Professional Soldiers ® - View Single Post - Family Tree/Lineage,, Any X-spurts?

**Airbornelawyer** · 01-02-2022, 08:10

My mother was her family's official historian, maintaining and updating the family genealogy, so I grew up surrounded by her research, including all the correspondence and detective work one had to do in the times before one could just click on an Ancestry leaf without verifying the accuracy of the information. I also have created and maintain several family trees on Ancestry for my family and some friends.

I would echo Paslode's comments regarding all the bad information on so many family trees on the various on-line sites. With regard to older genealogies, especially those which take you back to noble lineages, I would also advise taking what you find woth a grain of salt. It was especially common in the 17th through 19th centuries, as the middle class grew in wealth, to claim false lineages or at the very least to solidify really tenuous links to the landed gentry. The nouveau riche of the time wanted to establish links to the older aristocracy to increase their standing, and they had willing accomplices in the scribes and others who created the books of lineages which are still the backbone of much genealogical research to this day.

While all of us with some English ancestry are probably related to William the Conqueror, since his son Henry I famously had 24 illegitimate children, and thus through William to the older English, French and Norman nobility, the actual relationship is probably not as firm as some of the published lineages would imply.

Another factor muddying the water is, at least for Europeans, the main source of information before the rise of modern bureaucracies was church records (BTW, the Mormons have done a great service to genealogical research, as their missionaries have collected church records from all over Europe). But especially in what is now Germany, as well as other places caught up in the wars of religion, church records from before the Thirty Years' War were often lost. My father's father's family tree in southern Germany is well-documented back to the mid-1600s, and then hits a wall due to the destruction of churches. Some church records from before could be reconstructed, but that also created another avenue for erroneous connections to be made.

Still, while I cannot say with 100% certainty how accurate the genealogies are, it is still amusing to be able to point to the likes of William the Conqueror and Lady Godiva in my family tree. And it's fun to point out to some of the younger Harry Potter fans in my family just how many Death Eater families like the LeStranges we are related to.

01-02-2022, 08:10	#12
Airbornelawyer Moderator Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 1,954	My mother was her family's official historian, maintaining and updating the family genealogy, so I grew up surrounded by her research, including all the correspondence and detective work one had to do in the times before one could just click on an Ancestry leaf without verifying the accuracy of the information. I also have created and maintain several family trees on Ancestry for my family and some friends. I would echo Paslode's comments regarding all the bad information on so many family trees on the various on-line sites. With regard to older genealogies, especially those which take you back to noble lineages, I would also advise taking what you find woth a grain of salt. It was especially common in the 17th through 19th centuries, as the middle class grew in wealth, to claim false lineages or at the very least to solidify really tenuous links to the landed gentry. The nouveau riche of the time wanted to establish links to the older aristocracy to increase their standing, and they had willing accomplices in the scribes and others who created the books of lineages which are still the backbone of much genealogical research to this day. While all of us with some English ancestry are probably related to William the Conqueror, since his son Henry I famously had 24 illegitimate children, and thus through William to the older English, French and Norman nobility, the actual relationship is probably not as firm as some of the published lineages would imply. Another factor muddying the water is, at least for Europeans, the main source of information before the rise of modern bureaucracies was church records (BTW, the Mormons have done a great service to genealogical research, as their missionaries have collected church records from all over Europe). But especially in what is now Germany, as well as other places caught up in the wars of religion, church records from before the Thirty Years' War were often lost. My father's father's family tree in southern Germany is well-documented back to the mid-1600s, and then hits a wall due to the destruction of churches. Some church records from before could be reconstructed, but that also created another avenue for erroneous connections to be made. Still, while I cannot say with 100% certainty how accurate the genealogies are, it is still amusing to be able to point to the likes of William the Conqueror and Lady Godiva in my family tree. And it's fun to point out to some of the younger Harry Potter fans in my family just how many Death Eater families like the LeStranges we are related to.
Airbornelawyer is offline