Can I really be related to so many Surety Barons?

Question

Using the 'Relationship toMe' link, I see the following connections, this seems unlikely ...

William (Albini) d'Aubigny	26th great grandfather
Hugh Bigod	25th great grandfather
Roger Bigod	26th great grandfather
Henry de Bohun	26th great grandfather
Gilbert de Clare	25th great grandfather
Richard de Clare	26th great grandfather
John (Clavering) FitzRobert	25th great grandfather
Robert Fitzwater	25th great grandfather
William de Forz	11th cousins 17 times removed
William Hardell	No Connection Found ... Yet
William de Huntingfield	27th great grandfather
John de Lacy	25th great grandfather
William de Lanvalay	first cousins 26 times removed
William Malet	27th great grandfather
Geoffrey de Mandeville	24th great grand uncle
William Marshall	25th great grand uncle
Roger de Montbegon	24th great grand uncle
Richard de Montfichet	25th great grand uncle
William de Mowbray	25th great grand uncle
Richard de Percy	26th great grand uncle
Saher de Quincy	27th great grandfather
Robert de Ros	26th great grandfather
Geoffrey de Say	No Connection Found ... Yet
Robert de Vere	27th great grandfather
Eustace de Vescy	third cousins 26 times removed

Comments

I have 5 surety Barons, and thought wow its a lot. Your line It seems like a bit much, I imagine, maybe one or two are faulty, but it is possible. You have to remember their kids married each other. Making multiple Barons possible in anyones line. Plus mathematically speaking going back 30 generations, you would have over a 1000 great grandfathers. And their were what how many Barons, so yes its certainly possible.

Roger and Hugh Bigod were father and son, while thats two Barons,but its one line. Then a Bigod married a Bohun,,making 2 lines and 3 Barons. A Quincy married a Devere, making 2 barons in one line thru marriage. Looking at it like that, its possible.

Im related to every president except 7. Most have royal blood in their lines. We've always been a Monarchy in a way, we just didnt know it until now. If you come from a family that made connections in marriage, dont be surprised if your a cousin to every president too, lol. Marrying well and keeping it in the family, so to speak, was commonplace with our ancestors.

Answer 1

Good question! I had a similar list which I used to disconnected a bunch (at least 10) profiles that had false or fabricated information. My basic method is to generate the relationship to the Surety Baron, go in the middle somewhere to find the immigrant and their parents. If neither (father, mother and/or immigrant) were in Magna Carta Ancestry 2nd ed, the chances of the connection being valid are super low. It's usually easier to check Marlyn Lewis' site to find facts cited from MCA and other works written by Richardson. Eventually I found only one Gateway ancestor that was valid, Olive (Welby) Farwell , although somehow I keep getting new ones - there's two new ones today!

That said it's possible that's correct. Olive above was related to multiple Barons because of the way gentry families intermarried.

Answer 2

How are you doing on US Presidents?  Interestingly I didn't increase the number (4) by switching from 15 gen to 30 gen.  But I expect if you get into England early you don't need many links to get large numbers so far back.

Comments

Some US presidents, i.e.. George Washington, the Bushes, have a documented aristocratic background but there's a lot of fabricated pedigrees for others and most have their tree end abruptly at their immigrant ancestor(s).

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I haven't checked every single president yet.  But the ones that do show a relationship all go through what I believe is a false connection.  *sigh*

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i was doing revolution and mayflower connections when i ran across the Magna Carta trails. Presidents are on my 'to-do' list.

edit:  I just clicked through all of the presidents. I am a distant cousin to all but 5 presidents. hmmmm...

Answer 3

It's possible--I'm descended from like 11 (some several times over). If you're able to tie yourself with valid documentation to one of the Gateway ancestors in Richardson's book, then I'd say the chances are pretty high. I don't say solid, because I know one of mine he still has in RA that is now in doubt (Col. John Henry, father of Patrick Henry).

Here are my Gateway ancestors: Col. Walter Aston, Mrs. Sarah Ludlow Carter, Katherine Deighton, Gov. Thomas Dudley, John Harleston, Warham Horsmanden, Henry Isham, William Randolph, and Elizabeth Towneley.

But using wikitree solely to find out your relation? Not reliable (yet)....

Answer 4

My theory is controversial, but forces me to believe that all magna carta immigrants and are related: to the Beaucamps, Beaumonts, Woods .Baileys and them comng to America first?

Kind of throws  a shadow on-the theory it was all poor people who settled the colonies though. I know they all show those related names.

Answer 5

From a mathematical standpoint, it makes perfect sense. In the generation of your 27th great-grandparents, that means a potential 512 million possible ancestors. Of course, due to cousin marriages and the fact that there probably were only about 70 million people living in Europe in the 13th century, you aren't going to fill those 512 million spots in your tree with unique people.

Proving it with a paper trail is another matter entirely ;)

Answer 6

If you really want to know the answer to this...

What are the names of your gateway ancestors? E.g. the immigrant to America who connects you to these Surety Barons.

Comments

i looked at the gateway ancestor list and some were not immigrants, they were born & died in England. so what defines a 'gateway?

I have the names of the ancestors that floated over on boats, but they are not on the official 'gateway' list

Elizabeth Howland (Tilley-73) and Joan Tilley (Hurst-26) for 1

George Kendrick (Kendrick-211) for 2 of them

John Dunham Sr. (Dunham-151) for 19 of them

 

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Jason,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  You are going to lose at least 19 of them.  The ancestry of John Dunham is a case of known genealogical fraud.  John Dunham's parentage is unproven.  He *might* have been a son of Richard Dunham of Langford, co. Bedford.  Richard's ancestry is unknown.  They certainly were not connected to a Dunham family of Scrooby, co. Nottingham (this family is completely fictitious).

• The American Genealogist, vol. 71 (1996):130-33. The English Origin and First Marriage of Deacon John Dunham of Plymouth, Massachusetts, by Robert Leigh Ward. AmericanAncestors.org (paid) LINK

• The American Genealogist, vol. 73 (1998):101-104. The Fraudulent Ancestry of Deacon John Dunham of Plymouth, by Paul C. Reed. AmericanAncestors.org (paid) LINK

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Interesting. I didn't expect to find any fraud when I started my research. Thanks for looking out for us.

Answer 7

I got similar results with the relationship finder, there are a lot of mistakes in the trees found. My best connections are through Olive Welby (Welby-8)