Showing posts with label English royalty ancestors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English royalty ancestors. Show all posts

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Another Royal Wedding....Oh Goody!

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few months, you are aware that today was the day Prince Harry of the UK married American actress Meghan Markle.

Yes, this is an interesting event as not only is Harry marrying a commoner but *gasp* an American!
I am not an anglophile personally nor am I a Royal Watcher but being the whitest white woman on Planet Earth, and also having been researching my ancestry full-bore for the past 9 or so years, you probably know that I am related to the English royal family.

Prince Harry(and his brother Prince William)are my 19th cousins.  Interestingly, we are cousins through both his father, Prince Charles' and Princess Diana's ancestry.  Charles and Diana are BOTH my 18th cousins 1 x removed.(Charles through his maternal lines and Diana through her father's lines.)



I relate to Prince Harry through our shared ancestor George de Neville, 1st Baron Latimer, through his father, Ralph De Neville on both his parents' family trees.

And as it turns out I am also related to Meghan Markle.  She's my 21st cousin 2 x removed.
I also relate to Megan Markle through George de Neville, 1st Baron Latimer, but through his mother, Joan de Beaufort, Countess of Westmoreland.
Meghan and I are also direct descendants of Edward III.

                             Good ol' Edward III

So this means Harry and Megan are also related to each other via many different lines of ancestry but nothing too close.  I believe their closest shared ancestor is Ralph Bowes of Streatlam 1480-1516 which would make them 15th cousins.

Since my invite never arrived(I am "family" after all, right?) I will assume that the English postal system or USPS lost it somewhere along the line. sniff*sniff*

And all this other talk about this union being so historic as the Royal Family is having someone of African ancestry marry into the bloodline?
It's true that Meghan is bi-racial, her father is "white", her mother is "black"(actually her mother is bi-racial--not black as many of her direct ancestors are listed as "mulatto" in federal censuses) but this is NOT the first instance of ethnic ancestry being injected into the English Royal Family.

I posted about Queen Elizabeth II having a direct ancestral connection to the Profit Muhammad back in March HERE.
This line of descent connects her(and me)to various Spanish Royals so there has already been much Hispanic blood flowing through the veins of English royalty.

The first known royal with "African" ancestry was Queen Consort Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz who married King George III(the monarch we colonies revolted against).


This is one of the portraits of Charlotte painted by Allan Ramsay painted in 1761 when she was 17 years old not long after her marriage to George III.  There are eye witness descriptions of her looks that allude to her African genes.  If you look at the genealogical records you will find that Charlotte was descended from a branch of the Portugese family through Alfonso III.  Alfonso's armies captured the Moorish town of Faro and demanded the Governor's daughter as a "spoil of war". The Governor's daughter, Ouruana, went on to have three children by Alfonso III.  Martin, one of Alfonso and Ouruana's sons married into the de Sousa line.  This noble line also held African ancestors so Charlotte owed her ethnic roots to both her paternal and maternal lines.

Interestingly enough, at the time of Charlotte's wedding, the question of slavery and it's abolishment was swirling around England(and also the civilized world).  Allan Ramsay, the painter of many portraits of Queen Charlotte, was an ardent abolitionist on this issue.  He was married to the niece of Lord Mansfield who ruled in 1772 that slavery within the British Empire should be abolished.
Allan Ramsay was also Uncle by marriage to Lord Mansfield's grand niece, Dido Elizabeth Lindsay.
Dido's father was Sir John Lindsay, the brother of Margaret Lindsay, who became Allan Ramsay's second wife.  John and Margaret's mother was the sister of Lord Mansfield....got that?


Portrait of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth Murray, painted in a Zophanian style, now attributed to English artist David Martin.

You may have seen the feature film they made about the life of this child of naval officer and nobility member Sir John Lindsay and a captured slave from the West Indies named Maria Belle called "Belle" back in 2014.


And it seems fitting that Meghan will take her vows and become Princess in the very same place that Queen Charlotte is buried-St. George's Chapel in Windsor Palace.

If you want to see the pedigree of both Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and how they are related(at least their closest connection)go HERE.


Sluggy



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Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Another Celebrity Cousin.....And More

We no longer have cable tv but I was able to watch the first episode of the new season of "Who Do You Think You Are?" US Version yesterday as it was on You Tube already.

I really prefer the way the UK and AUS versions of this show are handled but I'll watch any country's version and relish it since I am such a genealogy hound. 8-)


Anyway, they had as their guest/victim Courteney Cox the actress.  I confess that I have never watched an episode of "Friends" in my life, nor will I, on purpose, here on out.

But even so, it turns out we are cousins.  Probably quite distant cousins....something like 15th cousins 2 x removed.
I know of our kinship because we share a common ancestors in King Edward I of England aka Edward Longshanks and Eleanor of Castile.  They two are my 22nd Great Grands and Courteney's 20th Great Grands.

I haven't tried to graft all her ancestors down to her onto my family tree yet but I do know from the tv show that she has an English immigrant ancestor who landed in the Virginia colony(hence her deep roots in that state)in the first decades after Jamestown was founded in 1607.
This ancestor was Thomas Lygon or Ligon and through this line she is descended from Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's daughter, Joan of Acre, while my direct line descends down through Joan's brother, the odious King Edward II or Edward of Caernarfon, who was deposed, when his wife, Isabella of France took up with Roger de Mortimer and seized power.  But that's another story sort of.

Edward II was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle(by another of Courteney's direct ancestors, Thomas de Barkeley, on her Despenser line)and killed there.
Eleanor and Edward II's son, Edward III, eventually seized the crown back and had Roger de Mortimer put to death and his mother Eleanor exiled.

Oh, such a lovely nest of incestuous of love/hate in English royal lines!  ;-)

So this was an interesting episode(and a good English history lesson)but they totally ignored one of Courteney's very interesting ancestors also up her mother's family tree(as were her Despenser and Edward Longshanks lines).

Courteney's mother(through her paternal line)is a direct descendant of John Basse, an immigrant ancestor who came to Virginia in 1622 as a 6 year old boy with his family. His family arrived just in time in Virginia for the Massacre of 1622.  The story goes that John was not killed(though his two older brothers were)but captured and taken away.  John wrote of this time, of eluding his captors at some point and being found in the woods by some Nansemond Indians who took him in, adopting him into their tribe.
John Basse grew into adulthood among the Nansemond and eventually married a Nansemond woman, Keziah Elizabeth.  It is said that Keziah Elizabeth was the daughter of Nansemond Chief Robin and granddaughter of Nansemond Great Chief Peter.

The Bass family line of Virginia who claim Nansemond Indian ancestry, alive today are all descended from John and Keziah Basse.
The Nansemond were part of the Powhatan confederation of Native Indians and were found in what is the Norfolk, VA metro area today.  Once the English arrived in Jamestown this tribe was forced to migrate west into what is now the Suffolk, VA area, adjacent to Norfolk.

The Nansemond are one of the small tribes that gained Virginia state recognition in 1984 and are currently working on establishing a reservation and museum in that area of Virginia.

So this is the long way of saying that Courteney Cox has native ancestry as well.

There was another large massacre in the Jamestown area in 1644, which I'll talk about at a later date.  This era of Courteney's Lygon/Ligon ancestors and ancestors, who married into my line, lives intertwined again during this time in Jamestown.
Funny how we always call bloodshed of Europeans "massacres" but when Europeans likewise wiped out native groups in large numbers it isn't called the same?

Sluggy
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