Related to a King
If I had a dollar for every time someone showed me a family tree with ties to royalty, I would be able to afford several high end steak dinners as a result. My quibble with this isn't that they think they are related to royalty because most of us our indirectly, but rather due to direct route up the tree that involves more often than not 12 years and younger or 45 year old and over women giving birth to descendants. This is one of the easiest ways to spot wishful family trees. These family trees are full of wishful thinking with absolutely no proof having been obtained. It is a tempting thing to see someone with the same or similar last name and add them to your tree thinking they have to be your ancestor. It only takes a few to succumb to that temptation and errantly add an incorrect person to their PUBLIC family tree and then it propagates like a weed as hundreds if not thousands of others come after and copy that information assuming it to be correct and assuming the other person has the proof. As a result, we end up where we are now where 95% of all public family trees are incorrect and those 5% who do the research are seen as a minority and looked over and assumed to be incorrect since 95% of the other family trees say otherwise.
Stepping off my soapbox, as I said above, most are related to royalty but these connections tend to be indirect with most not being of blood relation. For example, my relationship to King Charles III. In my case, my great aunt married into a family by the surname of Benge. That goes back another generation to the Shuck family marring into the Benge family. Another two generations back and it is the Campbell family marrying into the Shuck family. Prior to that the Jones family had married into the Campbell family. Finally 12 generations back, we come to a fellow by the name of William Jones, brother to Elisha Jones. Descending down Elisha Jones directly, you come to Rosalind Cubitt, while her name doesn't mean anything to me, happens to be the mother of Queen Consort Camilla, current wife of King Charles III. This is just one path of many and may be the closest one by only being 22 generations removed from me. That is also assuming that the genealogist who created King Charles III family tree actually proved their research and didn't complete it with wishful thinking.
But to get there, assuming it is true, I most go through four marriage connections which means, I haven't a drop of shared blood between myself and King Charles III... at least not in recent times. We do actually share blood as we all have a common ancestor be it Adam and Eve from the bible or the first homosapien that made the break from apes, whichever your beliefs dictate and have direct trails leading both to King Charles III and myself and of course you.
I guess that means you are a distant cousin of mine. Welcome to the family!
I know you found a hitch in mine, or actually Sue’s, from the first generation to arrive on one of the first ships to New England. I have been inclined to think that is what it was or is and that it is correct on either side of the hitch. I am wondering abut an adoption or one record missing. It is interesting and doesn’t matter too much to me at this point.
ReplyDeleteAt least in the U.S., it is hard to go back further beyond 1850 without doing some old fashioned leg work. Our census records go back further but only by the head of the household name which means many use proximity to assume the next one back. In order to prove it, it often means digging through probate records and that generally means a trip to the local courthouse. Occasionally it is possible to run across a family with a published genealogy line but at least in my experience, that is fairly rare.
DeleteI guess the lesson for me is in all of this, if someone shows me their family tree, I will nod and admire it but I won't trust it until I see all the other documents supporting it.
What a funny post on the majority of us being related to royalty. I think I have heard my mother-in-law state she is related to royalty. I think her info is from the grapevine as she has no computer or smartphone, so I don't think she has any hard evidence to back it up.
ReplyDeleteThat is one of those cases one smiles, says something like "you don't say," and then switch the subject.
DeleteWhile I haven't done much of my own genealogy work, maybe because of my Calvinist leanings that I'd be just as satisfied to find horse thieves and bootleggers (and I know there are some of the latter not too far down the tree).
ReplyDeleteI haven't found any horse thieves or bootleggers but I'm sure there are a lot of skeletons throughout.
DeleteI roll my eyes too. Then again, my dad's mom used to say that one of her relatives came over on the Mayflower and we politely blew her off. But it was actually true and is provable. As you said, anything super far back would be impossible to verify. Many of my genealogy relatives are using the wrong Robert Grieve and tracing him back. When I pointed this out (verified by the lack of shared DNA with that Robert's relatives), I was rebuffed so now I just keep my mouth shut.
ReplyDeleteThe Mayflower is much easier to connect to as there have been several descendants of the Mayflower books published so one doesn't have to go back as far. Though I still wonder how those that researched those book 200 years ago proved their work or how carefully they sought confirmation. I myself, have read a couple different lines of my tree go back that far but I have never proven it myself.
DeleteMy family would be interesting to try to track back. They had an unfortunate habit of marrying and then disappearing. They turned around and remarried in a different corner of the country. For instance, when my father was dying, he discovered another fellow who was a half brother. in a different city. He had no clue. If I understand it my great grandfather did the same thing. A great grandmother married a German man and moved to the midwest prairie. She did not like his family, so she packed up and headed back home. So at this point in my life, I have thrown my hands in the air and decided that I actually AM related to everyone.
DeleteI just assume we all have those sorts of things going on in our lineage, most of which we will never know about, especially if you (or I) are descendant from the first family. DNA can be really helpful with modern technology if you are from later unofficial procreations. Ancestry DNA analysis is sophisticated enough that it can match others in the same particular branch of your family tree as long as your family trees are accurate. It is hard to explain in comment form but if you ever need help, I can attempt to do so in emails with some pictures to help out.
DeleteI've never understood why anyone would claim a relationship by marriage as an actual relative. I think of it more along bloodlines. Of course adoption throws a kink in this, but I would still consider those adopted in the lineage. It just might confuse things for those using DNA records.
ReplyDeleteI think until recently, most people claiming royalty are claiming actual bloodlines but using very wishful thinking and not having any subsequent documentation other than assuming someone living in the area with the same last name had to be a parent/offspring match. I was just using the above scenario with marriage linkages to show that we are all linked in a twisted way.
DeleteRecently however some websites are automatically producing "connections" and emailing them out regularly showing how one is "related" to a whole host of people. While it is an interesting experiment in how connected we all are, i.e. thinking "Seven Connections To Kevin Bacon", I think some don't grasp that there is marriages involved in making those connections and assume blood connections.
The problems you mention are a real weak point with editable online family trees. I've worked a bit on the Family Search website and found documents added for only having the same name. But with the different birth years, location, spouses, children, parents, and siblings! Really makes a mess and makes the whole thing unreliable for serious research.
ReplyDeleteAncestry, which I belong to, is quickly becoming the same way. They advertise as how those "green leaves" will show you your family's history but don't tell you that 99% of those leaves aren't even for your family. They are just guesses based off the surname or a similarly spelled surname. They make a tool for comparing them before adding them to your family tree but I suspect few people know about it or take the time to do a comparison. They just say cool and save it to their tree.
DeleteMy dad did a lot of research on our genealogy and he was scrupulous about finding documentation and not making hasty connections. For that reason he specifically avoided both making our tree public and "linking" to the trees of others. The more he went back the dicier the evidence became until he just couldn't go any farther.
ReplyDeleteI have tried to balance things by having several trees. The public online one I try to keep as a gold standard. I've made mistakes on it from time to time, one of which I will write about shortly, but to the best of my ability. I do this for future descendants to have something to reference as they do their own research. Many of my branches, I have been the first to research so perhaps my efforts will save others time by reducing the false paths. I also keep research ones offline where I am more loose but it helps to keep records tied to someone until I can rule them out.
DeleteI'm related to a coal miner and a potato farmer. But my sister says I'm a royal pain in the ass ... so I claim royalty!
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I won't dispute your claim!
DeleteMy mother did tell me we were related to a prince from Korea who moved to Japan hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Hmmmm.... I'm not a believer, but I was given some historical genealogy to prove it. Okeedokee...
ReplyDelete