A Never Ending Journey
My cousin M__ was always into genealogy, and while I was interested in pursuing family history, I never bothered until June of 2015. I took the plunge, subscribed to Ancestry.com, and the rest is...history. A few things I've learned:
• I'm way less Irish than I thought
• I'm at least as Native American as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Powhatan tribe)
• I'm really really English
• The English side to me has a bit of Welsh from Dad's side, and Anglo Norman (that's French to you and me) from Mom's side.
• No horse thieves yet, but a fair amount of Revolutionary veterans, warriors, tyrants, farmers, businessmen, adventurers...and Pocahontas!
The rest is an unfolding mystery that gets more and more interesting as I go. Thus, I wanted to put a few profiles of the people I found through my family history and share a little of their lives with you.
I'm coming to the conclusion that a good portion of doing genealogy is speculation, within reason. One thing I've noticed after a couple of months of doing this is that people's research skills are pretty sloppy--they see a name on Ancestry and just grab it and add it to their family tree, not always paying attention to dates. Thus, I've seen family trees where the children are 50 years older than the parents! So be careful and do a lot of cross-checking, should you take the plunge into family history. Even when your heritage is well-documented, as is part of mine, you still need to be careful, especially as you approach the world of medieval aristocratic politics.
It's oh so easy to get stuck there, floating out there in the 10th century, trying to distinguish this William from this Ermengarde from this Fulk from that Geoffrey--is that Geoffrey I? II? IV? VII? And wait, his mother was Ermengarde or Gerberge or are they the same woman, and was this her first or her third marriage or was she a concubine or a mistress? Whew! Exhausting!
What all this has done is to break history wide open for me, and has made me realize how complicated history really is because it's a series of human relationships. Take medieval English history, for example, both before and after William the Conqueror (my 2nd cousin 27 times removed). He conquered England, and his descendants became future monarchs of England, but the women they married and brought to England are mostly French, from the Old Country. Along with that, I have started to see the reality of royal and aristocratic intermarriage, even if the years are spread apart. For example, my 28th great grandmother, Ermengarde d'Anjou married a second husband, Guillaume Taillefer, Count of Angouleme--if you follow the line from one of their sons, you ultimately arrive at Isabella d'Anglouleme, who married the evil King John Lackland. John, on the other hand, being the son of Henry II, is cousin to Ermengarde, whose brother would have been a great grandfather x however many.
• I'm way less Irish than I thought
• I'm at least as Native American as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Powhatan tribe)
• I'm really really English
• The English side to me has a bit of Welsh from Dad's side, and Anglo Norman (that's French to you and me) from Mom's side.
• No horse thieves yet, but a fair amount of Revolutionary veterans, warriors, tyrants, farmers, businessmen, adventurers...and Pocahontas!
The rest is an unfolding mystery that gets more and more interesting as I go. Thus, I wanted to put a few profiles of the people I found through my family history and share a little of their lives with you.
I'm coming to the conclusion that a good portion of doing genealogy is speculation, within reason. One thing I've noticed after a couple of months of doing this is that people's research skills are pretty sloppy--they see a name on Ancestry and just grab it and add it to their family tree, not always paying attention to dates. Thus, I've seen family trees where the children are 50 years older than the parents! So be careful and do a lot of cross-checking, should you take the plunge into family history. Even when your heritage is well-documented, as is part of mine, you still need to be careful, especially as you approach the world of medieval aristocratic politics.
It's oh so easy to get stuck there, floating out there in the 10th century, trying to distinguish this William from this Ermengarde from this Fulk from that Geoffrey--is that Geoffrey I? II? IV? VII? And wait, his mother was Ermengarde or Gerberge or are they the same woman, and was this her first or her third marriage or was she a concubine or a mistress? Whew! Exhausting!
What all this has done is to break history wide open for me, and has made me realize how complicated history really is because it's a series of human relationships. Take medieval English history, for example, both before and after William the Conqueror (my 2nd cousin 27 times removed). He conquered England, and his descendants became future monarchs of England, but the women they married and brought to England are mostly French, from the Old Country. Along with that, I have started to see the reality of royal and aristocratic intermarriage, even if the years are spread apart. For example, my 28th great grandmother, Ermengarde d'Anjou married a second husband, Guillaume Taillefer, Count of Angouleme--if you follow the line from one of their sons, you ultimately arrive at Isabella d'Anglouleme, who married the evil King John Lackland. John, on the other hand, being the son of Henry II, is cousin to Ermengarde, whose brother would have been a great grandfather x however many.
Recent Portraits:When you hear the name Earp, you probably think of Wyatt Earp, the famous gunfighter, sheriff, boxer, pimp, hunter, gambler, jail escapee, etc. (and my 3rd cousin 4 x removed). But if you travel back about a hundred years, you'll land on a much more honorable set of Earps, including my 5th maternal great-grandfather, Josiah. His brother, Phillip, is the great-grandfather of Wyatt, so I won't take Cousin Wyatt's antics too personally. Josiah, though, was just 14 or 15 when the Revolutionary War erupted in 1775...
|
Subscribe |