Daily AncestorWhole blood
Whole blood means kinship through the same two parents or the same ancestral couple, as opposed to half blood, through only one.
Whole blood is the legal term for relatives who descend from the same pair of ancestors. Brothers and sisters of the whole blood share both a father and a mother; those of the half blood share only one parent.
The difference mattered in inheritance. Some state laws gave half-blood relatives only half as much as whole-blood ones, while others let them share equally. That is why estate papers and heirship lists take care to say which siblings were of the whole blood.
As seen in a recordStatement of heirs in an estate record, 1870s
Abel and Sarah Fenstermacher, brother and sister of the whole blood of the intestate
Sources
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Daily Ancestor. "Whole blood." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/relationships/whole-blood. Last checked 2026-10-12.