[Up] [Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Genealogy



The St. Clairs/Sinklers/Sinclairs that descended from Co. Richard Sinkler
(g. grandson of John of Exeter, NH) can trace their line back to
Charlemagne.  This line goes through Richard's wife Polly Cilley (can be
spelled many ways) family.
What is interesting, once you get back about 25 generations beyond her, the
chart begins to pick up many nobility such as Charles the Simple (the line
back to Charlemagne) and Henry the Fowler King of Germany , Alfred the Great
of England.  .  Didn't Charlemagne have a number of wives and concubines?
That would, of course, add to the number of his descendants.


   These families married back and forth. The kings had usually more than
one wife over the years (and who knows how many concubines, etc.) and thus
usually large families whose genealogy was recorded.  For instance, the
daughters of Edward the Elder, Saxon King of Eng. (s/o Alfred the Great),
married Charles the Simple king of the Franks, another married Hugh count of
Paris, another m. Otto I duke of Saxony and German Emperor, etc.   Also
these people had relatively better nutrition and  health care so more
children survived and were recorded in history

Here's an unusual story but illustrates the complexities of the royal
relationships:
When 61 year old Athelwolf s/o the above "Edward the Elder, was returning
from a pilgrimage to Rome, Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, presented
him with his young daughter, who may even have been a few months under
thirteen.  They had no children, but Judith caused a scandal by being
crowned queen and then went on to marry her stepson.   Through her third
marriage she became an ancestor of Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror."
from "British Kings and Queens" by Mike Ashley

    During many centuries people did not travel far from home to find a
spouse.  Thus within villages, everyone was soon related to one another.
Eventually some would find jobs in the households of the rich and famous.
And it was in this environment many times where we find the illegitimate
mixing of the aristocracy and the peasants.
   During wars, the soldiers and aristocratic officers were certainly very
busy off the  battlefields also.  If there is truth in certain scenes in
"Brave Heart", we see another method the English used to humiliate the Scots
when the English commander could claim the first night with the newly
married Scots wife.

    Eventually the grand children descended from younger children of each
aristocrat would now be so far from the line of heirship that they became
cut off from further inheritance and had to go out and seek their own
living.  This eventually placed thousands of bluebloods in the common
genetic pool as it happened with the ancestors of the Cilley's that married
Col. Richard Sinkler/Sinclair.  The truth is, that each of is probably
several times descended from Charlemagne and from a few other common
ancestors.

As ever,
Laurel



----- Original Message -----
From: "Réseau DMD" <janek@arobas.net>
To: <sinclair@quarterman.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 10:52 PM
Subject: Re: Genealogy


> First time post, so I'd like to thank all the contributors for the
wonderful
> input I have read over the last several months.
>
> Has anybody seen the May 2002 issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine, essay

[ Excess quotations omitted. ]

[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@quarterman.org
[ To get off or on the list, see http://sinclair.quarterman.org/list.html