I've been spending quite a bit of time with my genealogist's hat on lately.
* I am sad that this season of TLC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" will be over in only 2 more episodes.
Last Wednesday evening's episode was neat because the first ancestor of guest Valerie Bertinelli had lived near were I am living now.
Her great grandfather Gregorio Mancia tried to kill her great grandmother, Mary Possio Crosa Mancia, and then turned the gun on himself in a little town outside of Scranton, PA back in 1931. Before removing to Lackawanna County, PA, Gregorio and Mary had lived in western VA, near Wytheville as his draft card noted. He was a coal miner so both areas make sense for them to be living in during those times.
Anyway, after her paternal ancestor search, they moved on to her maternal ancestors and soon were revealing how one of her lines stretches back to Edward I of England and beyond to William the Conqueror.
Edward Longshanks happens to be my 23 x Great Grandfather too.
Thus Ms. Bertinelli and I are some sort of cousins.
Imagine that!
* Then later in the week I was doing some deep ancestor hunting on my PARHAM line. On my maternal grandfather's line I have Thomas Parham Sr. and Susannah Hunt as my 9 x GGrands. I discovered that it appears that Susannah married twice, with Roger TILGHMAN being her second husband.
I know a fellow blogger who has talked about her TILGHMAN(later changed to TILLMAN) connection over the years so I wrote to her to let her know that we may be related through allied families(related by marriage of one line to another, but not directly by blood). My blood relation ancestor, Susannah's son Thomas PARHAM, is not a TILGHMAN.
So we hashed it out and my 9 x Great Grandmother married the brother of my friend's 8 x Great Grandfather.
Are you confused yet? lol
I had seen that TILGHMAN name on my tree yet had never thought that it would be connected to fellow bloggers TILGHMANS, because mine came to/were based in Virginia and she kept mentioning Maryland in connection to her TILGHMANS.
But on further investigation her TILGHMANS were part of the Virginia branch of that family that ended up heading into Maryland early on after their immigrating to the New World in VA.
There are 2 different TILGHMAN lines in Maryland it seems--The piece of the Christopher TILGHMAN line that removed to Maryland and a line sprouting from a Dr. Richard TILGHMAN, for which TILGHMANS ISLAND and other areas in Maryland on the Eastern Shore are named.
And this is more than anyone reading this ever wanted to know about the Tilghman family I am sure. lolz
Having found that connection by marriage she led me to some more family Tighlman ancestry information going further back on the TILGHMAN line showing that Christopher/Gideon/Roger/et all descend from the Plantagenet line of the kings of England.
And this line is the same line that I and Valerie Bertinelli's have on our trees.
So fellow blogger and I DO share bloodlines after all, just further back in our respective ancestry.
Our most recent shared common ancestors are Ralph de NEVILLE and Joan de BEAUFORT as we are each descended from a child of this couple. My 19th x Great Grands are also fellow bloggers 17th x Great Grands. I guess my family is a bit sooner to jump into bed than hers. ;-)
* Then I got bored last week....after all, all the college prep was finished......so I started doing a family tree on the next TLC "Who Do You Think You Are?" guest, Kelsey Grammer.
I have never really been a fan of his but what the hey! I am always up for a genealogy challenge.
I wanted to see if I could do this(without cheating and googling his line, other than his parents names and dates to get me started), tracing his ancestors back before the show aired on tv.
And I think I did fairly well.
I got back into the late 1600's on 2 of his paternal lines and 2 of his maternal lines, as well as back to late 1500's on 1 of his mother's lines. I am not saying that there might not be errors in the information because, after all, I haven't documented all this information, but it's fairly accurate.
I found lots of English, some French, some German, even some Nova Scotian Canadian ancestors.
And the tv promos sound like the show will be investigated a "patriot" on one side and a "pioneer" on the other side of his family during his episode.
And I know EXACTLY which ancestors they will talk about now, since I found them too. 8-)
So stop reading this and don't scroll down to the end of my post if you don't want to spoil the surprise when you watch the show, ok?
Because I am gonna end this with the names but I won't give any other clues or information about them. I just want a record of me having found this myself. 8-)))
* Then late last week, I got an email from someone asking about a certain line of my ancestors. This person manages DNA accounts at FamilyTreeDNA for, I am assuming, are other family members who have had their DNA tested. She let me know that one of her subjects/members matched me in the autosomal testing they had done(about 50cms)and we also have one surname in common on our respective family surnames lists, DUDLEY.
It didn't take long to track down our common ancestor--Edward DUDLEY, my 10th x Great Grandfather. Their ancestor William, and my ancestor Richard were the sons of Edward DUDLEY and Elizabeth PRITCHARD.
While it's not common to match DNA with someone when your shared ancestor is so many generations far removed, it IS possible and highly likely if the ancestors are affected by "Founder's Effect", and if you have ancestors who were very early (usually English)settlers to America and intermarried within their social circles. You may be able to match DNA on those lines of your ancestry going further back than the standard 6 or 7 generations.
Keep scrolling for the Spoiler--
SPOILER ALERT--
The patriot ancestor for Kelsey Grammer is probably Jacob Grammer, a First Lieutenant in the Maryland Militia/Revolutionary War, and the pioneer ancestors are probably Joseph Dimmick and his wife Mary Frances Kriechbaum, in 1852. You figure out what state they removed to...it's out west and has a shoreline. ;-)
Sluggy
