General Chat

Must go, have a great day and Gwyn, good luck with George Jones!

which George Jones lol

back later have a gr8 day all

Le Sieur Thomas Le Sauvage, born in Normandy, living in 1066.

1. 1675 - my 7xGreat Grandfather
2. Sort of lol (father already on way! & GGmother signed marriage cert with an X to mark her name, God bless her. Never thought of people not being able to write or read. Also from little acorns the family run business on one line has escalated to a very successful business - now that was a shock! lol
3. No immediate family help - all dead now. But lots of help from 2nd 3rd 4th cousins found on GR - thank you to them all as I would not have got as far back without them.


Tina

Back to 16th century with one line but i can't claim the credit for that. The research was done by a distant relative who lives in Australia.

Ann
Glos

I started doing my tree seriously about 12 years ago and to begin with concentrated on my mother's side of the family. They came from Somerset so I could research in the Records Office in Taunton myself.

I spent hundreds of hours in there researching and also joined the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society so could share information with some fellow members.

I felt really pleased to get back to an ancestor who was born around 1500. I found a copy of his will in the Records Office mentioning grandchildren and I was able to roughly work out when he must have been born even though that was before parish records.

I'd have been satisfied with that till I felt guilty and decided to work on my father's Lincolnshire ancestry. Not so easy from over here but lots more had got onto the Internet since I started and I contacted various people on GR.

My father's great grandmother was called Sarah Ann Fines and she was very ordinary. I knew who her parents and grandparents were but hadn't gone further. Then a GR contact I made told me things got a bit more interesting a few generations back. He didn't then contact me again for about a week so I assumed we'd got some scandal or other.

Anyway to cut a long story short........it turned out that earlier generations (since checked and double checked to make sure) were spelled Fynes or Fienes or even earlier as Fiennes. On that branch my 9x great grandfather was Henry Clinton-Fiennes the 2nd Earl of Lincoln. My lot had ended up impoverished because from then onwards it was always by younger sons and usually by second wives.

The Clintons and the Fiennes always tended to marry well to aristocratic women and in earlier generations to descendants of royalty. The lines back from the wives went all over Europe and way back all over the British Isles too. My most recent monarch is Edward III but I have royal ancestors from all sorts of countries.

Just about everyone of English ancestry probably has descent from people like William the Conqueror but it isn't so usual to be able to prove it. I can do that numerous times over in a variety of directions. Even if the odd one turns out to be a false father there are all sorts of ways back via siblings of various royals too. It gets amazingly complicated.

In answer to the original question.........I am going along with the majority view of the most likely D of A (ie Descent from Antiquity). I've done a lot of reading about it and the most likely to stand up to scrutiny is one of the ancestors of the Emperor Charlemagne. There is a route back from him to someone called Afranius Syragrius who was a Gallo-Roman consul alive in 381 AD. If that line is correct as a lot of medievalists say then Afranius is my 48x great grandfather.

He's also the ancestor of all of you.

I've got tentative ways back to two 52x great grandfathers as well but they were a century later than Afranius.

I have ignored all online trees going back via Da Vinci Code routes or heading off into mythological realms. The ones I look at are those being properly considered by medieval experts.

Sue

well done all of you


make sure you back your tree up

Wow, Sue in Somerset, respect. Perhaps you should name yourself 'posh' too!!!

posh Sue

On one side of my family back to 1570
But must say it's not all my own work .....
But haven't found ANYTHING norty in either side
they must have been goody two shoes . boring ......
lol

So who do you take after Hazel lol

LOLOL BORING .....LOL

pmsl

oh i could take after goody two shoes i surpose ......

who ?

GOODY 2 SHOES......lol

pmsl

miss GOODY 2 SHOES......

Yes hello i'm here .....