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Shona
10-05-13, 21:14
Listening to the radio today, a statistician did a back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate the number of living people who could be connected genealogically to the king in the car park.

Richard had plenty of nephews and nieces. Assuming they each had two surviving children who each went on to have two children and a generation is 25 years (so 20 generations), you end up with a figure of 1,000,000 people descended from Richard III's nieces and nephews. This is assuming there is no inter-marrying, of course.

If the medieval average of 2.3 children is assumed, then there are 17,000,000 people living today who are genealogically linked to Richard III.

kiterunner
10-05-13, 22:49
This is assuming there is no inter-marrying, of course.


A pretty silly assumption! I read an article debunking this kind of thing recently, I wonder whether I can find it...

Olde Crone
10-05-13, 22:53
I read somewhere (dunno where now, can't remember!) that ON AVERAGE, the male line fails after six generations, which would make actually proving you are descended from R3 quite difficult.

At a distance of 20 generations, we each have about 1 million ancestors (assuming no doubling up) so R£'s genes have become somewhat diluted by the time they reach his 20 x descendants.

OC

kiterunner
10-05-13, 23:32
I think the article I read must have been in a family history magazine, and not available online, but the point was that family trees actually include a very high proportion of intermarrying, and that if you go far back, people didn't move around from place to place so much, so all or nearly all of their ancestors would come from the same place where they lived. So they would not have many more ancestors in a particular generation than the actual number of people who were living around there at that time. (With the same applying going forwards from those ancestors to the number of descendants of any particular person.)


Of course royalty moved around but their descendants would have intermarried with a small group of families in the higher social strata.

Olde Crone
10-05-13, 23:59
Kite

That's certainly the case in my tree. My GGM from Gawsworth in Cheshire came from a family which had been in the village since before church records began and had intermarried with the other families in the village for nearly 400 years. She accounts for one-eighth of my genes and DNA of course, but at every generation backwards someone married a cousin or at least a blood relative of some sort.

Half my genes and DNA come from Scotland and I doubt has much to do with R3. They too intermarried.

In fact it is only in the last two or three generations that anyone in my tree appears to marry a completely random stranger. Even when they moved away from close family, they moved to be with more distant kin and married there.

The idea that everyone's genes are spread out evenly across the generations is a nice one but totally false as far as I can see.

OC

Glen TK
11-05-13, 03:57
Kite

That's certainly the case in my tree. My GGM from Gawsworth in Cheshire came from a family which had been in the village since before church records began and had intermarried with the other families in the village for nearly 400 years. She accounts for one-eighth of my genes and DNA of course, but at every generation backwards someone married a cousin or at least a blood relative of some sort.

Half my genes and DNA come from Scotland and I doubt has much to do with R3. They too intermarried.

In fact it is only in the last two or three generations that anyone in my tree appears to marry a completely random stranger. Even when they moved away from close family, they moved to be with more distant kin and married there.

The idea that everyone's genes are spread out evenly across the generations is a nice one but totally false as far as I can see.

OC

I think the eight fingers per hand and the third arm were a bit of a clue though OC without you going through the pain and angst of researching it all :d:d

Olde Crone
11-05-13, 11:05
*Slaps Glen*.

Makes a nonsense of all that business about inbreeding being a bad thing though. If the genes are good, you generally get good genes. Animal breeders have known this for many centuries.

On the other side of the coin though - if the OP is correct, then equally Osric the gooseboy, Greasy Joan and Will the blacksmith also have over one million descendants living today......

I'm busy with a little sketch tree at the mo, starting with a couple born in the 1780s. They had a least 11 children. 5 survived to adulthood and had 8 children between them. By 1923 there isn't a single person left on this line, it has completely died out. So, there's at least one line which MAY have been descended from R3, who knows, but has long gone. The same must apply in every generation - just because you are born doesn't mean you will leave descendants!

OC

Shona
11-05-13, 15:37
Shall we send a briefing note to Radio 4's More of Less programme to put them right?

Olde Crone
11-05-13, 22:56
Shona

I don't think there's much point, do you? There seems to be a widely accepted belief that statistics and averages prove facts. Everyone loves the idea of being descended from R3, no one wants to be descended from Greasy Joan!

OC

Glen TK
11-05-13, 23:48
I have a few lines that stop as there are no descendants,
I also have a few where a hubby/wife dies and the surviving spouse (a cousin) then goes on to marry a sibling of the deceased, children born to both marriages then marry cousins, for a genration or two it's not a massive gene pool that's for sure.

I personally nearly ran into what would have been a nightmare, as a teenager I had a relationship with someone I very recently discovered to be a half sibling, of course we never knew at the time, it only came to light a few months ago when one of my old posts was discovered.

Kit
12-05-13, 00:56
That must make for interesting conversation over the dinner table Glen.

My 4g grandfather/mother and my 5g grandfather/mother are same people, my 3g grandfather married his niece. A generation or so later, and not my direct line, also had a similar marriage.

Glen TK
12-05-13, 01:22
It was a bit wierd that's for sure, she contacted me through a long forgotten trying to find post, we worked out that we were half sibs and that we probably passed each other in the street as we lived in the same area and were similiar ages. Then she sent a few pics asking if I recognised her......as I looked at them she looked familiar but were when she was still at school, then one of them was a pic of the two of us together, no point trying to hide who I was but it was a bit of a shock for the pair of us.

marquette
12-05-13, 06:08
That must make for interesting conversation over the dinner table Glen.

My 4g grandfather/mother and my 5g grandfather/mother are same people, my 3g grandfather married his niece. A generation or so later, and not my direct line, also had a similar marriage.


My trees has been pruned a bit too -

My 6xg grandparents are also my 5xg grandparents. Thier oldest daughter married one man and the youngest daughter (18yrs younger) married another.

One great-great grandchild married a one great-grandchild. Second cousins once removed, but born within a month of each other !


Wow, Glen - that's a bit scary, but also a bit of a shock to both of you.

Di

Phoenix
12-05-13, 11:42
Shall we send a briefing note to Radio 4's More of Less programme to put them right?

I would love to know what proper statisticians came up with. I used to read the population studies papers: age at marriage, family size etc which were fascinating, but did indicate how very grey the stats get pre decent recording.

Even if all the premises were solid, I do find the 25 year generation decidedly suspect. The actual nobility and royalty may well have been taking teenage brides, but ordinary people wouldn't be marrying until they could afford to. With one of my ancestors having children in his seventies, that really skews the figures.

Olde Crone
12-05-13, 12:08
Phoenix

It's a bit like that "average life expectancy" thing that made 40 the age at which you died, pre NHS.

It was probably the biggest surprise overall in my research to discover that many/most of my rural ancestors lived well into their 70s,80s and 90s. If they survived childbirth and accidents, they mostly lived as long as we do today.

OC

Phoenix
12-05-13, 12:16
I always liked the "facts" that average life expectancy in Roman times was 24, while average age at marriage was 28. Which of course could both be true.

Merry
12-05-13, 18:09
I always liked the "facts" that average life expectancy in Roman times was 24, while average age at marriage was 28. Which of course could both be true.

But surely that could be true (I'm definitely not saying it is! lol)?

Grossly simplifying the numbers.......If half the population died at birth and the other half lived to be 48 then the average age at death would be 24. But if all those who lived until 48 married at 28 then the average age of marriage would be 28. :)

*runs out quickly*

Olde Crone
12-05-13, 18:28
Merry

Yes, that's what Phoenix said......both statements can be statistically true.

OC

Merry
12-05-13, 18:31
lol That's funny I read n't in the middle of her last sentence!! I even thought "I'm surprised Phoenix made that mistake" when it was me all the time!!! :o:o:o

*slopes away again*

Michael
12-05-13, 19:12
A pretty silly assumption! I read an article debunking this kind of thing recently, I wonder whether I can find it...

I certainly wouldn't be able to find it now, but I remember reading an article which mentioned that almost every line of Prince Charles's ancestry had been traced back 20 generations or so, and compared the theoretical number of ancestors at that point (assuming doubling every generation) with the actual number of distinct individuals. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the number of different ancestors at that generation was MUCH smaller - I think only something like 1/20 of the number with no intermarrying. If we estimate that over the course of 500 years, intermarriages reduce the total number of descendants by a factor of 20 or so, the radio statistician's estimate of 1,000,000 becomes a more believable 50,000.

To illustrate OC's point, there's a certain fairly well known individual who lived a century or so after Richard III and has no living descendants. He had three children and four grandchildren, but only one of the grandchildren lived long enough to marry, and she bore no children so his bloodline ended with her death, only 54 years after his own.

Shona
13-05-13, 15:35
I like listening to More or Less on Radio 4, but was irked by the item on Richard III, which was broadcast on Friday - hence this thread.

I also contacted the show to say the assumptions they made rendered the stats meaningless.

This morning, the producers got back on touch and asked me email them to explain why there can't be 1,000,000 descendants of Richard III's nephews and nieces.

I was thinking of replying along the following lines. However, do GF moderators want me to put in a plug for GF? Also do members have personal examples by way of illustration that why wouldn't mind being quoted (no names mentioned of course!). Or would you prefer me to do a reply on behalf of GF?


Dear More or Less,

I was intrigued by your item last week where a 'back-of-the-envelope' calculation concluded there could be one million descendants of Richard III's nephews and nieces. The calculation may be correct, but the probability of there being 1,000,000 living descendants is zero.

Look at it the other way round. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc.

If we take a generation as being 30 years and go back 1,000 years, there would be 1 billion ancestors - more than the population of the world at the time.

The reality it that, until relatively recently, people didn't marry random strangers.

Monarchy (and landed gentry) were the most likely to marry someone with 'pedigree' from their own class in order to restrict land, wealth and power - a practice known as endogamy. It was, in fact, normal for the British monarchy to marry a cousin.

Check out this link to see just common it was for British royals to marry someone with whom they had a familial relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogamy_in_the_British_monarchy

To be fair, you did say that your calculation was based on the assumption that there was no intermarrying.

Even looking at more recent royal marriages, Victoria and Albert were first cousins. The Queen and Prince Philip are second cousins once removed through Christian IX of Denmark and third cousins through Queen Victoria. Charles and Diana were seventh cousins once removed (Diana was descended from Charles II and also King James II). Charles and Camilla are linked but not related - Alice Keppel, Camilla's great-grandmother was a long-time mistress of King Edward VII.

Away the British monarchy, people lower down the social scale would tend to marry someone within their own social groups - the illiterate farm labourer would rarely get hitched to the daughter of a merchant.

Religion plays a role, too. Certain groups, such as Orthodox Jews, have practiced endogamy as part of their traditions. Catholics, too, traditionally practiced religious endogamy. Even now in Northern Ireland, so-called 'mixed marriages' are the exception.

Another reason why the back-of-the-envelope calculation that there are 1,000,000 descendants of Richard III's siblings may be correct mathematically but wrong genealogically is that lines die out.

Let's take Henry VIII - six wives (yes, each of them was a cousin to Henry), three children, but no grandchildren. The line died out.

Thanks to intermarrying, Edward VII was pretty well connected:

Adolphus, Duke of Teck - second cousin
Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein - nephew
Albert I of Belgium - second cousin
Prince Alexander of Battenberg - nephew
Alexander, Duke of Fife - son-in-law
Prince Alexander of Teck - nephew-in-law
Empress Alexandra of Russia - niece
King Alfonso XIII of Spain - nephew-in-law
Prince Arthur of Connaught - nephew
Prince Carl of Sweden - nephew
Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha - nephew
Charles I of Portugal - second cousin
Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein - brother-in-law
Constantine I of Greece, Duke of Sparta - nephew by marriage
Duchess of Albany - sister-in-law
Duchess of Connaught and Strathearn - sister-in-law
Ernest Louis - Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
Ferdinand of Bulgaria - second cousin
Ferdinand of Romania - nephew-in-law
Prince Francis of Teck - second cousin
Frederick VIII of Demark - brother-in-law
Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein - niece
George I of Greece - brother-in-law
Prince George of Hanover and Cumberland - nephew-in-law
Haakon VII of Norway - nephew by marriage and son-in-law
Prince Heinrich of Prussia - nephew
Manuel II of Portugal - second cousin
Crown Princess Marie of Romania - niece
Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein - niece
Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden - niece
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia - nephew-in-law
Tsar Nicolas II - nephew
Princess Patricia of Connaught - niece
Crown Princess Sophia of Greece - niece
Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain - niece
Kaiser Wilhelm II - nephew

Any one with an interest in family history will come across people in their family tree who married some form of cousin.

A member of a discussion forum of which I am a member, estimated that over the course of 500 years, intermarriages reduces the total number of descendants by a factor of 20 or so. The results? Rather than 1,000,000, a more believable 50,000.

Glen TK
13-05-13, 16:28
I have to say that very often the BBC present things based on a lot of assumptions, have basic factual errors at the outset, or have a preset agenda. In the last 3 weeks a relative has been involved or mentioned on three different BBC programmes, two of them have had such errors, (including his name and the names of institutes he is associated with), the third was only correct in as much that they were broadcasting his book but even the editing and paraphrasing changed some of the passages to the point that their context was changed so greatly it can hardly be recognised.

kiterunner
13-05-13, 16:38
I was thinking of replying along the following lines. However, do GF moderators want me to put in a plug for GF?

That would be lovely, please, Shona, if you want to.

Shona
13-05-13, 16:43
That would be lovely, please, Shona, if you want to.

Will do.

Olde Crone
13-05-13, 18:47
Shona

Not just landed gentry, but anyone who owned a farm (or even tenanted it) would tend to marry other farmers etc, to protect their lifetime interest in the sheer hard work they had put into it. Many of my farmers had daughters with illegitimate children, from which I deduce that a farmer would rather have illegitimate grandchildren than see his farm inherited by some passing vagabond who had got his daughter pregnant! (Or some jumped up farm labourer from a local bad family).

Yes, it's POSSIBLE that R3 has a million descendants - but very unlikely.

OC

Shona
13-05-13, 19:03
Shona

...or some jumped up farm labourer from a local bad family.

OC

Exactly what my great-grandfather, Duncan did - got the farmer's daughter pregnant. No way was Mr Farmer letting his dear daughter marry him - regarded as from bad stock.

Phoenix
13-05-13, 19:48
Thank you Shona! I had assumed this was silly drivel that a programme like More or Less would knock on the head, rather than perpetuate.

The number of Medieval surnames is vastly greater than those in existence today: an indication of the number of families who failed.



On the other hand, I am a distant cousin of Richard III (on the assumption that he was related to Edward I) and my family is completely ordinary for the last couple of centuries.

Olde Crone
13-05-13, 23:33
Phoenix

Yes, as the genes descend further down the years they often tail off into obscurity and become ordinary, but that's presumably because you cannot have over one million royals, lol.

OC

Macbev
14-05-13, 02:39
Didn't the original article quoted claim 'connected genealogically to' rather than 'descended from'? I am genealogically connected to Winston Churchill, but I am definitely not descended from him. One of OH's lines married 'advantageously' many times and there are any number of grand names in his tree.....but he is blood kin to very few of them.

And since they were counting from R3's nephews and nieces, they would not be his descendants either, but his parents'. Just a thought :)

ElizabethHerts
14-05-13, 09:14
Macbev's post has reminded me that some people don't seem to understand the meaning of the words "descendant" and "ancestor". I have had to point out the fact gently to a few people! :)

Michael
16-05-13, 19:20
I hadn't thought of Henry VIII; when looking for an example of someone who lived several centuries ago whose bloodline died out within a generation or two of his own death, the first one who came to my mind was Shakespeare.

A member of a discussion forum of which I am a member, estimated that over the course of 500 years, intermarriages reduces the total number of descendants by a factor of 20 or so. The results? Rather than 1,000,000, a more believable 50,000.

While you're welcome to quote the estimate if you wish, I'd be wary of placing too much emphasis on it - although it's almost certainly closer to the mark than their own estimate, "something which I read a few years ago and of which I can only remember a few vague details" is not the firmest of grounds on which to make it.

Olde Crone
16-05-13, 22:37
Michael

I think the point is though, that statistical evidence can prove anything - or nothing. It is a guess. Unless someone actually counts up the number of descendants of R3, any figure is just a GUESS.

On my Gawsworth line I worked out that where I should have, um, 5000 ancestors, I only have about 1000 individuals because of the intermarrying and generational "slippage" that went on. This must be the same for many people, whether highborn or lowly, due to a lack of choice of partners, the lack being one of geography or of social standing.

OC

Glen TK
18-05-13, 03:25
In a few hundred years there may well be someone who does in fact fit the general figures that have been guessed, I'll be long gone by then of course but I will be one of those to be counted within the total. In fact knowing just some of the antics surrounding the legend that was my birth father then the figures are very likely to be on the low side.

Michael
18-05-13, 17:48
I think the point is though, that statistical evidence can prove anything - or nothing. It is a guess. Unless someone actually counts up the number of descendants of R3, any figure is just a GUESS.

True, but not all guesses are equal. An 'educated' guess - that is, one which takes into account the factors which are likely to have the biggest effect on the answer - is likely to be much closer to the true figure than one which disregards one or more important factors.

Glen TK
24-05-13, 15:18
I've just done a quick chart on my tree from my 5xgrt grandfather, lots if his descendants never married and many of those who did died young and childless

Counting him as first generation the following 6 are as follows

8 Children 19 Grandchildren 22 Great grandchildren, the next three generations are 53, 82 and 68 descendants.

I make that 252 over 6 generations, some lines only come forward to 1920 or so, the majority to the 1960's and others to the 1990's but the absolute maximum wouldn't see a three fold increase.

anne fraser
26-05-13, 21:05
I have a lot of generational slippage. My grandmother was born in 1882 and her grandfather in 1799. A fact of which he was apparently very proud. I have an ancestor who married for the third time aged about 70 and thanks to the family search site habit of estimating a generation as 25 years there are family trees that invent a missing generation to account for the years. I was born in 1952 and my children have yet to provide me with any grandchildren. Personally I think a generation should be closer to 30 years as a lot of men and women were still having children into their forties. I have comparitively few births to fathers under 20.

Shona
26-05-13, 23:44
Exactly, Anne. One of my great-grandmothers was the youngest of her father's 17 children. When she was born, her eldest sibling was 44 and a grandfather.

Olde Crone
26-05-13, 23:55
Shona

I have one of those as well, drove me nearly round the bend. I thought I was dealing with three men because the children were born over a period of 49 (?) years to three women, two of whom had the same name!

I only managed to solve the problem when I studied the monumental inscriptions and made a time line. It was one man married three times, wives one and three having the same very common name. Eldest child was a grandmother several times over by the time her youngest half sibling was born.

OC

Shona
27-05-13, 00:37
Good example, OC. Another puzzler I dealt with was this great-grandmother's husband. She was his second wife - and a good 20 years younger than him. I thought I had all the offspring from both of great-grandfather's marriages, until I read his obit in the local newspaper. There were too many sons. Eventually discovered he had a son with the farmer's daughter.

anne fraser
27-05-13, 14:41
It is estimated that about a third of the population died in the great plague in 1665. This is a genetic bottle neck and it is likely that a lot of Richard 111 relations perished as well.

Glen TK
27-05-13, 18:12
Well in my generation we have 33 years between oldest and youngest half siblings,......so far. As the father to them all started at the age of 18 he was only 51 when the youngest was born so it's very likely the rumour of a few more younger ones is true, I'm almost scared to look any further, I'm now almost at the point of breaking the 20 half sibling barrier and no longer the youngest.

Daniel
09-10-13, 11:47
Apparently, there are 17 generations from Anne of York (Richard III's sister) to the modern day. If you use this number as the exponent and 2 as the base number (which was used by the management consultant - no mathematics qualification by the way - on the BBC radio item), you get 131,072. A very long way off 12 million! Is it also suggested that this figure may actually be too high due to various 'genealogical' factors (infant mortality, inter-marriage etc)?

Michael
09-10-13, 14:25
Yes, intermarriage is the primary factor in reducing the actual number of descendants compared to the theoretical estimate. Someone has done a few calculations comparing the number of unique ancestors to the theoretical number in the case of Prince William: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fettesi/unique.htm

At the 17th generation, of the 131,072 ancestors he 'should' have, 47,420 have been identified (the numbers given are cumulative, so to get those for the 17th generation only you have to subtract one row from the next), but those include only 3,871 distinct individuals! So over 17 generations, inter-marriage reduces the number of ancestors/descendants of an individual by a factor of around 13 - giving Richard about 10,000 living descendants at that generation. You can add on some from the next generation or two on lines which reproduced earlier, and some from the previous generation who are still alive, but the total number of descendants is still only going to be in the tens of thousands - certainly not millions.

Phoenix
09-10-13, 15:59
That argument is equally spurious, Michael, because it assumes that there was no social mobility. Patently there was, otherwise I wouldn't be (according to the lady) descended from Edward I.

My one name study is based on a man born in 1722. I have found about 700 surname descendants - ignoring a colossal branch. I would reckon over say 9 generations the total number of descendants would be at least 35,000 (using your shrinkage factor of 10 for intermarriages) on the assumption that half were females who bred at the same rates as the men. The Canadian branch is completely skewed as two brothers had about a dozen sons between them who then seemed to populate half of Ontario.

Olde Crone
09-10-13, 20:31
I also have done a study of a "gateway" ancestor, born conveniently in 1700. He had eleven children (all survived) over 100 grandchildren, blah blah, to a point in early 1900 where I could identify over 5000 descendants. However, the tree then implects and gradually dies out. I can find only about 800 descendants at the present time and with family sizes apparently now firmly fixed at 1.9 children, the line is going to virtually die out - there won't be millions that's for sure. Incidentally, there were more than the usual intermarriages as this was an isolated area until about 80 years ago.

OC

Carolyn P
09-10-13, 20:55
Phoenix, if the apparently very well informed lady I have been communicating with is correct, we must be distant cousins (along with a fair few others), as I am also a descendant of Edward 1 through his daughter Elizabeth who married Humphrey de Bohun. Needless to say, my family has also been very ordinary for at least the last few centuries.

Phoenix
09-10-13, 23:37
Me too, Carolyn. I have Courtenays and Champernownes in the mix, but by the 1500s the eligible females are being snapped up by rich merchants and yeoman farmers busy on social climbing. Needless to say, by the 1800s they hardly had two pennies to rub together.

Kit
16-10-13, 10:03
I have quite a few intermarriages on my side, I'm my own second cousin, I think, but on OH's main line there is only one and not a direct line for him. Two people got married, had children, she died and her cousin then married the husband.

Back to R III is the Queen related to him? Going back about the required 20 generations (I'm guessing) the Queen Mum's wealthy ancestor had an affair (please sit down and calm yourself) and OH is said to be descended from the offspring.

Phoenix
16-10-13, 21:03
Just discovered from last night's talk that the Queen has black ancestors, from George III's wife.

Olde Crone
16-10-13, 23:04
Kit

Yes, the Queen is related to Richard III. He is her 14 x Great great uncle. I don't suppose they exchange Xmas cards........

OC

Kit
17-10-13, 03:00
Thanks OC. That means I am extremely distantly related (by marriage) to Richard III myself, as long as proper (or any) evidence is not required. :)

I should explain. We went to a family reunion for OH's side and they had a book for sale that had been researched by one of the older members of the family. The man had worked on the tree solidly for many hours a day for a year or so. I got it home and realised he had not spent one cent on certificates but it is my claim to being related to royalty. ;)

I also claim all relationships for OH's side, unless I don't like them, as I am the one who put all the effort into determining they were relatives.

My only genuine/proven claim to royalty is that one of my distant somethings was the bell cleaner on the brittannia or whatever the royal ship was at the time. The census was very specific, it may have been a brass bell but i can't remember now. Who knows maybe there was an indiscretion? Or more likely she may have even see a royal person, in the distance, down the other end of the ship, if she squinted. She is very important to me, although I can not recall her name.

maggie_4_7
17-10-13, 06:24
Just discovered from last night's talk that the Queen has black ancestors, from George III's wife.

Is the link you are talking Margarida de Castro e Sousa who was descended from Madragana, although Madragana was described as a moor they now believe that she was in fact a Christian Sephardic Jew.

Phoenix
17-10-13, 07:37
Hmm. I had assumed we were talking c 1600, rather than c 1250 :D

Though we were advised that "black" in records was a reflection of skin tone, rather than racial origins, and could encompass gypsies and jews.

Shona
17-10-13, 11:04
I do like the story about the Queen's so-called black ancestry, but the family tree linking Charlotte back to the mistress of a 13th-century King of Portugal would come crashing down once the eagle-eyed researchers on GF got stuck in.

Slightly related is this story about the African ancestry of one group of Yorkshiremen.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11018-genes-reveal-west-african-heritage-of-white-brits.html

Olde Crone
20-10-13, 17:16
Thankyou for the interesting link, Shona. I know these articles are written in a dumbed-down way without going into fine detail, but......there have always been black people in the UK and they were not all slaves or descendants of slaves. As it happens, I'm just reading a book which mentions the black Senegalese (next door to Guinea Bissau) amabassador for Portugal who was in England in very early 1500s. Portugal owned Guinea for many centuries.

There is also the misunderstanding that the Y-chromosome somehow codes for skin colour - it doesn't, it is merely the decider of sex (male) and a very few other things. Just because two men have the same Y-dna does not mean they will have the same skin colour.

And who is to say that the rare haplotype now found only in Guinea Bissau and Yorkshire, lol, started there? Why couldn't it have started in China (for silly example) and spread sideways, dying out in all except the two present day locations.

OC

Daniel
15-02-14, 17:55
And, it would seem, far more realistic in terms of numbers...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/379766/Descendants-of-King-Richard-III-ruled-the-free-world

Olde Crone
15-02-14, 19:08
How can ANYONE be a descendant of this man when he had only one legitimate child who died in childhood!!!!!!!

OC

ElizabethHerts
15-02-14, 19:15
How can ANYONE be a descendant of this man when he had only one legitimate child who died in childhood!!!!!!!

OC

A similar scenario in our family where some insist that OH's line is descended from Sir Isaac Newton. Only problem, he didn't marry and there are no recorded children. So then I was told that they were probably descended from his siblings - except he only had half-siblings, with the surname Smith and not Newton!

If the facts don't fit the theory, the theory is probably wrong!

Olde Crone
15-02-14, 19:47
Elizabeth

Yes, but don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, or indeed a good family tree!

I notice it is Anthony Adolph who is saying most of the Wstern world is descended from Rlll. You really would think he would do his research a bit more carefully.........

OC

Kit
15-02-14, 23:34
Same as Sir Francis Drake, you can't be descended from him either. You can only be related.

Daniel
16-02-14, 10:31
How can ANYONE be a descendant of this man when he had only one legitimate child who died in childhood!!!!!!!

OC

Absolutely. But I think the term 'descendant' is being used by many (particularly those in the media) expediently. Richard III clearly has collateral descendants alive today - that is to say direct descendants of his siblings.

ElizabethHerts
16-02-14, 11:58
Similarly, some genealogy sites ask "Is this your ancestor?".

Umm, no, but it is someone I'm researching who is connected to my ancestors, is the frequent reply from me.

Olde Crone
16-02-14, 13:23
Why do I want to sing "Lloyd George knew my father" lol.

OC

Kit
17-02-14, 03:29
Absolutely. But I think the term 'descendant' is being used by many (particularly those in the media) expediently. Richard III clearly has collateral descendants alive today - that is to say direct descendants of his siblings.

I think that many don't understand the difference between related to and descend from, particularly when looking into the past.

The term collateral descendants is a new one for me.

kiterunner
28-03-14, 11:29
Interesting update about the remains that they found in Leicester:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/27/richard-iii-remains-leicester-doubt-car-park-academics

Olde Crone
29-03-14, 10:19
Thanks Kate. Nice to know that some leading experts agree with US, lol.

OC