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| Family Trees | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 19 2015, 08:10 PM (1,147 Views) | |
| Oddball | Sep 19 2015, 08:10 PM Post #1 |
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Senior Member
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Well guys and gals, I have reached that time in life when assembling my family tree is turning from a hobby to a time consuming obsession. A least it keeps me off the booze, gambling and drugs etc.. It is amazing what I am learning about my relatives - warts and all. How many of you have taken to online family and inter e-mail sleuthing? Found any juicy stuff yet? |
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| skwirked | Sep 19 2015, 08:35 PM Post #2 |
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On Enforced Vacation
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Only dug a bit, found gamblers, gangsters, pirates, french who moved to scotland and became a lovely clan of ruthless warriors. And then extremely snooty middle-class people who had no time for anyone. All very odd. |
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| johnofgwent | Sep 20 2015, 08:52 AM Post #3 |
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It .. It is GREEN !!
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my brother took to pursuing it online I had quite enough of it decades ago when i got roped into helping out one of my great uncles. Cyberspace my arse there's no substitute for crawling round graveyards in freezing drizzle filled days trying to make sense of weathred inscriptions ... |
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| Affa | Sep 20 2015, 10:52 AM Post #4 |
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My ancestors were all honest citizens, no cheats, liars, or thieves ..... the wonder is that any survived long enough to procreate. On a serious note, my wife was unable to get beyond her maternal grandparents ........ no records exist beyond them, and her father was adopted it seems, so nothing there either. How will the newly acquired citizens from immigrant stock view their heritage ......? |
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| Oddball | Sep 20 2015, 11:49 AM Post #5 |
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Affa - I have a similar problem with getting beyond my paternal grandfather. I don't know if he was adopted; I don't think so - but a search for my grandfather's birth certificate draws a blank at present. I am going to attempt to go down the census route, since in 1901 he would have been around 9, and I know the town where they likely lived then. JoG - If I was younger and fitter and could fund the cost of going hither and yonder in this country and at least 6 others, I would. Traipsing around graveyards in inclement weather is liable to hasten your own need for a plot. That would be a good weather task if I was up to it. Now fusty old parish registers are things I could get to grips with. I did a search for details of my uncle Jim's death when he was killed on a torpedoed ship. I fairly quicky got not just the sinking, but saw my uncle listed among the casualties, and the bearings relating to where his ship went down. I also have a photo of the skipper of the U-boat that sunk the ship and 4 others in the convoy. In addition I have details of how and when that skipper, his U-boat and crew met their own end and where. Edited by Oddball, Sep 20 2015, 11:58 AM.
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| marybrown | Sep 20 2015, 01:07 PM Post #6 |
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Ha ha..delved into it..a lot of it was brilliant..lot's of skeletons in cupboards..first one was finding my grandfathers marriage certificate..and it wasn't my grandmothers name on it...
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| Deleted User | Sep 20 2015, 05:22 PM Post #7 |
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Living over the brush and pretending you were man and wife was more common in the old days than they would have liked to admit. My nephew does that stuff and has gone quite away back. TBH I have no interest in knowing that my great great grandad was a fisherman or I have some family connection to a historical figure that makes no difference. Though I am interested in the characters and exploits of some of my late uncles and grand parents' siblings etc |
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| marybrown | Sep 20 2015, 05:42 PM Post #8 |
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She was Russian..had 13 kids..when my grandfather decided he didn't like her that much..and left.. |
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| marybrown | Sep 20 2015, 05:48 PM Post #9 |
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And they weren't living over the brush..they were married...but it wasn't my grandmothers name on it..it was someone called ''Amy Cockrill'' My grandfather was in the Irish Navy during the Pogrom in Russia when they drove the Jewish people into the sea...from Archangel.. And rescued her.. Edited by marybrown, Sep 20 2015, 05:49 PM.
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| papasmurf | Sep 20 2015, 05:53 PM Post #10 |
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I am interested in if I have any financial claim on one of the biggest "offshore" banks where a big slice of all the UK evaded tax gets deposited. One of my relatives on my mothers side started the bank back in the 1800s, after he left America. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 20 2015, 06:24 PM Post #11 |
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IIRC you cant use other peoples names on the marriage certificate so technically they were not married |
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| Malum Unus | Sep 20 2015, 06:27 PM Post #12 |
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Hater of Political Correctness and Legalese
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Well, both sides of my family go back over a thousand years, I've no desire to even attempt to dig through that. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 20 2015, 06:42 PM Post #13 |
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Doesnt everybody's family go back further than a thousand years? |
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| papasmurf | Sep 20 2015, 06:48 PM Post #14 |
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Not when it comes to tracing ancestors. Many "working class" people have problems tracing back past 1800. I am lucking in that my family can be traced back a long way because they lived in the same rural area for hundreds of years, and appear on the local estate records because they traded with the estate. |
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| Rich | Sep 20 2015, 06:56 PM Post #15 |
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Good evening Odders, I did start about 18 months ago, but I found that the more you looked then the more dosh the search engine wanted from you so, as for now until I have more dispoable income then it is not a priority. But you are quite right, the revelations can be eye opening and somewhat embarrassing.
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| Curious Cdn | Sep 20 2015, 11:18 PM Post #16 |
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I'm a tentth generation Canadian , fourteenth generation North American on one side and the grandson of immigrants on the other (North Wales and Yorkshire). All of my people came from the UK, except for the very first ones who arrived in 1702. As information becomes more public and automated. I can trace some of them back in the UK, now as more documents present themselves. I was aware that one branch were ,"banned" Scots (a badge of honour, here like having a transported ancestor in Australia). Anyway, as clear as day, there is my direct ancestor who settled in Upper Canada in the 18th century, appearing on Bonnie Prince Charlie's Muster Roll. Oh well. Not everyone can back a winner but I will say that my Scottish family did far, far better, hard far more opportunities and generally soared ahead of where they would have been had they stayed in Blair Atholl. The best thing that could have happened to them was that they were kicked out of the UK. That applies to the rest oif the Jacobite Scots who came here in large numbers and pretty much built the place in pioneering times. This remains a land of freedom and opportunity ... well beyond those of our other North American neighhbours. Edited by Curious Cdn, Sep 20 2015, 11:22 PM.
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| Jessamy Bride | Sep 21 2015, 07:49 AM Post #17 |
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I have found distant connections to the Rathbone family of Liverpool...I much admire Eleanor Rathbone suffragette... and have always loves Sherlock Holmes. Also I uncovered a huge family secret My great grandfather died in an asylum It says paresis on the death certificate and we think that means syphilis. He had been in the Boer War and apparently people came home infected. Sometimes you uncover things you don't want to know. |
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| Curious Cdn | Sep 21 2015, 12:49 PM Post #18 |
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That was because of all the boerdom that the soldiers had to deal with. |
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| Oddball | Sep 21 2015, 01:15 PM Post #19 |
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I was up until past 2am this morning on my ruddy family tree! It can be a bit of a nightmare sorting out just what is correct info and what takes you up blind or erroneous ally ways. Been tracing one particular line last night to 1801. Another track is throwing up some problems with either too little feedback, or wrong names, or surmames being inserted as middle names etc., etc., etc. Had to force myself of for a while to recharge my batteries. I even have a photo of the submarine commander of the U-boat that sank the ship one of my uncles was on, killing him. Tracked a lot of detail of the attack on the covoy, and also a lot of detail about how the sub ended up getting sunk the next year with all hands. What goes round comes around, so they say. It helps that the Irish side of my family have been compiling a comprehensive list of their own that they are working at from two ends of a timeline that stretches from the present day back to the 15th and 16th centuries. It is very much a work in progress that involves some very heavy sleuthing. The Irish love to regularly use the same few first names, and they have such large families - mind you 'we' on this side of Paddy's Pond have also have large families in the past. The tree is getting both wider as well as longer. I'll have to assert some discipline in not going beyond half brothers and sisters and trimming the 'branches' back unless there is some particularly promising allyway that will reveal scandal or fame. I have come across a number of child deaths, and one of my uncles born in the Victorian times experienced the tragedy of his first wife along with the son she had just delivered, both dying the same day - back in the 1930s. Edited by Oddball, Sep 21 2015, 01:39 PM.
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| Curious Cdn | Sep 21 2015, 03:22 PM Post #20 |
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I just spent the weekend at a Boy Scout event at an old War of 1812 fortification on the Canada US border called Fort George in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This historic place has touched my family tree several times. Two lines of my ancestors spent a cold and starving winter, there as refugees from the new US Republic. They were what we call UELs or United Empire Loyalists and 40,000 of them essentially founded English Canada after the Revolution. they are currently honouring the men of another war, there right now as it is the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of a huge training camp for volunteers going overseas during WWI. There were tens of thousands of men, there at any given time and it was surrounded with a tent city of hundreds of shelters. (I was just camped on the same space, all the while thinking about the two and a half centuries of archaeology underneath my sleeping pad.) . My grandmother's brother (another MacGlashan from Perthshire stock) signed up at that Fort in 1915. His attestation papers, now up on the internet for all to see show that he wrote "18" in as his age. He was actually born in 1900 ... big, tall man, he was. He was a Mule Skinner in the artillery and he went everywhere that the CEF went ...all in Flanders and around Amiens ... back and forth through the whole War. On the German side, there were Prussian and Bavarian divisions that followed them back and forth up and down the line for the whole War and they were often facing each other in different battles many miles apart right up to hear the end, when the armies started "moving" Anyway, I was following in my Great Uncle's footsteps this weekend. What I didn't follow him to was the Somme, Vimy, Paschendaele, Amiens, Cambrai and Mons where he fought and survived. He lived to the grand old age of 94 and, even later in his life, he couldn't talk about the War without ending up crying. |
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| Affa | Sep 21 2015, 04:27 PM Post #21 |
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Give Thanks for the NHS. The Tories would return us to those dangerous times if they could. |
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| ranger121 | Sep 21 2015, 04:41 PM Post #22 |
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I was delighted when I found that my grandfather on my mother's side earned a DCM during WWI. As it is second only to a VC, the man must have been very brave indeed. |
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| Oddball | Sep 21 2015, 08:00 PM Post #23 |
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Yup, that and the DSO/DSM and DFC/DFM, they all mean you were nudging for a VC - but often it was the officer in a group action that would get the biggest gong. Your grandfather as a 'ranker' must have gone an extra mile to get his gong.
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| Curious Cdn | Sep 21 2015, 09:07 PM Post #24 |
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The DSO was referred to, by WWII servicemen as "Dick Shot Off". True story. |
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| Jessamy Bride | Sep 21 2015, 09:24 PM Post #25 |
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I think that's why they used to sit on their hats in planes. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 22 2015, 08:29 PM Post #26 |
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I have an uncle who was a sadistic sniper in WW1. Another uncle who died heroically when his little boat took on a big German ship in the Arctic ocean ( or something like that). A forces boxing champion, two cousins who were brothers, one got his legs blown off in the N African desert campaign and died the other died at monte cassino.( his mum got his glasses and a bloody scarf..there wasnt much left of him) Ive got wealthy scots, and thespians a story of family curse, another of a rather well to do woman marrying a a pugilistic cockney,malificient sisters, withcraft etc etc. Unfortunately they make up just a few percentage of the whole of my family tree and reflect nothing upon me or mine. You can have them if you want. |
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| Oddball | Sep 29 2015, 12:56 PM Post #27 |
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Well guys, I am hooked on this family tree thing - so ruddy fascinating. I am for now chasing up my dad's family line and have got as far as my 14th great grandfather who was born in a castle in the north of England. Things start to get a tad messy at this point, since it was a time of great turmoil and intrigue - a bit more sleuthing of official books and archive material, and the one 'missing' but suspected link will then open me up to a well recorded trail that will quickly link me to the de Brus family tree which includes Robert De Bruce [Robert the Bruce], to the de Percys of Alnwick castle, back over to Normandy, to the Earls of Orkney etc., to the kings of Sweden and back to the kings of Upssala {in Sweden], and even further back to Afghanistan in 170AD, and also to Turkey and Mesopotamia even to before the time of Jesus. It even looks as though the trail doesn't finally come to a halt until around 150-200BC. There is a huge amount of detail I have come up with so far about 'my' family and the various times they lived through. Blood, snot, the odd bastards, but not directly linked to me. There seems even a strongish possibility that I am related to one of Henry VIII's mistresses, and that she was a cousin to Anne Boleyn. Another relative was tutor to Henry when he was a prince, and later became his favourite poet and satirist, and was made Poet Laureate - he also had a few satirical goes at Cardinal Wolsey, who gaoled him a few times. I am becoming quite a history buff, both of my own family line, but also in the more general feel and understanding of times and mentalities. I don't know what diehard Scots Nats would think of 'we' lot, what with being related to Robert De Brus of Bannockburn and also to the Percys and 'Harry Hotspur/Prince Hal', who had mixed results fighting the Scots, and who eventually came to a sticky end after being betrayed and finding himself on the sharp end of the king's temper. Bits of his body were displayed in several cities, including London and Bristol. His bits were eventually sent to his widow - so nice and thoughtful! |
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| marybrown | Sep 29 2015, 01:02 PM Post #28 |
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I believe my Grandfather was married..don't know if it was to her or not.. Maybe people changed their names to avoid being discriminated against? |
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| C-too | Sep 29 2015, 02:32 PM Post #29 |
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My known paternal family tree only goes as far back as a Farmer born 1704 died 1794 (seen his grave). The family were mostly farm owners, at one time owning four farms all within a twenty(ish) mile radius of each other. One skeleton in the cupboard, one lady missing. No marriage certificate and no names, and her son's marriage information, done by licence, was destroyed by Nazi bombers in WWII. Three Master Mariners and a family history of people living into their eighties and nineties. One young volunteer officer killed in WWI. Overall not much personal information though. Mum's great grandfather was a shipwright, one member of her family tree was active in the Crimean war. |
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| marybrown | Sep 29 2015, 03:22 PM Post #30 |
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Now down my mother's line we are related to the Earls of Dudley..and Warwickshire..she was related to Lady Jane Grey.. |
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| Oddball | Sep 30 2015, 03:49 AM Post #31 |
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I seem to be related most of the knobs with castles in Medieval times, I've just got as far as my 24th great grandfather, and the De Bruses, it looks very promising that 'Robert the Bruce' is a direct ancestor. Bleedin' castles everywhere and The first ancestor with 'King' in his list of titles. Now you can all bow and kow tow to me and call me Your Majesty. It seems like it is just a case of downloading on to my Ancestry site all the stuff that the De Brus/Bruce family have already researched, generation by generation. One of my Scandinavian ancestors had the nick name 'Skull Crusher', another one 'The Farter', yet another 'Evil Advisor'. ps. Marybrown - It also seems that I have links with the folks in Warwick Castle. When I get around to that part of the family, it could well turn out we are related. Oh, and I do have a direct link with the Parcys of Alnwick Castle, so next time I visit there I don't expect to be charged like the hoi polloi. I expect their entrance commissioner to doff his hat and call me sir, at the very least. Edited by Oddball, Sep 30 2015, 03:59 AM.
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| C-too | Sep 30 2015, 08:58 AM Post #32 |
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Do you have the name of the ship your uncle was on when it was torpedoed ? |
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| papasmurf | Sep 30 2015, 09:02 AM Post #33 |
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What a strange comment. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 30 2015, 09:47 AM Post #34 |
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Well I'm not surprised that the point went over your head. The point IS that your ancestors need not have anything to do with you or yours....which I actually stated. Someone in the future would only find out that he was a sniper or even an infantryman. They would never know what he did or what kind of person he was unless it was documented. Try reading the whole post instead of sifting stuff out in isolation to deliberately misunderstand |
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| papasmurf | Sep 30 2015, 09:49 AM Post #35 |
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It didn't go over my head, it is your use of sadistic I find puzzling. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 30 2015, 10:03 AM Post #36 |
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Er.. yes it did.....now you realise that there was a point and you missed it, you have moved the goal posts. If not you would have asked a question such as 'how was he sadistic?' or something of that kind. Just posting' what a strange comment' pretty much reveals that you did not have a clue of the point of the post or the context of the words that you quoted. Anyway this gives me the opportunity to point out again that finding out that your ancestors were related to or part of people of influence or power has about zero to say about you. |
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| marybrown | Sep 30 2015, 11:59 AM Post #37 |
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Whilst I was investigating ..I went into a old church..and the vicar kindly gave me access to the records dating back over 200 years.. There was a special book for children..well 3 actually..everyone of those children had died of Scarlet Fever.. |
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| marybrown | Oct 1 2015, 03:24 PM Post #38 |
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Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick..I got back as far as him..after that it was the Plantagenets.. We should swop info.. |
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| Oddball | Oct 2 2015, 02:39 PM Post #39 |
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Speaking of the Plantagenets, one of my ancestral families had two brothers who fought on opposite sides at the Battle of Towton. The elder brother sided with the Yorkists and the younger {only around 12-14] sided with the Lancastrians. The younger one was captured during the battle or the apres battle rout, and imprisoned; but then out of consideration for his youth he was sent back to mummy. Another of my family came over with Duke William to Hastings in 1066, his own family being directly descended from a 'King of Normandy'. It is amazing to see just how the names in families and places have altered with time and the change of place and language. Also, the fulsomeness and pomposity of some of the official and unofficial titles and 'nick-names' given them. I have three generations who were endowed with 'The Treacherous' as part of their 'handles'. Another one called, 'The Fortunate'. Oh, I nearly forgot, there are also a couple of, 'The Great', and even a 'lay Abbot', whatever the heck that is - I'll have to look that one up. ps. Have now gone past my 35th great grandfather and mother. Edited by Oddball, Oct 2 2015, 02:48 PM.
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| Oddball | Oct 4 2015, 11:10 AM Post #40 |
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Well guys, 45th great grandfather is Fergus Mór mac Earc, Rí na {King of] Dál Riata. b. 29/06/430 - d. 12/10/501. [Legendary 'first' King of Scotland.] |
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