Showtalk said:

She actually wrote to her cousins and said since their great grandparents weren’t married they had no claim to the family name and she was going to remove them from the family tree and place them under a their mother’s maiden name.

<sarcasm> What a wonderful way to win friends and influence people </sarcasm>

I bet those cousins didn't attend her funeral, but later took a pee on the grave.

Meriana said:

He wouldn't allow the marriage, and the girl stated if she could not marry him, she wouldn't marry at all. She didn't marry but did proceed to produce a number of children.

An oil company land man, looking for mineral rights heirs from a farm one of my ancestors had in the 19th century, discovered an extinct family tree branch like that. The version I heard was a similar situation - a great-great aunt decided that if she couldn't marry the guy she loved, she would not just never marry but also never had children. She died in 1940, and that was the end of that branch.

She's still alive last I heard.

But I bet that those other family members wont speak to her.

They are cousins, probably never that close.  It’s strange, because she is a nice person, but she’s obsessed with her genealogy.

I found a cool article while ago about estate processing if someone has been a miser his whole life and had no will, which mentioned finding cousins and other distant far-flung relatives that might not even know the deceased ever existed, a whole process when someone kicks the bucket and leaves a lot of loose ends.

Which is why everyone needs a will or a trust or something legal to divvy things up.

But an estimated 70% of Americans die intestate.

A big number.