RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: shan42 on Friday 02 October 09 11:35 BST (UK)
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Morning!! What's the earliest ancestry you've managed to find for your tree? How did you find them?
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Probably my g.g.g.g.g.g.g.g. grandfather William Wode (Wood) b. 1515 in Therfield Hertfordshire. Found him through parish records. Sometimes you strike lucky with an established family who don't move around a lot :)
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ive got back to 1756 with my mams family the flaxens/flexons its my 4xgreat grandfather stephen a name which is still in the family today .They came ftom cumnor near oxford the parish records are realy good not as good as nicks.
neil
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1798, 1812, 1860, and 1865.
Don't know why I bother sometimes.
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I have gone back to 1699 with one side, I found a marriage between Paul Kentish and Frances Cox on the Kent Ark site - it took hours of searching but was worth it as I also found out he was born in Middx and was a sailor.
Anna
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Don't know why I bother sometimes.
a) 'Cos it can be fun, and educational, ;D
b) 'Cos you've come into contact with some really good people on RC., ;D ;D
c) 'Cos your (insert relative) asked you to, pretty please! ;D ;D ;D
Don't get downhearted, Pauline - I found new leads by reading unconnected threads and following the posted links to websites I hadn't found myself.
My earliest proven is only 1784.
'Hat.
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Way back into the first millenium, which is only practically achievable by connecting to royalty (which we are all likely to be descended from somehow - I'm certainly nothing special).
Parish records back through various framework knitters, weavers, husbandmen etc to Robert Heathcote, the son of cobbler, who was born 1675.
He married the youngest daughter (and orphan), of a local minor landowner Raphael Bradbury. This mismatch almost certainly achieved because a relation of his stepfather mas married to her elder sister, whom she lived with after her parents' deaths.
Combination of parish records and wills back to Raphael's gr gr grandfather George, born c1518, who married Anne Gilbert.
Herald's visitation, supported by a deeds, church monuments etc back to her great grandfather Robert, born before 1450
Church monument and herald's visitation to his father in law John Statham, born circa 1405.
Dispute over inheritence at TNA to his maternal grandfather Richard Cornwall, and then IPMs, supported by copious entries in the rolls (close, patent, fine etc) back to his gr gr gr grandfather Richard earl of Cornwall, second son of King John.
Then once you hit royalty, you can't fail but get back to pre-conquest times - just how far back you claim depends on how much you believe certain ancient documents - for example king Alfred's biography, written contemporary to his reign (I can't just remember the name of the chronicler off the top of my head) gives Alfred's lineage, but how many generations you trust it for is debatable - it claims to give it all the way back to Adam and Eve !
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On my mother's side I have a baptism in 1557 naming the father as William the younger. So about 1507. Got it all from parish registers searched at my local LDS centre.
My fathers side I am only back to 1817. They have a common name and were in London so could have come from any where.
Sylviaann
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Wow, the 1500s is good going!! So I'm very lucky to get one line back to 1625 then, I'll be searching some registers to verify it all asap! :D
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Pat. Tree 1610
Mat. Tree 1835
Wife
Pat. Tree 1605
Mat. Tree 1788
I have a couple of connected trees [marriages] one goes back to 1545, the other back to 1568
The maternal tree is Irish and after searching for about 5 years, I have abandoned it for a while.
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I guess I've been very lucky on my mum's side - lots of people came from lots of different small villages, lots of the PRs are available and no-one was called Smith!
My earliest confirmed by myself through PR's, about 1640.
IGI has extracted records for another of my maternal lines to 1540 but the relevant fiche had gone walkabout when I went to the Grantham records office to check so I haven't seen this for myself yet!
I have copies of 2 wills written by ancestors born in the mid - late 1600's; they are fascinating, once you get through the scrawl!
On my dad's side I have only got back to about 1800. A combination of commoner names, more misspellings, people living in towns and sailors who could have come from and gone anywhere continue to fox me.
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My fathers maternal line goes to 1550-ish, but I myself havent done all of that ... I was lucky it was an unusual surname with a one-name study already done !
I have got a tenuous link to Catherine Howard, which would push it further back, (she of the 'divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, BEHEADED, survived !!) But I havent got time to go into it thoroughly, so at the moment, don't believe it !
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1535 on mother's Tree
1722 on father's side
these ancestors did not move around much until the 1850's and then they set out around the world,Argentina,Japan,Australia,New Zealand,France and other places so that by 2000 very few remained in their original counties
Alf the exile in South Australia
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Proven? A couple from both maternal and paternal sides to the 1700s in Scotland and England.
At the moment I must confess I'm not even tempted to try to go further back, mainly because there are so many gaps since then that it will take me several lifetimes to fill them in. That's OK, because I have no intention of going anywhere for a long time yet, I've far too much to do!!!!! ;D
Once those gaps are filled (???) I will definitely be trying hard to track back with all of them including the Irish and I just know they are waiting to give me trouble.
In the meantime I'm concentrating on trying to track the elusive ones from their arrival in Australia (from 1800 to 1823) until their next verified appearance - sometimes a death record, sometimes nothing - they just disappear into the mist. I do have descendants of the disappearing ones though, so that's probably a plus!!
Philippa
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1537 - birth of Sir Robert Bell
he married a Dorothy Beaupre who has a lineage going back way further but I've not looked at it or anything yet cos other folks have done it all which makes it a bit boring!
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I've gotten back to 1525 with one line, but not through much effort on my part. I saw on a Genuki surname page that someone was searching the name I was interested in. I sent an e-mail and a few weeks later I had a PDF of a carefully and thoroughly researched and annotated tree going back 225 years from our common ancestor in the 1750s. Part of the family has remained in the same town--near Wakefield--from the 1500s to the present.
Regards,
John :o :o :o