Geneology

Gillette

Yes, this shit is hilarious because none of us take this to mean much of anything. My 27 times removed means that I stand to inherit a title sometime after the entire population of Great Britain expires.

There's no self importance going on, hun. I doubt any of us takes ourselves more seriously because someone noteworthy is hanging off a branch of our family tree somewhere. My mother also mentioned a connection to Isaac Newton. Doesn't mean I have any special knowledge of apples or gravity.

What you say about serfs and common folk founding the US may be true, but keep in mind some serfs were bastard children of nobility.

Lighten up. These noteworthy links mean less to most of us than 0.05 inches in length would.

The best a man can get.

tripod

To lighten up has been my problem since as far back as I can remember... I guess that I was born a curmudgeon. I understand that you aren't even American, being from Nova Scotia increases the likelihood that your sources are legit. Serf and bastard children of nobility should have absolutely no record of their lineage except for the handed down, verbal kind.

My stepmother was totally into genealogy and got me into my own family tree. She traced hers back to the 1500's with all sorts of nobility and interesting connections only to take a DNA test and find out that she is NOT a blood member of her family. Someone was adopted or was posing as having her particular surname. To this day, her genealogy still contains the same info and she pretends like she is still a blood member of that family even though she isn't.

People need to do their genealogy going backwards, not by finding someone that you want to be connected to and then trying to bridge the gap by going forwards.

I have done my genealogy and everything stops after the boat trip to the America's. Unless I see the ship's manifest or passenger list with my own eyes, I won't believe a damn thing about what any genealogist says about the history of my particular family tree. As far as I can tell, there are VERY few ship's passenger list's that have survived.

Have you seen the passenger list from your ancestor's boat ride to Nova Scotia? If your mom wrote a book, I am sure that she must have seen it. How did she get a hold of that record?

My family tree stops about where my fellow African American brothers and sisters do.

TheBomb

becominghorse

Maybe, but more interesting still are the Royal Bastards who had it LUXE at Louis XIV's court. The Duc du Maine, Duc d'Orleans, and they were very often very devious pricks who did a lot of conspiracy like all the best indolent courtiers do. Louis XIV was, according to St.-Simon's memoirs, found to have a rectum twice the size of a 'normal man.' I bet it was pungent too!

Despite my ongoing grandiosity, I cannot claim to be Queen Elizabeth's cousin even though I do find this is the most frequently attractive famous person to claim kiinship with--and understandably so: She is so cool and good at the job that I have never been able not to admire her greatly. She makes the rest of the family look like amateurs (even her 'beloved mother' wasn't so cool and salty.)

Just read tripod's last post after posting above. One part of my family tree has been traced back to England, but it was one of the Welsh parts, because the name was Welsh and the side of the current family was also Welsh, but with a different name. One other strain was researched, but it broke off, but had also originally come from an English-named family in Bournemouth. But they never fixed it, and I have no interest in labouring at such things when there is fucking to do.

Writing courses are for everyone...

My dick is my immediate family. We fell in love and had to get married because one of us got pregnant...


"The First Tiiiiiime....Ev-ah I Sawwwww Yo' Dick..."
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE MAN-BUTT ROSES!

Gillette

Painstakingly.

She spends oodles of time in old libraries that have nothing but birth and death records, plus traveling to Scotland, Wales ("Oh, you're an Evans! Not too many of those around here.) and Ireland. She spent two weeks at Trinity College last summer digging for info.

I might actually be interested in this stuff if I hadn't been bored to tears as a child being dragged from graveyard to graveyard collecting information from headstones.

I'm not going to waste any time so I can claim some dubious pride from a distantly peripheral connection. But I'm not going to question my mother's dedication to getting it done right. She's been doing this longer than I've been alive.

Short version. Watch what you say about my mama.

The best a man can get.

hotbtminla

Well, look at it this way. At least some of you guys can envision, in obviously silly, far-reaching terms, a family reunion presided over by the Queen of England.

The best I can hope for (as far as I know) is a former rapper and underwear model.

Sigh. Story of my life, literally.

Exit, pursued by a bear. - Stage direction from "The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare

becominghorse

Well, I'd rather suck Mark Wahlberg's dick (even though that's a stunt dick at the end of 'Boogie Nights', he said so, but I have heard he used to jack off at Hollywood clubs a few years ago, when that was fashionable, and I want to do that too--at a restaurant) than the Queen's...one of her few drawbacks...although I remember in a PBS docu about 1993 she was at Sandringham and all of a sudden we see the camera on 'Sandringham Stud', and she said 'now that's MY job..' Shit! I bet she is even able to be discreet about all the magnificent dick she gets to sniff back there. I'd do MUCH more. I'm sure she'd think that's unseemly of me but pah-don me f'livin'...yes, I'd suck a real horse...have wanted to for years, but last summer one of the Central Park hansom-cab guys saw me cruising his horse who had this big hard-on...and he KNEW what I was up to...but you go straight to jail..I'm sure Mrs. Windsor has never entertained such thoughts...after all, she's God's gift to twat....

Writing courses are for everyone...

My dick is my immediate family. We fell in love and had to get married because one of us got pregnant...


"The First Tiiiiiime....Ev-ah I Sawwwww Yo' Dick..."
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE MAN-BUTT ROSES!

wi_sugargrl

Actually you may be surprised that you're incorrect. This is from Wikipedia. From the 380 plus KNOWN descendants who immigrated to America, it is estimated that 150 million of us are descended from one of them. So theroretically, half of the US is descended from royalty. Now, I'm not saying that this really means anything special - we are not going to be called on like John Goodman (King Ralph) to fill in if the Royal families of Europe should all be blown up or anything. It's just fun.

Royal descent is common among residents of the United States. It has been estimated that probably as many as 150 million Americans (half of the population) have traceable royal European descent.[7] More than half of the Presidents of the United States (27 of 42) have had a traceable royal descent or a wife with a traceable royal descent.[8] According to American genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, an expert on royal descent, most Americans with significant New England Yankee, Mid-Atlantic Quaker, or Southern Planter ancestry are descended from medieval kings, especially those of England, Scotland, and France. Some Americans may have royal descents through German immigrants who had an illegitimate descent from German royalty.[9]

Due to primogeniture, many colonists of high social status were younger children of English aristocratic families who came to America looking for land because, given their birth order, they could not inherit. Many of these immigrants maintained high standing where they settled. They could often claim royal descent through a female line or illegitimate descent. Many Americans descend from these 17th-century British colonists who had royal descent. There were at least 650 colonists with traceable royal ancestry[10][11], and 387 left descendants in America (almost always numbering many thousands, and some as many as one million).[10] These colonists with royal descent settled in every state, but a large majority lived in Massachusetts or Virginia.[10] Several families, who settled in those states, over the two hundred years or more since the colonial land grants, interwinded their branches to the point that almost everyone was somehow related to everyone else. One writer observed, "like a tangle of fish hooks" [12].

Over time, opposing factors have affected the percentage of Americans who have provable royal descent. The passage of the generations has further intermingled the ancestry of the English colonists' descendants, thus increasing the percentage who descend from one of the immigrants with royal ancestry. At the same time, however, waves of post-colonial immigrants from other countries decreased the percentage who have royal descent.

The Medieval Genealogy Society sites this reference: Frequently Asked Questions for soc.genealogy.medieval

In The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, Roberts includes almost 350 colonial American immigrants with royal ancestry. These immigrants (pp. xiv, ff.):

"left sizable, often huge, progenies...These 350 are a large enough group so that living Americans with 50-100 colonial immigrant ancestors in New England (or Long Island), in Quaker (but not German or Scots-Irish) Pennsylvania, or in the Tidewater South (but often not the Piedmont, Shenandoah Valley, or mountainous 'backcountry') can expect to find a royally descended forebear."

Of these 350 immigrants, 167 left ten or more descendants treated in the Dictionary of American Biography. In the New England Historic Genealogical Society newsletter NEXUS, June-September 1994, Roberts says (p. 104) that 100 million is very likely quite a conservative estimate of the number of American descendants of these 167.

wi_sugargrl

I just thought of some of the folks I can PROVE I'm descended from (still nobody famous) but...

Thomas Ballard - a wealthy planter who's land is now the site of the College of William and Mary - they even found the house ruins on campus a few years back

William McGehee - lived near Thomas Jefferson, signed the Albemarle Co Dec. of Independence, and helped roof Monticello (mentioned somewhere in the TJ papers)

Joseph Swope - he was captured by Indians as a child. His brother is considered to have been the first white child born in today southern WV

This stuff means more to me than that royalty crap - it's still cool though. I get to say I'm descended from several men who fought in the Rev War (most of them lowly privates who had an $87 a year pension).

Sugar

Sir

My family tree doesnt fork. Thats Arkansas for ya. hehehe. But its tall and proud.

Its my 1 year anniversary of being on this site!!

Quite Irate

Elvis. By marriage.

I'm expensive.

mista geechee

well we're all related somehow. every person on teh planet. my last name is richardson so my ancestors were prolly slaves of someone named richard. and i got the same birthday as dave chappelle, yasser arafat, mike huckabee, and cal ripken junior

wi_sugargrl

Anyone out there have any famous cousins? I love this thread!

simcha

/And Tripod, being a direct descendant of Ben Franklin is no great rarity. He was rather prolific in at least three countries on two continents. Most of us are related to him through bastard children (as is my case, most certainly). When I was told that we were related to him, (my mother's maiden name was Franklin actually) I was told with a sly sort of wink and an explanation that we were among thousands who had this in common in at least three countries on two different continents. So, it wasn't anything to be puffed up about. It's just an interesting factoid told amongst family members that makes for interesting banter at the occasional cocktail party. It carries with it absolutely no importance to us in our daily lives. We usually laugh about it because Ben Franklin's proclivities toward massive pro-creation are legendary (and true!).

"I am fucking through being diplomatic with people your age who continue to act like children." - mindseye

kalipygian

Do you get to collect any royalties on electricity?

Bod rangzen!
Free Tibet!

MidwestGal

I am related to Aaron Burr, Rev. Aaron Burr Sr (who was president of what is now Princeton University) as well as Joseph Wadsworth who placed the charter in the Charter Oak. I am also descended from John and Priscilla (Mullins) Alden that came here on the Mayflower. I am sure there are several other names in my family genealogy that would have meaning in religious history but off the top of my head I just can't think of the names at the moment.

Many of my family members were significant pioneers and set up communities and churches. Several lines of mine came to the county I live in in 1832 and many decedents still live here today. Several Traveled the Oregon Trail. I am lucky enough to have family artifacts to go along with the stories. I have drawers of glass negatives of the settling and setting up of many communities in the area I live. As well as centuries old Bibles, a lead plate that parts were melted off to make bullets during the Revolutionary War. So many interesting things, well I think. I also have thousands of letters, copies of deeds of where people lived on the East Coast, a copy of a letter of commendation from George Washington, decorating someone from our family, during the Revolutionary War.

I inherited the position of family historian and keeper of documents after my father passed away. When I am well I will put it all on a disk. I would eventually like to publish a book on life as a pioneer based on the thousands of letters I have.

In fact, the bed I sleep in was my 5 great grandmothers as a wedding present from her husband. It was common for men and women to sleep in separate rooms back then. My mom's house looks like a museum with all the antiques, more than 70 percent of the items belonged to a different generation in our family.

My historical roots are based from Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, and Germany. I am very proud of most of my families contributions to settling this country. I feel very blessed that each generation has had a record keeper to keep accurate information so I can find the original copies of documents if I need. One day, I hope to have a project room just to house an area for me to work on getting all of this information on a computer and documenting photos/paperwork so that generations to come have the information.