Back in October 2009 I published my genealogical connection to Emperor Charlemagne [My Family and Other Emperors]. It is wrong. I relied too much on the information found in Ancestry.com and much of that information is unreliable.In my case the connection was through Ruhamah Hill (b ~1708) who married John Belden (1728 - ). They were British citizens who lived in Norwalk, Fairfield Country, Connecticut (a colony of Great Britain). The parents of Ruhamah Hill are often listed as William Hill and Abigail Barlow of Greenfield Connecticut but there's no evidence to support this connection. On the other hand, historical records say that Ruhamah Hill is the daughter of Captain John Hill (1669 - 1768?) of Westerley, Rhode Island and this seems much more reasonable since Captain John Hill married Ruhamah Wyer (1670 - ).
There goes my connection to Charlemagne and all of the other notables on the list.
Not to worry. The probability is high that I am a descendant of Charlemagne just like most others with any European blood [Are You a Descendant of Charlemagne?]. There are two other connections in my genealogy. I'm working on conformation.
Ms Sandwalk doesn't seem to have any ancestors that connect to European royalty but she is related to a number of very interesting people. Unfortunately, she's too embarrassed to let me mention them in public.
Ancestry.com throws up suggestions based on it's crawler's matches, but each suggestion has to be evaluated independently. I've been through this a few times myself.
ReplyDeleteIt's OK, take solace that you are probably connected to Genghis Khan :-)
ReplyDeleteProbably most people with Western European ancestry are descendants of Charlemagne, many of them multiple times. What is interesting is that, even though Charlemagne is a figure from the Dark Ages, we actually might some day see Charlemagne's genome sequenced! That is because he was buried under the floor of the chapel at Aachen (his own cathedral) and as of the 19th century his skeleton was findable and was in reasonable condition. Which is remarkable for a remove of almost 1200 years.
ReplyDeleteI worry about some of the more far-out 'Puritan' names being transcription errors, possibly long standing ones.
ReplyDelete"Ruhamah" from a particularly florid "Susannah" in Italic or Secretary hand?