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There's12,000 folks today in the Saudi Royal Family. In a few generations, given the culture of common polygamy and large families, most people in that area will probably be descended from Saud ibn Muhammad ibn Migrin.
Hiya Chiro, nice to see you again. This makes more sense to me... the DNA part.
I don't really understand genealogy charting (& perhaps someone can explain what I'm missing, because I do find it confusing) from the perspective that people who are non-blood related are mixed into my family tree. Imo, they're not my relatives. Even with siblings' spouses or 1st cousins' spouses or parents' remarriages... children they have together are related to me, but, why add in the spouses & their entire lineages? They're not my blood relatives.
That's why these articles come out all the time in which we see Madonna is related to Obama & the queen & Charlemagne & the Bushes. I beg to differ in that they're not necessarily blood relatives. If we cram all the ex's of distant cousins & the kids they brought with them into their marriages from other bloodlines, dear lord, toss it all... we're all related & probably all royals, then, no? Shouldn't DNA determine lineage rather than marriage?
We include spouses and their lines because their children become blood relatives. The information on those lines can help find other blood relatives some times. Also, the people who marry into your family are your relatives, just not by blood.
When you see claims of relationships, those are blood relationships, though. Usually they are very distant cousins. Somewhere many generations back there is a common ancestor.
"Obama, on the other hand, comes by his multi-racial appeal quite naturally: roosting in his family tree are both George W. Bush and his father, plus Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and James Madison. Not to mention Dick Cheney, Winston Churchill, and Robert E. Lee."
Mitt Romney and I are tenth cousins three times removed! We share common ancestors in the early seventeenth century who were prominent enough that there are records for them in both England and Connecticut. The common ancestors are my twelfth great grandparents. I did not go looking for Mitt. The relationship just popped up when I was researching the line.
Charlemagne was very much a ladies' man and he must have had many, many kids including tons of illegitimate ones who eventually married local village girls and guys.
Good points, HVL & you also described at least 1 relative all of us have had, whether in our lifetimes or generations before, whether we know it or not. Do we really know today what great-great-great-granddad was up to? Add in an assault no one dared speak of, adoptions, putting those 'not perfect' in institutions/sanitariums, old world pillaging or love affairs, which produced children... well, I daresay all of us have genes in common with those we'd never expect.
Reminds me of that Chris Rock joke (addressing people who are prejudiced in some way), in which he says don't kid yourself, because whatever you hate has probably already found it's way into your family bloodline.
Well -- you get so many generations out and there are tons and tons of people. My 6th great grandfather's ancestor was very interested in genealogy, and started keeping record in the 20's... by the time he died in the 50's, he had recorded and verified over 22,000 people in the lineage. After he died, the records were kept at a local library and another ancestor picked up the reins and took it online, and he's up to 30K....
And almost none of the thousand I have is on his list.
People are prolific. And while a number of very famous royalty didn't have many children in the marriage, and a few of them didn't produce (Henry the 8th -- his three legitimate children who reigned died with no children).....there were far more that did have tons of kids who had tons of kids who had tons of kids(Victoria).
I would love to tie into a royal family -- only because of the documentation.
We include spouses and their lines because their children become blood relatives. The information on those lines can help find other blood relatives some times. Also, the people who marry into your family are your relatives, just not by blood.
Hiya Suzy... Yes, I understand, but I only wish to know blood relatives. I don't mean it in an exclusionary way... I just think it would be interesting to look at blood ancestors to see if there are any actual resemblances or commonalities... physical, talents, skills, careers, life patterns, etc.
Unfortunately, I don't even know where/which year my dad was born (IR or Wales, but that's all I know) & never met any grandparents, 1st cousins or aunts/uncles or heard anything about any of them... that goes for both sides... don't even know their names. All died early, so there's no one to ask... we don't live long in my clan. Who knows if any birth certs, marriage docs, death certs survive, in physical form.
Maybe that's why I have a desire to learn blood lineage... I'm not interested in my brothers' wives or sisters' husbands & their whole list of relatives... I'd like to know something about my own bloodline. But, since I couldn't possibly know, perhaps that's for the best. Maybe I'll unearth that I'm related to Joan of Arc's serial killer buddy, Gilles de Rais or the Kardashians or the wretched soul who made white chocolate (what a travesty to the palate, that nonsense)... then I'll be really upset.
My last name happens to be the same as a royal family from an Eastern European country and in fact I bear a strong resemblance to one of the queens in that line. It's always been a known fact that I am related to royalty, some more closely related to others. Apparently I am the closest related to the British royals (who are actually German)and the Spanish royals (mostly French). Honestly while it's cool to be related it hasn't made a difference in my life.
If your ancestors were European and came to the New World (America) in the 1600s, then you have a greater chance of being a direct descendant of English royalty than if you were born in England today. That's because the younger sons of nobility, those who weren't going to inherit family land, often picked up stakes and moved to where the opportunity lay - and they had the money to invest and risk in a new country. So for throughout the first couple of hundred years of mass immigration to the New World, there was a higher than average concentration of wealthy families represented.
But that's not even the main reason why so many people can legitimately claim that there is royalty in their family tree - the reason is not as dashing and full of intrigue as the scenario above. It's more of a matter of simple math. This article explains it nicely:
Then, in US, Roger Sherman, only Founding Father to sign all 5 documents; Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, VP James S. Sherman 1909-1912 (died in office); uncountable # in Congress, who at 1st had no pay; John Sherman, author of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, a cousin of great-great-great grandfather & his brother Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. I may be distantly related to Nixon's prosecutor Archibald Cox as he is direct descendant of Founding Father Roger Sherman, who is distantly related to William Tecumseh Sherman.
What's up cousin?
I'm kin to Roger Sherman as well on my Mother's Mother's side.
As for Royalty, I have "royal bloodlines" as well; but other than a neat conversation piece here and there, it's not really doing me any good, lol!
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