Genealogy Chat

I was loking to see if I could find the wife of a distant relative on roots web and was directed to a roots web site called rather modestly descendents of William the Conqueror. Does anyone know if any English families can reliably trace their descent back that far?

Well, the Royal Family can!

We knew a conker tree called William and I descended from that a few times. Sometimes inadvertently. Does that count?

ROFL!

Being serious, The Birtwistle family claim descent from the Conquest, although not directly from William. The earliest I know of is Ralph de Bridtwisell born about 1160. The trouble is that I have seen 2 Trees for that family and they disagree in details.

If you look at gencircles or the big US genealogy sites, you see that pretty much all the early Massachussetts settler families, such as those of the Winthrop Fleet of 1630, can be linked to William the Conqueror, usually through more recent royal ancestors, such as John and Edward I. Now, whether these genealogies are authentic, I'm not sure. It would be nice to think so - since my maternal grandmother's line definitely traces to an Elizabeth Sewell 1768-1827, whose mother Sarah Thorndike is supposedly descended from early Massachussetts Thorndikes - which would make King Edward I and Eleanor of Castile my 22nd great grandparents. Me and about a quarter of the US population by the same route!

One line of my family is supposed to be descended from some fella called Odard who was great nephew of William the Conk ............ but I wouldn't like to try and prove it, lol!! Bev x

19 GR members list 'Conqueror, William the' in their trees. Maybe we should ask them how they did it.

They must all be descended through that well known mediaeval Jester called Vivid Imagination.

You want to try searching for 'Henry Tudor' - quite a few folks out there related to Henry VIII, plus quite a few other kings of England by that name. They're having a laugh, surely? There is also at least one '(unknown) Adam' born 'Garden of Eden'. Completely insane or what??

Pity the poor souls like me with the surname Henry in their tree. Every time I do a search on the name, I get hundreds of references to the various kings with Henry as their first name. Seems if you are a king you don't need a surname as well! Tina

Wished I had a fiver for every tree that we've printed with William the Conk or Oliver Cromwell on it. I could retire (well almost) Regards. Ron www.genealogyprinters(.)com

My mum has traced one (or two) lines of our family back to the 1650's (this was the time between Charles I and Charles II when Cromwell was in power : 1649-1660)... but she makes no claim at all to being related to any really famous persons in our tree...lol. No kings, queens, or anyone named Adam or Eve at all BUT in the tree there is: Robert E Lee John Lewis Matthew Hopkins But they are just names - not the famous people themselves. Apparently, we are related to Joseph Grimaldi (Joey the clown) somewhere deep back in time.

I have just done a Quick Search for Elizabeth Windsor, and several of our members have our beloved Majesty included in their Trees. I couldn't resist emailing GR to ask if they all had Her Royal Permission to include her. That should put the cat among the pigeons. Lol

Jim You're wicked. But I love it! Tina

Well, someone has to be descended from all these randy nobles! To be honest, people are just as likely to be related to William the Conquerer or William Shakespeare as they are to plain old William Smith the ag lab.

In fact, the odds that any of us with European ancestry is NOT descended from William the Conqueror are vanishingly small. He lived, what, 30-35 generations ago? We have more than a billion ancestors slots at that distance, far more than the number of people alive at the time. So anyone who lived then and left any descendants at all is likely to be your ancestor, many times over, whether that's William the Conqueror, or Oswald the Dung-Shoveller.

Hi, just put in a few Royal Family names myself (must be really bored) - you'd be amazed how many on here are related to Prince Philip and Diana, Princess of Wales. Brilliant! And all I have are railway workers and cotton weavers. Where am I going wrong????

If I find another agricultural labourer ancestor to add to my colossal list I will scream. Still a couple were farmers of several acres, one a coffee house owner, and another was a cricketer, just waiting for Royalty.

The nearest I've got is a baby born on the wrong side of the sheets, supposedly descended from 'a Big House'. Amazingly only found one illegitimate ancestor so far (although a few close shaves) so it must be her. Think I discovered the nearest place to her birth was Belvoir House in Leicestershire so will check out the lads there at the time one of these days. Who knows.