Family History

[mizarchivist]

In a surprising turn of events, my father shared with me that I am related to
-Gen. Joseph Hooker, famous for being in the civil war and loving the ladies just a bit too much
-John Alden: Mayflower pilgrim (aka, could I be whiter? Well, no!)
(drumroll)
-William the Conqueror!

Feel free to start addressing me as Your Highness.

I'd still like to see some sort of one-tree representation of the 40 generations between an French/English king and the very not monarchical me. It required hopping through several people's work on Ancestry. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fit on one paper, unless it was a very long roll... still. I'm impressed with the tenacity it takes to trace back that far. If we were talking any other part of the country, I don't know that you could have done it due to lack of records.

Comments

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

I thought my family's genealogist was impressive for tracing herself back to Charlemagne! But that's quite a few genealogy points for you there! (BTW, Charlemagne, not in a family line I'm in.)

I am however Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal's 15th cousin. I don't know what that means you can address me as...

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Well, Your Highness, I hope that we cross paths somewhere during the events of the holiday season so I can show Proper Respect. ;->

(Staxmas, perhaps?)

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Neat! I once found such a family tree for William the Conqueror when I was researching someone for work. I'm not sure I could re-find it, though. It was enormously long, as you might expect such a thing to be.

ETA: Might've been this: http://www.william1.co.uk

[mizarchivist]

Neat, thanks!

[beowabbit]

Cool!

I'd still like to see some sort of one-tree representation of the 40 generations between an French/English king and the very not monarchical me. It required hopping through several people's work on Ancestry. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fit on one paper, unless it was a very long roll...

One of my colleagues did a “CSAIL Academic Genealogy” (Isaac Newton advised so-and-so, who begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so, who begat so and so, ... so and so, who was the advisor for So-and-So, who is a CSAIL professor or grad student.) We have a large-format printer we use for posters, so he was able to actually print it out (although as you would expect some parts of it are incomplete). The printout is about 7'x3', and you can download PDFs and information about the software he generated it with at http://people.csail.mit.edu/wollman/genealogy/.

[mizarchivist]

Sweet Jebus, but that's complicated! And cool. :)

[kebbykate.livejournal.com]

I'm a Jamestown descendant, myself. My grandmother said older relatives of hers claimed a connection to George Washington and that her great-aunt was the spitting image of him.

In another line, my 5X great-grandmother was a member of the aristocratic Hamilton family, which has the distinction of holding a noble title in each of the four countries of the British Isles.

I read somewhere that because of how the math of descent plays out that everyone of European descent has a very high statistical probability of descent to one or more European monarchs.

On my mother's side, one of her great-grandfathers was the illegitimate child of a minor German noble.

It's all pretty cool.

[mizarchivist]

Teehee :)