Genealogy of Mark Hamill - WikiTree Challenge Highlights

Question

Hello WikiTreers!

WikiTree Challenge 19 for Mark Hamill has wrapped up. The collaboration was incredible to watch, and it was a lot of fun watching those Swedish and English lines grow! The Force was with team members as they took on the challenge and amazed us with their discoveries.

It was exciting to follow along as they tracked down his paternal ancestors from England, Ireland, and Scotland. The English lines connected back to some really early ancestors, including Rauld Adolpheus Lovecotes, born about 1030! The Swedish lines turned to Denmark lines, reaching back to 1475! There were many Swedish lines as well on his mother's side, reaching as far back as 1663 or earlier! Also on his mother's line were Canadian (1843) and Holy Roman Empire (1728) ancestors, which were part of his Swiss lines (1440). 

Challenge participants added 1,255 family members to his branches! There were 115 direct ancestors added, 257 nuclear relatives of ancestors, and 883 additional relatives within seven degrees! New connections were made to the global tree on all eight of the ancestral lines!! This will help a lot of us grow closer together.

Altogether, more than 46 members made 5,720 edits to his family profiles. Many did research, while others worked on profile narratives, looked up articles, added categories, made peripheral connections, and contributed in other ways.

MVP: Marta Johnson

Top Bounty Hunters: Donna Baumann & Homer Thiel

Team Captain: Kathy Nava

Challenge scoring explanation. Challenge Resources.

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Here are some highlights from our discoveries:

1. Mark's second great grandfather William Arthur Hamill served in the US Civil War for the Union. He was as an adjutant in the 156th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Infantry. He survived the war and lived until 1904, at which point his widow Priscilla applied for her widow's pension.
2. Mark’s third great grandfather Thomas Hamill (1790-1858) was born in Derryaghy, Lisburn, County Antrim. We know the village because it was recorded in his Army records in the Lancashire, England, militia. One of the oldest Catholic Churches in the region was built on the Hamill family’s farm. 
3. Another of Mark's third great grandfathers, Hiram Hull, published an advertisement in 1825 stating: "NOTICE. It is the request of the subscriber, that his FRIENDS and COUSINS should suspend their visits for two years. HIRAM HULL. Bennington, Sept. 20, 1825." The reason for the ad? He was in prison for two years.
   On the lighter side, his daughter Martha wrote a letter in his pension file that states: "father was called the handsomest man that walked the streets of old Bennington.
4. Mark's seventh great grandfather Per Olofsson (1610-1696) got a last message from the priest in his death record, "Vir dives qvidem et opibus abundans, utinam beni partis." Google translates it to, "A man rich in every way, and abounding in wealth, I wish you would go to the party." The last part might better be translated as, "I wish I could be part of it".
5. Mark's eighth great grandfather Peder Esbjörnsson (abt. 1628 - 1724) got a last message from the priest in his death record: "Har warit en mäkta wacker Man i sitt lefwerne." Translated to English: "He was a mighty handsome man in his life."

Comments

A few more interesting finds:

• Mark's fifth great-grandfather Hans Persson lived in Skåne, Sweden in the mid-1700s. His first wife Kjerstina suffocated their first child to death in the night. It was 18 days old. The record doesn't say if it was intentional or accidental.
• The oldest ancestor on the Swedish lines is Håkan Larsen (1475-1567). He was born about 1475 in what is now Sweden, but was Denmark before Treaty of Roskilde 1658. 
• Related in the sixth degree, Dr Omar Burton Pancoast, is noted in his obituary as having been Associate Professor of Surgery at John Hopkins University and of having invented an operating trunk used by surgeons when operating rooms were unavailable.
• A fifth degree relative, Annie Mary Ross, was electrocuted while removing a plug from an electric heater while still in her bath.
• Ford C. Frick was the uncle by marriage of Mark's great-uncle by marriage. He became public relations director of baseball's National League in 1934 and then NL President. Frick was instrumental in founding the Baseball Hall of Fame in the late 1930s. He helped to ease tensions and strike threats during the racial integration of the major leagues, threatening to suspend any players staging protests of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was the third commissioner of Major League Baseball.

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Click the picture to see the original image of Mark's ethnicity.

Please share this image on social media with a link to his full genealogy at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hamill-277 ... thank you, WikiTreers!

Answer 1

wow, great work! 

I see in Mark's Canadian line, there is a question about what B.C. might stand for in a record related to his maternal line gg grandmother Margaret Burns.

B.C. might stand for Bas-Canada, ie Lower Canada = Quebec, Also at one time Canada East.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Canada

It was not uncommon for the children of immigrant English speaking parents to be born in Quebec because the ship that brought them might have disembarked the family in Quebec City or Montreal.

Cheers

Shirlea