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According to family lore we are related well down the line to King Henry VIII as well as Judge Roy Bean. I do have a copy of our paternal family's geneology trace that was done by a great aunt in the mid-'70's that does show us as relatives. Not sure on my maternal side as my great grandfather was from England and he and his siblings were orphaned at a very early age. Consequently, our maternal family tree stops there.
Location: A Very Naughtytown In Northwestern Montanifornia U.S.A.
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Not sure but if I do I don't know names. There must be some sort of "Heavy Hitters" in our family.
My mums side has a family tartan or plaid exclusive to thier clan.
My Dads side has a coat of arms with a center crest that contains the family crests of twelve other families of old Saarland.
It was rumored in my fathers family for generations that we had some sort of medieval ruler who had huge land holdings or something like that.
My children (thru my first husband) are related to Andrew Jackson
One of my distant second cousins, Eliza (Gist) Blair, knew Andrew Jackson and actually lived in the White House for about one year with him. She was the wife of Francis Preston Blair, a member of Andrew Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet. They eventually bought the house across the street from the White House, Blair House, which is used today as the president’s guest house. (http://www.blairhouse.org/ )
That area of my family tree is very, very interesting: Francis Preston Blair eventually went on to be one of the founders of the Republican Party and was one of Abraham Lincoln’s closest friends. One of their sons, Meredith Blair, was a member of Lincoln’s cabinet and another son, Frank Blair Jr., was a Congressman from Missouri who resigned his seat shortly after the Civil war broke out and became a general in the Union Army. Their daughter, Mary Blair, married Samuel Phillip Lee, a cousin of Gen. Robert E Lee. Francis bought the house next door as a wedding gift for Mary and Samuel, and that’s why Blair House is called the “Blair-Lee House.”
That area of my tree goes on and on like that. Since they were a very well-connected political family their grandchildren married into other wealthy, well-connected families.
As for my direct line of the family, my g-g-g-g grandfather made the mistake of heading west, where he became nothing but a poor dirt farmer in Ohio. If only he would have stayed on the East Coast with the rest of the family. :-)
Yes. A large proportion of Americans are, too - as I'm sure you know, a number of prominent emmigrants from England in colonial days were younger sons of noble families; they all had smatterings or more of Plantagenet blood. Nearly all of us of Anglo descent can claim royal blood.
That’s fascinating, and I’ve read that before. Normally, I ignore the areas of my tree on ancestry.com as soon as they start to turn into nobility. (It’s usually made up nonsense.) However, there is one area of my tree that might have some legitimacy because it is already recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
A long line of some of my great-grandfathers were the Ashbys of Ashby Gap, Virginia. They were a prominent family in the history of Virginia. The family story is that the first Ashby to come to Virginia in the 1630s (Henry Ashby) was the third son of the Duke of Beaufort. (DAR says it’s true, but I haven’t investigated.) If it’s true, then I’m a descendant of Edward II, a Plantagenet king. Centuries later the Beauforts also intermarried with the Tudors. Supposedly, my line down to Henry Ashby goes through Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, and her second husband, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. (Mary’s first husband was the King of France.)
Another mystery in my tree concerns one of my great-grandmothers who came to America in the 1640s. Her maiden name was Cromwell. (There are 11 documents in the Baltimore, Maryland, courthouse, including wills, property deeds, and her marriage contract ,that clearly show that her maiden name was Cromwell.)
Over the past 150 years professional historians in the US and the UK have been intrigued by this area of my tree and have been investigating it (without any luck). There have been 9 papers published in an attempt to connect her and her four brothers to Oliver Cromwell and the famous Cromwell family of England. Nearly all of the historians are confident that we’re somehow related but they cannot find the paperwork to prove it. (The missing link.) Apparently, the family was very wealthy before they arrived in America because they bought large tracts of Maryland as soon as they stepped off the boat. That’s why they feel that we’re related to Oliver and the rest of the Cromwells back in England.
Of course, on ancestry.com they do not let facts (or the truth) get in the way of anything. Almost all of the trees there connect us to Oliver Cromwell, even though there is no solid evidence to support it. Everyone there is apparently too lazy to actually read the 9 papers by the professional historians.
If your ancestors crossed the seas early on, they were of one of two groups. They were younger sons of titled houses who were landless and hoped to stake out their piece of dirt since there were none to have at home. Younger sons lost value once the heir had a son. Or they were servants, personal or indentured. The early attempts at settlments were attempts to find wealth. One of the reasons Jamestown was a near complete failure was that gentlemen did not do manual labor and the natives were not incline to either, leaving insufficent bodies to do the hard work. Had they brought a bunch of farmers who knew how to grow a crop they would have done much better.
A LOT of Americans can trace ancestry back to those who arrived under indenture, voluntary or otherwise as well. The people who later moved on from the coast were the people who became farmers and settled living off the land but early on this wasn't the main reason. Even the Pilgrims were largely urban types who didn't come equipped with the skills they immediately needed. Hoping to find the riches the Spanish had found, most first settlements were actually commercial in nature.
That’s fascinating, and I’ve read that before. Normally, I ignore the areas of my tree on ancestry.com as soon as they start to turn into nobility. (It’s usually made up nonsense.) However, there is one area of my tree that might have some legitimacy because it is already recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
A long line of some of my great-grandfathers were the Ashbys of Ashby Gap, Virginia. They were a prominent family in the history of Virginia. The family story is that the first Ashby to come to Virginia in the 1630s (Henry Ashby) was the third son of the Duke of Beaufort. (DAR says it’s true, but I haven’t investigated.) If it’s true, then I’m a descendant of Edward II, a Plantagenet king.
Centuries later the Beauforts also intermarried with the Tudors. Supposedly, my line down to Henry Ashby goes through Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, and her second husband, Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. (Mary’s first husband was the King of France.)
It's probably not made up.
Many people don't understand the mathematics of ancestry. If you are English, then the possibility that you are descended from a medieval king who lived before the "Black Death" in 1349 is estimated at 99.999..% Most of these estimates were done by professors, and I am not pulling them from my butt.
The 9 medieval kings from the Conquest to the Black Death (who left descendants) were William I, his son Henry I, his nephew King Stephen, and Henry I's grandson Henry II, his son John Lackland, his son Henry III, his son Edward I, his son Edward II and his son Edward III (died 1377). The bloodlines that are most likely to be well documented go through one of the three Edwards.
The plague killed so many people, but Edward III only lost one daughter. He had a healthy large family and many documented descendants when most people died out. Of course, his ancestors all had bloodlines from other children. Even using conservative estimates it is almost impossible to not be a descendant of one of these 9 kings. It is true that many people cannot trace their ancestry, but it is there, nonetheless.
In fact, most people of English ancestry are actually descended from one of these kings in tens of thousands of different bloodlines. Queen Elizabeth II has over 2 million documented bloodlines from William I.Total number of descendants are estimated in the hundreds of millions.
Now to be a descendant of Henry 7th (via one of his two daughters) or one of the Stuart monarchs is a many times less likely. Descendants are not exactly rare, but they are part of a considerably smaller group. Of course being a legitimate descendant of a Hanoverian king puts you in a small group of roughly 6000 people and you have a place in line to the throne.
Last edited by PacoMartin; 06-14-2013 at 02:18 PM..
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There must be some sort of "Heavy Hitters" in our family.
