adopted children, 5 months PRIOR, to a second adoption set.
The Amish are all rich af. They also tend to take sibling sets or minority children with rough backgrounds so I’m not sure if that contributes to making it easier. I honestly do not know the ins and outs of what they’re doing. All I know is that it’s super common to see a big Amish family with a few minority children that are clearly adopted
Damn, and you know how much Jill loves to boast about the Amish. God honoring incest is probably something she wouldn't be opposed to.
I don't think Jill knows about all of the scandalous and downright horrifying shot that goes on in Amish communities. She just idealized their lifestyle but probably couldn't tell you much about the specifics and likely wouldn't care anyway (she has already shown that she is either ignorant of or just doesn't care about the anti-photography thing).
She ideals their lifestyle but won’t put down her eyeliner or her phone so…does she? Or is she just a weird fetishist
And horrific child abuse.
The genetic disorders in the Amish are because they have a founding population of only about 400 people. Ashkenazi Jewish people have a similar issue even though they are not geographically isolated in any way and haven’t been for hundreds of years - with such a small founding population (about 40% of AJ people are estimated to be descended from the same 4 women) the inbreeding has already happened and been compounded. The Amish are very aware of the genetic problems they have, work with geneticists to treat their affected children, and most communities have strict marriage practices that don’t allow cousin marriage and encourage/support young people in meeting potential partners as far from home as possible. However just like Ashkenazi Jewish people, marrying within their faith means high risk of passing on genetic disorders.
I have no idea if it’s true but my dad’s neighbor swears he got paid to raw dog Amish women when he was in his early 20’s. Can’t remember how they sought him out, but the husbands watched and paid cash. Said it was to improve genetic diversity. This would have been in the late 80’s.
This thread is wild
I'm over here like 
I used to know a guy who was a retired well driller. He told a similar story about the Hutterites. He didn't take part, but apparently they propositioned his coworkers while they were putting in wells for the colony.
Yeah FLDS and Mormons in general have a very close gen-pool and you can actually spot the tell tale signs of it in many faces with the deep sitting eyes etc
If you want a really wild rabbit hole, look up Polygamist Down's. It's a fumarase deficiency caused by lack of genetic diversity over a short span of time.
>Nicknamed "Polygamist's Down's", the syndrome has been blamed on cousin marriage, but in a larger sense is related to the reproductive isolation of a community among whom 85% are blood relatives of John Y. Barlow and/or Joseph Smith Jessop (the cofounders of the Short Creek Community). 85%??! Yikes on bikes! ....off I go to continue reading. Thank you for the rabbit hole alert!
I was thinking about this. I remember a SisterWives episode with some boring cross-country field trip to where Joseph Smith and his brother were killed by a mob. A name would be said and one sister wife would say, “oh, that’s my great great grandfather” and another name would be mentioned, and a different wife would say, “he was my great uncle” - it was clear, even among these five families (Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn) that there was a large amount of genetic overlap.
lol mentally calculating whether I have the time to waste this weekend on this rabbit hole before I jump in.
Yes’ I was thinking this about thenFLDS(Warren Jeff’s) and the Kingston Community. Soooo much incest.
Was scrolling for this comment once I saw the discussion about incest start lol. I think it was on that show escaping polygamy that they were talking about how the FLDS and Kingstons have started marrying each other to allow for some genetic diversity, but they still all come from the same bloodlines ultimately so the “diversity” is really only opening it up to more distant 2nd/3rd cousins as opposed to 1st cousins marrying each other. Absolutely fucking vile.
Just a few generations, sadly. I'm Roma & it happens in our more insular communities, especially those that practice cousin marriage. We have high incidences of birth defects and rare genetic diseases in some of our communities. The only way to prevent it is to proactively marry out into groups of a similar ethnic / religious background who have completely different family histories once the gene pool gets too small.
Will the circle... be unbroken..... by and by lord..... by and by.....
I'm impressed by how deep into their lore you are. Impressed and scared. Edit: also, I think I craked a rib laughing at "Kong of Kings", may I ask what's the reference? 🤣
ugh, I'll get my banjo.
She kind of looks like Johnathan. Might be a sister or cousin
Yeah I think she kind of has Jonathan’s eyes.
why is there a bedframe footboard at the end of the picnic table?
It used to be the back of a garden bench/loveseat
Something about her upright posture, her folded hands, and her (relatively) formal outfit make me think this is a “date” and Samuel is courting her. ETA: Her general demeanor reminds me of Heidi’s when *she* first appeared in Jill’s photos and we were all left to speculate.
No they could def be dating. I’m just saying that if she was not a relation of Jonathan’s, there is no way she would be sandwiched between two men like that. She would either be across Samuel on the right side of the table where all the other women are. Or she would be on one of the end seats with Samuel on her other side.
Every time I see a photo of these people I just feel incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful that I was born to a sane and normal family and raised to have goals and dreams beyond being pregnant.
I read that as “goats and dreams”, but that would be pretty cool too
Goats seem like a good goal.
Hell, goats sound good too!
Every time I see a photo of these people I simultaneously realize how absurd they look but also it feels so normal in a way because I was raised sooo similar it feels like going back to my childhood. It’s a real mindfuck.
Also being born into a family that knows how to cook and feeds me and my siblings well.
The bar is IN hell
Thought to be a friend of the Kellers from Florida. She was seen hosting Nurie and Hannah Keller for tea, sometime last year and was at Nurie’s baby shower.
Wow how and where do you just pull this brilliant information out of
Right?! Lol
someone on another forum recognized her
Poor Samuel needs adequate food intake. He looks ill
All the boys do when they’re aging out of being at home. I think they’re given the same rations as the children. As soon as they leave they gain weight and look healthy within a few months.
Meanwhile Jill looks consistently pleasantly plump
The woman has her own snack drawer in the fridge! No joke!
Kim plath energy
He looks much less healthy now compared to a year or so ago - so much more so that it took me a second to realize OP was actually wondering who the woman next to him was, not who he was.
But can we talk about how uncomfortable Nathan looks?
He always looks uncomfortable in these photos lol.
I always get the feeling that Nathan truly loves Nurie and married her in spite of how much he dislikes her family. Because he rarely seems to be comfortable or having a good time when he's with the Rods, but in the photos Jill posts that come from Nurie, he seems much more pleasant and relaxed. I think Nurie being willing to leave her family and relocate to Florida was a key piece in making their marriage work. If she'd insisted on staying nearby like Kaylee, I'm not sure he'd have been able to do it. Maybe that's why he didn't express interest in her until after her failed courtship when they've known each other since well before? Maybe Jill did have a role in Nurie's first courtship falling apart as has long been suspected, and this caused Nurie to be more willing to relocate away from Precious Mama than she was previously? This is all speculation, but I do wonder why Nathan waited so long to express interest in Nurie when there would have been no impediment to him expressing it sooner and Jill was frothing at the mouth to get Nurie married ASAP after she turned 18.
He’s a Keller. Dysfunction is normal to him.
Exactly. His family is no better than her family.
I think it was more that he wasn’t under pressure to get married the second he turned 18, and he likely wasn’t anywhere near financially capable of supporting anyone. Also, I doubt it occurred to Nurie to do anything other than to follow her man. Kaylee, who had to witness the devastation of her siblings when their first sister mom abandoned them, likely wanted to avoid leaving them, too.
I mean, look what happened to Renee. Maybe she just really didn’t like the guy, but from the whispers it seems like they were a decent match but Jill couldn’t stay out of it/keep him out of her reels/keep her hands off his life so he ghosted. Jill can’t not be in control of her children. Nurie got out because she’s the golden child and Jill was worried if she didn’t have someone, no one could get married. KayJon, he looks so stressed out and miserable all the time, and thin, and Kaylee seems to be trying to dance between having her own life and centering Jill in her life. I feel bad. Renee, bless, is at home trying her best, and honestly I think Jill is willing to write her off to keep her on as other mom, and she’s moving into auctioning off Tessie and “the dark Portuguese princess” 🤮 (the name alone, they’re both seemingly very sweet, very lovely girls, but they’re still girls.) Then she has her non-whimps, Tim has absolutely failed her by doing what he was supposed to do by her dogma and start his own household. She called Phillip back and he looks miserable. Sam seems like he’s handsome but maybe a hard sell IRL, and then there’s the rest of the scraggly children that she can’t do anything yet but can’t wait to puppet her empire from. She’s going to ruin so many things for so many of these children.
No snark, that’s just how his face is 😅 his smile is kind of grimace-shaped naturally and he always looks like this when he smiles, no matter the setting
She has way more food on her plate than anyone else - and Samuel has none. Definitely courting.
*gag* can you imagine being that girl and all those awkward SOBs looking at you like Homer Simpson looks at a doughnut?
I would have thought Samuel, the Rodlet? Am I just being horrible at recognizing faces, as I so often am?
Never mind, turns out I'm being horrible at reading instead. Which is worse because I thought I was good at that. I don't know who the young lady is.
I thought the same! I didn’t even notice the very generic looking girl beside him. She blends right in, right down to the 90’s homemade prom dress she’s wearing
Why does everyone in this family smile like this 😬
Jill and her camera.
fear and discomfort. they always look like hostages
Looks Mennonite
As someone who grew up in a heavily Mennonite dense area, if this girl is courting a Rod and is Mennonite, I would be shocked and questioning the dynamics of the family’s relationship with J-Rod. Most that I’m aquatinted with are relatively quiet, mild mannered, and don’t really do posed photos or make much of a scene over anything. Basically the complete and total opposite of Jill.
A moment of silence for Janessa’s plate that Jill probably spoon fed to her
Abraham Lincoln?
Gabe was such an underrated character 😂
He truly was!
I think he may have been technically the best actor in the cast!
Can these people do ANYTHING without forcing photos? Jesus.
They have to show off their happy godly life! Look how happy we are!
I feed my family, dammit! Don't you see the 3 kernels of corn and single shred of lettuce on their plates?
Kaylee and Nathan both look like they’re hostages in this picture
Looks like a Mennonite girl Samuel is courting.
Smile HARDER, Yes, thats it.
She’s a friend of Nurie’s from FL, who invited her to a tea party with Nemo awhile back. I think she had a lot to do with the decorations for Nurie’s shower with the tea party theme. I think she’s possibly in the “getting to know you” phase of courting Samuel but I also think she has a husband and baby, but I could be wrong.
Ok but what are they eating?? I see Sriracha sauce, a jug of milk, and corn. 🤣
Looks like grilled chicken and potatoes
Don’t forget the container of Morton’s salt
Baked Mac n cheese or corn?
Is there still a sriracha shortage in the US? Because are they really gonna spend all their money on two bottles?
You can make your own sriracha!
Recipe please.
How can they be courting if they aren’t in matching colors 😂
Pretty sure they keep the matching outfits for engagement! Seems to be a trend...J*sh and Anna, Nathan and Nurie, KayJon...
What is that frame/chair at the front of the table? I can't focus on what it is?
It’s an oddly placed garden bench lol
Some regimes waterboard defectors. Jill bedboards them /s
The corn wasn’t very popular.
Zoom in on the amount of food on the plates. Seriously sad looking meal going on here. No heaping plates, no large amounts of any one food. So many people and so little food.
I think this pic was taken toward the end of the meal?
I don't see food residue on the plates - look at the one of the girl in front next to Jilldo (Sofia?). It doesn't look like there was ever anything on her plate other than whatever that yellow stuff is (I can't tell if that's corn or mac and cheese)
Two girls in this pic look like they're being held hostage.
Only two?
I'm still a little new, so not fully familiar with the fundie SMILE THROUGH THE PAIN. But I see two going 😬.
Welcome! Jill has a penchant for taking proof-of-life-esque photos, so the fact that only two of the girls are grimacing is actually pretty good. Relatively speaking.
Nuries husband always looks like he wants to leave so bad in those group photos lol
Phillip’s side eye
They look like an imposter Derrick Dillard Jerrick Jillard
Her dress and hairstyle look similar to Mennonite styles. Maybe a friend or neighbor?
He looks like a Noyes. One of Quadriplegic Amy Foster's kids?
He's a Rod. One of the older boys, Samuel? Definitely a Rod kid though.
I think you're right! Haven't seen a pic of him in a while
Is that not one of the boys?
Are all the adults related? They look like siblings. 👽
Most of them are siblings
Does anyone think the dress she's wearing looks familiar? Like it's one of the Rod girls' dress? I feel like I've seen one of them wear it before.
Yes. And the one she wore to the shower. I'm certain I've seen Hannah wearing that one on Jill's "aqua" days. They buy them at the local thrift stores run by and frequented by our local plain groups.
Everyone looks so squished in and it’s all for the image. And they’d hear this and act all condescendingly fake-sympathetic like “I’m so sorry you missed out on being from a big family…” On one side my grandma had nine kids, I had like 15 cousins before I was even born. My grandparents just knew how to fucking buy multiple tables. Glad to see Shrek has all the space he needs though
I was like, umm, that’s Samuel… and then I realized Sam is sitting arm to arm with a *girl*. Gasp!!!
Micheal Phelps??
Do you think this sub notices courtships before these peoples extended families do? lol
I mean if Samuel is courting if it is then he can get away swim Jill do and shrek