My 11th Great Grandfather beheaded my 2nd cousin 13 times removed

Grab your salt shaker as all of this needs to taken with many, many grains of salt.

I have been playing around a lot in the genealogy at FamilySearch.org.  This is the genealogy sponsored by the Church of Latter-Day Saints aka Mormons.  While it is a crowd source genealogy, having just one common “family” tree that everyone contributes to. It is generally well thought of by genealogist.  It does have consistency issues at times, and third party software that accesses their database does not always agree with their site… such is genealogical research and crowd sourcing.  Of course, inconsistent results drive this long time programmer nuts.

As I was playing around with my lineage, I kept bumping into one English monarch or the other. Being the OLD retired Systems Analyst that I am, I decided to construct a spreadsheet to get a better picture of the relationships.  I began with a list of English monarchs, some vital stats on each of them, their FamilySearch ID.  I then added my relationship to them, through which grandparent, and my first ancestor of that line to step ashore in the New World.  I have a link to a Google docs spreadsheet below since probably most of you do not have Excel. The spreadsheet is a work in progress.

I have connections coming down through all four of my grandparents, Austin, Carr (through the Treadwells), Rush and Collings.

I say take all this with a grain of salt for several reasons.  Outside of being interesting, I am not sure what it signifies.  Another is the distance of most of these relationships.  For instance William the Conqueror is listed as my 24^th Great Grandfather.  At this level of genealogy, my number of grandparents can be found by taking the number two to the 26^th power.  So any “blood” relationship is very dilute.  I read an article that estimated that William the Conqueror has 5 million living descendants running around the planet currently, not an especially elite group of Homo sapiens.

Our genealogy is a treasure trove of information, probably for two reasons.  First is the connections to European nobility.  They were (and are) absolutely fanatical about lineage/blood lines. Because endogamic marriages were the norm, once you find that you are related to one, you are related to half the aristocracy. Second reason is that many branches of our family tree go back to the earliest European settlers to step foot on this continent.  Again there are many folks absolutely fanatical about tracing colonial genealogy. FamilySearch.org has three of my ancestors on the Mayflower, but I am not sure I am buying this one as there are multitude of issues with the lineage and folks arguing over which is correct. Again the number of Mayflower descendants is in the millions. While many of my ancestors were seeking religious freedom, I suspect more than a few were younger sons of noble families.  Due the practice of primogeniture, many had to seek their fortunes elsewhere.  The clergy and military were common outlets, then the New World opened up.

Put the two together and we have a genealogy going back more than a thousand years.

It would be interesting to see what a professional genealogist would make of all this, not that this tacaño would ever pay for such a thing.  I suspect I would have my semi-inflated bubble burst.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet I created: English Royalty and Our Genealogy

Oh the beheading… Not to bore you too much if you remember your English history, but there was a brief period (1649 to 1660) when they overthrew the monarchy in Britain and established a republic. Oliver Cromwell (11^th great grandfather) was the head of the revolt and the republic.  He had the disposed king, Charles I (my 2nd cousin 13 times removed), beheaded.   Interestingly, when they overthrew the republic and Charles II (husband of my 2nd cousin ten times removed) assumed the monarchy, he had Oliver Cromwell’s body dug up and the corpse beheaded.

Of course, when I think of my personal genealogy I think of the picture of my mother’s grandfather, John Franklin Austin, and his family, including my grandmother, that is in the Oklahoma History Museum.  They had come down out of the Arkansas mountains (Pope County) for a better life sharecropping in Tom Joad country aka around Sallisaw, Oklahoma. A family legend I would like to verify is that my great grandfather Austin left Shelbyville, Illinois due to a shooting when he was discovered in the bed of a married woman.  I am not sure how to prove or disprove this tale. They must have been fairly well off in Shelbyville as his father has an impressive tombstone (for the times) in the Austin cemetery in Shelbyville.

Just as an aside, I am attempting to train my wife to address me as Sir David of Snottingham.