For centuries (okay, maybe just a few decades), scholars have tried to figure out why there are so many Mennonite writers. Various theories have been proposed, but I’m going to throw out a new one – we’re all cousins. Simple. All the Mennonite writers you’ve heard of are related to each other – a lot of them anyway.
Using the Mennonite genealogy website Grandma Online, we looked up Andrew Unger’s relation to various other Mennonite authors. Let’s see the results. (This is real).
-Andrew Unger and David Bergen – 4th cousins
-Andrew Unger and Patrick Friesen – 3rd cousins twice removed
-Andrew Unger and Matt Groening – 5th cousins once removed
-Andrew Unger and Paul Hiebert – 3rd cousins thrice removed
-Andrew Unger and Rhoda Janzen – 4th cousins twice removed
-Andrew Unger and Casey Plett – 3rd cousins once removed
-Andrew Unger and Miriam Toews – 4th cousins
-Andrew Unger and Mitchell Toews – 5th cousins once removed
-Andrew Unger and A.E. van Vogt – 5th cousins twice removed
-Andrew Unger and Armin Wiebe – 7th cousins once removed
I could not find relations to Di Brandt, Rudy Wiebe or Arnold Dyck … but, trust me, I’ll keep looking until I do.
