After a lengthy chase through a pile of sources this morning I eventually remembered (cue trumpets, choral voices from above, shafts of blinding light and a very large facepalm) that 'son-in-law' in seventeenth-century texts can also mean stepson. #newsbooks#history#earlymodern#17thC#genealogy

<< Someone just drew my attention to stepchildren being called in-laws in my own family tree, in 1851. So our current definition of what "in-law" means (confining it to sideways married-in family, not stepchildren) is evidently more recent. I don't know how recent, can anyone beat 1851? #genealogy

<< Consequently 'brother-in-law' can also mean stepbrother! And just to make your tea break seem even further away, 'sister' and 'brother' frequently mean an in-law rather than a proper sibling. Deep dives into genealogical sources are frequently required to sort these things out.