(06-29-2023, 08:17 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: Ah, howdy distant cousin!
There was one long list of Vikings and such leading back to Ragnarsson, of course, I went back to 873 when he died. That was through the MacLean and MacDonald clans.
Quote:Ivar Ragnarsson nicknamed the Boneless (inn beinlausi), was a Danish Viking chieftain (and by reputation also a berserker), who, in the autumn of 865 A.D., with his brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson (Halfdene) and Ubbe Ragnarsson (Hubba), led the Great Heathen Army in the invasion of the East Anglian region of England.
Here's a good one. I found one ancestor that was related to both my mother's tree and my father's tree. A male ancestor married a woman then another, one from each side. That was 7 or 8 generations back, here in the New World.
The Mayflower connection is with John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, both from off the Mayflower. Also Chief Quadequina Wampanag, the native who shared popcorn with the pilgrims.
The Jamestown connection is with Captain William Tucker (1589-1644)
I'm also related to Capt Tobias Lear Secretary to George Washington and a half dozen or so Lords and Ladies in Ye Ole England.
Here's the thing with family trees, both DNA-based and paper-trail based: for each generation back one goes, the number of people in that generation doubles. We have two parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grand parents, 16 great great grandparents and so on. at the same time, each generation back we go, that generation had fewer people on Earth to choose from, because there are fewer people making more children for the next generation. So, at some point in time, you arrive at a place where there are more people in that generation of your family tree than there are people on Earth to fill all the positions. For me, that point is reached about 29 generations back, around 1150 AD - a mere 800 years or so.
Compounding that is the fact that some folks were not reachable by other folks then - Australian Aborigines or American Indians, for example, were not reachable by Europeans in 1150 AD, meaning that the pool is even smaller than expected, as parts of the world population were not available for breeding at that time, and that means that some folks will necessarily start appearing in one's family tree multiple times.
The farther back one goes, the worse that problem becomes.
So, mathematically, it is certain that if we dig deeply enough, we're going to find that multiplication of individual people in a family tree. I've found similar things in mine - 8 or 9 generations back, I start finding my dad's surname in my mom's family tree, for example. I also find "Evans" and "Price" in both, and if I dig deeper back, there are sure to be more instances.
You also find unexpected things. There is sub-Saharan African DNA in my testing, too, but no paper trail to any Africans. No idea if it was a slave, an indentured servant, or or a freeman. All I know is that he or she was right near the cutoff of 7-10 generations where the DNA is susceptible to disappearing altogether - I have a small bit of it, but my son has none. It's disappeared from the DNA in our generations. I also have a small snippet of DNA from what is now Bangladesh, with no paper trail to tell who it was, or when. That bit DID get passed on to my son, largely unchanged.
I find only one single record of any ancestors that were slave owners - the will of one mentions his "Indian slave gal". No mention of what kind of "Indian" she was, whether feather Indian or dot Indian.
In the other direction, the paper trail, I find an Irish slave girl named Mary and owned by the Custis family (Martha Washington's bunch) that was stolen by another ancestor - Christopher Nutter, I think his name was - and made away with shortly after his arrival in America in the mid-1600's. They skied away to another colony - started in Virginia, ended up in Maryland - and made good for themselves somewhere called "St. Mary's". But it's not possible to separate out that girl's Irish DNA from other Irish DNA, like the O'Briens. I don't know, really, even if any of her DNA made it this far up the tree.
Court records show that Nutter got in a boatload of trouble for stealing her, but he got to keep her all the same and they were later married. He set up trade with the Naticoke Indians, and eventually became the official interpreter to the Naticoke tribe for the Colony of Maryland. He was paid in tobacco, because money was scarce and hard to come by, and tobacco was the medium of exchange at that time.
This is the sort of stock I come from - slave owners, slaves, slave thieves, and all of them escaping from "civilization" and pushing the boundaries into the wilderness.
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