We are all Irish according to Ancestry.com

One of my wife's relatives just had her DNA tested by Ancestry.com and the results show that she is 61% Irish.¹ She was (pleasantly) surprised so she shared the information with her relatives, including Ms. Sandwalk.

I was also surprised because I have a pretty extensive genealogy of my wife's side of the family and there's no ancestor from Ireland. Her grandparents—the aunt's parents—have typically Scottish surnames and they are the product of several generations of Scottish ancestors from a small community in Eastern Ontario.

I know of all the ancestors of the aunt (and my wife's mother) for five generations. That's 32 ancestors—their great-great-great-grandparents (Ms. Sandwalk's great⁴-grandparents). There were four ancestors born in England and 28 born in Scotland, mostly around Glasgow. The original settlers of this district all came from Scotland. That means that to a first approximation about 87% of the aunt's DNA comes from Scotland.

The genealogy of Jesus

I saw this at The Cloisters when I was in New York last week. It's very hard to read¹ so I'm not sure if it's accurate.

Here's what the Metropolitan Museum of Art has to say about The Compendium of History through the Genealogy of Christ by Peter of Poitiers.

Admirable for its concision and graphic boldness, this imposing scroll presents a history of the known world from the creation of Adam until the birth of Jesus. It is a teaching tool—a graphic summary of a classroom text. The ancestry of Jesus, traced back to the first man, is shown through a stemma (a system of lines and framed circles that runs down the center of the scroll’s length). Noteworthy ancestors, including King David with his harp, are pictured at regular intervals along the stemma. Successions of biblical rulers, as well as the lineage of ancient rulers of the Near East, Greece, and Rome appear on less elaborate stemmata that diverge from, converge with, and run parallel to that central history.

Sounds authentic to me. I wonder who is listed as the father of Jesus and if the genealogy covers the ancestors of Mary all the way back to Eve?

Peter of Poiters lived in England and the scroll was created in the 1200s. I bet he had lots of fun searching ancestry.com and all the census records from Ur and Egypt.

Here's photo that I took at The Cloisters.

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1. It was in a dark corner and my Latin is a bit rusty.

The Burghers of Calais at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

There are 13 casts of the famous sculpture by Rodin [The Burghers of Calais]. I've seen four of them (Paris, Washington, Los Angeles, New York). I took this photo today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The burghers thought they were sacrificing their lives to save the inhabitants of Calais, which was being starved into submission by Edward III of England in 1347. Their lives were spared after Queen Philippa convinced her husband to be lenient.

One of my ancestors is Paon de Roet. He was a knight in Queen Phillippa's retinue and was one of two knights assigned to protect the burghers of Calais. I descend from Paon de Roet's daughter, Katherine. Her sister, Philippa (named after the Queen), married a poet named Geoffrey Chaucer [My Connection to Geoffrey Chaucer and Medieval Science].

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James Hutton and John Playfair and a genealogical connection

I'm reading Eternal Ephemera by Niles Eldredge and learning about the early history of evolution and geology. Eldredge describes the work of James Hutton who is known as the father of modern geology. Here's the Wikipedia description of his work ...

He originated the theory of uniformitarianism—a fundamental principle of geology—which explains the features of the Earth's crust by means of natural processes over geologic time. Hutton's work established geology as a proper science, and thus he is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology".[2][3]

Through observation and carefully reasoned geological arguments, Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; he recognised that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His theories of geology and geologic time,[4] also called deep time,[5] came to be included in theories which were called plutonism and uniformitarianism.

I'm Related to a Philosopher! Edwin Proctor Robins (1872-1899)

I'm been filing and organizing my mother's genealogical data and I came across a list of people buried in various Prince Edward Island (Canada) cemeteries. One of the tombstones in the Lower Bedeque United Church Cemetery says, "In Memory Of / Edwin Proctor Robins, / Born At / Central Bedeque / July 2, 1872. / Died at / Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. / April 19 1899. / Mors Janua Vitae [Death is the gate of [everlasting] life]" [Edwin Proctor Robins].

This was intriguing. I know I am related to all the Robins (Robbins) descendents from Prince Edward Island but I'd never heard of Edwin Proctor Robins. His great-grandfather, Robert Robbins, is a United Empire Loyalist who came to PEI from New Jersey when the American Revolution ended. Edwin Proctor Robins and I are fourth cousins, three times removed. Why did he die at Cornell University?

I still don't know how he died and why he was so young (26 years old) but I did find a book he published on Some Problems of Lotze's Theory of Knowledge. I think the book was first published in 1900—a year after he died. Sounds like Edwin Proctor Robins might have been an epistemologist. Does anyone know anything about my relative or about Lotz's Theory of Knowledge?

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Dr. Azor Betts vs Smallpox and George Washington

Dr. Azor Betts (1740-1809) is a distant cousin of mine. His mother was Mary Beldon and I descend from another Mary Beldon who is a cousin of Dr. Azor Betts' mother. Our common ancestor is William Belden (1609-1655) of Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Dr. Betts' father was Nathan Betts and I'm also related to him through my ancestor Tama Betts (1754 - ).

Dr. Azor Betts was a physician in New York city at the beginning of the American Revolution in 1776. At the time there was a smallpox epidemic in the city and other parts of the colonies. George Washington had issued an order that no soldier of the Continental Army should be inoculated. In spite of this order Dr. Betts inoculated several officers at their urging.

Betts was arrested and George Washington issued a second order ...

The General presents his Compliments to the Honorable The Provincial Congress, and General Committee, is much obliged to them, for their Care, in endeavoring to prevent the spreading of the Small-pox (by Inoculation or any other way) in this City, or in the Continental Army, which might prove fatal to the army, if allowed of, at this critical time, when there is reason to expect thay may soon be called to action; and orders that the Officers take the strictest care, to examine into the state of their respective Corps, and thereby prevent Inoculation amongst them; which, if any Soldier should presume upon, he must expect the severst punishment.

Any Officer in the Continental Army, who shall suffer himself to be inoculated, will be cashiered and turned out of the army, and have his name published in the News papers throughout the Continent, as an Enemy and Traitor to his Country.

Upon the first appearance of any eruption, the Officer discovering of it in any Soldiers, is to give information to the Regimental Surgeon, and the Surgeon make report of the same, to the Director General of the hospital.

Dr. Azor Betts continued to give inoculations to officers of the Continental Army so he was arrested and imprisoned. He was freed when the British took over New York and the Continental Army retreated to New Jersey.

Dr. Betts became an officer in the Kings American Regiment (a Loyalist regiment) and later on was a surgeon in the Queen's Rangers. At the end of the war he moved his family to New Brunswick (Canada) and then to Nova Scotia where many of his descendants still live.

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James Hood (1776-1859)

We were at a wedding in Orillia (Ontario) on the weekend with my son and his wife. On the way home we took the long route and stopped at the Creemore Union Cemetery in Creemore, Ontario. The town is known mainly for its beer (Creemore Springs Brewery) but we were looking for ancestors.

James Hood was born on April 6, 1775 in Kelso, Scotland but his family moved to the Glascow area a few years later. His father was a Calton weaver and so was James. The recession following the end of the Napoleonic Wars meant that the weavers could no longer make a decent living and the British government encouraged them to emigrate to Canada by offering free passage and free land.

James and his family arrived in Canada on the "Prompt" in 1820. They settled originally in the area around Perth, Ontario. My wife, Leslie (neé Rodger) descends from James' son William whose family remained in Perth. James Hood and many of his other children moved to the Creemore area in 1830 and that's where he died on July 30, 1859.

James Hood is my wife's great, great, great, great, grandfather (and the great⁵ grandfather of Gordon and Jane). He is also the great, great, great grandfather of Mitt Romney [see A Mormon Tale].

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My Connection to Geoffrey Chaucer and Medieval Science

One of my ancestors is Katherine de Roet (1349-1403) better known as Katherine Swynford since she married Hugh Swynford. Katherine was the mistress (later wife) of John of Gaunt (1340-1399) and they had several children. I descend from one of them, John Beaufort (1373-1410).¹

Katherine's father was Paon de Roet better known as Sir Gilles. He comes from Hainault in Belgium and he served Philippa of Hainault who became the wife of King Edward III of England.

Katherine's sister, also called Philippa (1346-1387) [Philippa Roet] was a prominent member of Queen Philippa's court in England. At first, she was a child companion of the children of Elizabeth of Ulster and the Queen but later on she was a lady-in-waiting. Geoffrey Chaucer became a page in the household of Elizabeth of Ulster in 1357 when he was 14 and Phillipa was 11.

Queen Philippa encouraged them to marry in September 1366. Chaucer and Philippa Roet had two sons and two daughters. The youngest son, Lewis, was born in 1381 and attended Oxford beginning in 1391. Chaucer noticed that his son was interested in science and he wrote A Treatise on the Astrolabe to explain the workings of an astrolabe that he gave him when he was about 10 years old.

A Treatise on the Astrolabe
Geoffrey Chaucer
Lyte Lowys my sone, I aperceyve wel by certeyne evydences thyn abilite to lerne sciences touching nombres and proporciouns; and as wel considre I thy besy praier in special to lerne the tretys of the Astrelabie. Than for as moche as a philosofre saith, "he wrappith him in his frend, that condescendith to the rightfulle praiers of his frend," therfore have I yeven the a suffisant Astrolabie as for oure orizonte, compowned after the latitude of Oxenforde; upon which, by mediacioun of this litel tretys, I purpose to teche the a certein nombre of conclusions aperteynyng to the same instrument.

[Little Lewis my son, I perceive well by certain evidences thine ability to learn sciences touching numbers and proportions; and as well consider I thy constant prayer in special to learn the treatise of the Astrolabe. Than for as much as a philosopher saith, "He wrappth him in his friend, that condescendth to the rightful prayers of his friend", therefore have I given thee a suffisant Astrolabe as for our horizons, compounded after the latitude of Oxford; upon which, by means of this little treatise, I purpose to teach thee a certain number of conclusions pertaining to the same instrument.

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[Image credits: Wikipedia: Geoffrey Chaucer, Wikipedia: Chaucer Astrolobe]

1. Almost everyone who has European ancestors will eventually connect to European nobility so there are millions of people who descend from John of Gaunt [see Are You a Descendant of Charlemagne?]. If you know the names of all sixteen of your great-great-grandparents and their dates and places of birth, then chances are high that you can make the connection with only a little effort.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

One of the cool things about studying your genealogy is that you can find connections to almost everyone. This means you can celebrate dozens of special days. In my case it was easy to find ancestors from England, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, United States, and, of course, Ireland.

We will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day today. It's rather hectic keeping up with all the national holidays but somebody has to keep the traditions alive!

Here's my Irish connection.¹ The shortest connection is to the parents of my grandmother. My great-grandfather was Thomas (Keys) Foster, born in County Tyrone on September 5, 1852. He immigrated to Canada in 1876. Thomas married Eliza Ann Job, born in Fintona, County Tyrone on August 18, 1852. She immigrated to Canada in 1877.

Thomas and Eliza settled in Saskatchewan in 1883 and that's where my grandmother was born. Other ancestors in this line came from the adjacent counties of Donegal (surname Foster) and Fermanagh (surnames Keys, Emerson, Moore) and possibly Londonderry (surname Job).

My paternal grandfather's father was William Findley Docherty (1852-1920). Many of his ancestors were Irish but his DNA was considerably diluted by contamination from Scots.

That makes me at least one quarter Irish² and entitles me to drink beer and wear green. My children, however, are only one eighth Irish. They aren't allowed to drink beer.


Happy St. Patrick's Day (2011)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2010)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2009)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2008)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2007)
Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages

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1. You don't have to be Irish or have Irish ancestors to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

2. With the proviso that my Irish great-grandparents are probably descended from English setters who came to Ireland in the 1600s. I usually don't mention this on St. Patrick's day.

A Mormon Tale: The Romney Connection

My wife and our children are cousins of Mitt Romney. This is the story of their common ancestor James Hood and his Mormon descendants.A Mormon Tale

• Glasgow to Ontario
• Ontario to Nauvoo
• Nauvoo to Utah
• The Romney Connection

The Romney Connection

Hannah Hood Hill arrived in Salt Lake City when she was eight years old. She lived there with her father Archibald Newell Hill and his four wives. (Hannah’s mother, Isabella Hood, died at Winters Quarters in 1847.)

On May 10, 1862 Hannah Hood Hill married Miles Park Romney. Miles was born on August 18, 1843 in Nauvoo. His parents had been converted to the Church of the Latter Day Saints while living in England

Miles Romney (1806-1877) and his wife Elizabeth Gaskell (1809-1884) lived in the Liverpool area. Following their baptism, they sailed for New Orleans and made their way up the Mississippi by steamboat arriving at Nauvoo in 1841. This was a year before the Hill family arrived with Hannah Hood Hill.

The Hill family moved directly to Utah when Nauvoo was evacuated but the Romney family went to Missouri where they moved around from town to town until finally settling in St. Louis. In 1850, they were able to afford the move to Salt Lake City, Utah where they became reacquainted with the Hill family. Miles Park Romney was seven years old and Hannah Hood Hill was eight or nine.

Miles and Hannah had eleven children including Gaskell Romney (1871-1955). Miles Park Romney was sent on a mission to England Before their first child (Isabell 1863-1919) was born. While in England he preached for several years in the area around Liverpool (former home of his parents). He came back to Salt Lake City with a boatload of new English converts.

A Mormon Tale: Navoo to Utah

My wife and our children are cousins of Mitt Romney. This is the story of their common ancestor James Hood and his Mormon descendants.A Mormon Tale

• Glasgow to Ontario
• Ontario to Nauvoo
• Nauvoo to Utah
• The Romney Connection

Nauvoo to Utah

It was 1846 and the Mormons were preparing to leave Nauvoo for Utah. Many of them had crossed the Mississippi the previous year to prepare for the trip west. The Mormon town of Montrose, Iowa, had been settled some years earlier but now its population swelled to several thousand. Many blacksmiths, carpenters, and wainwrights set up shops to build wagons and carts.

The main exodus from Nauvoo began on February 4, 1846 with an advance party under Brigham Young. Archibald Newell Hood and his brother, Alexander Hill, were part of this advance party. The plan was to make it to Utah and establish a colony to receive the main body that would arrive later in the year. Here’s the description of what happened from the Wikipedia article on The Mormon Trail.

A Mormon Tale: Ontario to Nauvoo

My wife and our children are cousins of Mitt Romney. This is the story of their common ancestor James Hood and his Mormon descendants.A Mormon Tale

• Glasgow to Ontario
• Ontario to Nauvoo
• Nauvoo to Utah
• The Romney Connection

Ontario to Nauvoo

When we ended the first installment there were two families from Scotland living in Tosorontio township and Nottawasaga Township in southern Ontario. The Hood family and the Hill family came over from Scotland and settled originally in Dalhousie, in eastern Ontario. They moved south in the 1830s.

On April 6, 1832, Alexander Hill (born in 1811 in Scotland) married Agnes Hood (born in 1811 in Scotland). On Feb. 21, 1840, Isabella Hood (born in 1821 in Ontario) married Archibald Newell Hill (born in Scotland). They were married in Tosorontio where the Hill family farms were lcoated. Two brothers married Hood sisters. We are interested in the children of Isabella and Archibald. Recall that Isabella is the sister of William Hood and my wife and children descend from William.

UPDATE: The person in the photo is NOT the Isabella Hood Hill who is the mother of Hannah and the ancestor of Mitt Romney. Instead, it's the daughter of Isabella's sister who married Alexander Hill (see comments).

Archibald Newell Hill and Isobel Hood had two children while living in Canada. Samuel Hood Hill was born in Tosorontio on Dec. 23, 1840. Hannah Hood Hill was born in Tosorontio on July 9, 1842. She died in Colonia Juarez, Mexico in 1929 but a lot of interesting things happened in her life between those dates.

A Mormon Tale: Glasgow to Ontario

My wife and our children are cousins of Mitt Romney. This is the story of their common ancestor James Hood and his Mormon descendants.A Mormon Tale

• Glasgow to Ontario
• Ontario to Nauvoo
• Nauvoo to Utah
• The Romney Connection

Glasgow to OntarioJames Hood was born on April 6, 1776 in Kelso, a small town south of Edinburgh near the border with England. His parent were William Robert Hood (1744-1799)¹ and Hannah Clarke (1752-1832). James had six sisters (Agnes, Isabella, Margaret, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Mary) and one brother Dr. William Hood.

About five years after James was born, the family moved to Bridgeton in Barony Parish . At the time, Bridgeton was a small village, just north of the city of Glasgow. William Hood was employed there as a weaver and it’s quite likely that James also became a weaver at one of the factories in Barony.⁵

James Hood married Elizabeth Jones (1776-1803) in Barony on May 28, 1798. James and Elizabeth were both 22 years old. They had five children: William (1799-1894) (the direct ancestor of my wife and children), Jane (1800-1862), Elizabeth (1801-1875), Hannah (1802-1830), and Jean (1803-1803). Baby Jean dies shortly after birth and her mother, Elizabeth Jones, did not survive birth complications.

What William the Conqueror's Companions Teach Us about Effective Population Size

My mother has been working on genealogy for several decades. She recently gave me a little book called My Ancestors Came with the Conqueror by Anthony J. Camp, first published in 1988. Camp is a professional genealogist. Before discussing this book, I should let you know that the relationship between professional genealogists and the amateur genealogy found on ancestry.com is similar to the relationship between scientists and Intelligent Design Creationism.

It's estimated that half the population of Great Britain claims to have descended from William the Conqueror who defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Not all claims meet the rigorous standards of professional genealogists but it's quite reasonable that there are millions of direct descendants of William.

Back in 1400 it was less likely that you were a descendant of William because there were fewer generations and fewer descendants. This was a problem for aspiring nobility and minor landholders so they tended to settle for the next best thing—they claimed descent from one of the companions of William who accompanied him from Normandy and fought at the Battle of Hastings. Gradually the list of companions grew and grew because if you couldn't prove you were related to an existing companion, you just made one up.

Many genealogists and historians have analyzed the various lists of companions. Some lists have over three hundred names but there are only about 20 companions who are definitely known to have been present at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 [William the Conqueror's Companions, The Companions of the Conqueror]. The Order of the Conqueror’s Companions is part of a genealogical society that traces descendants of the companions of William the Conqueror. They list 39 known companions.

Let's assume that there are 20 well-documented companions. Only one of these (William Mallet) has possibly passed on his Y chromosome to the present time and even that male line of descent is disputed. This is fully consistent with our understanding of genetics when you consider that most male lines are likely to die out in a few generations. Those that survive ten generations or so are unlikely to become extinct since there will likely be several male lines at that time.

Only 10 of the companions have descendants who are alive today. This could be due to the fact that genealogists don't have perfect records for all the companions and their families but it's also quite in line with expectations.¹ You don't expect that all 20 families will avoid extinction. What this means is that for a random "population" of 40 individuals (20 companions plus their wives), only 20 of them contributed alleles to the present population after 50 generations.²

The take-home lesson from these genealogical studies is that the actual population size at a given point in time is not the same as the actual number of individuals who contribute to the gene pool over the long term.

This has long been known to population geneticists. They define a new term, N_e, called the "effective population size." In order to understand the definition of effective population size, you have to keep in mind that most of the variation in a given population is due to the presence of nearly neutral alleles whose frequency is fluctuating under the influence of random genetic drift. The parameter of interest, N_e, represents the theoretical number of individual in a population of size N who actually contribute to the variation in a population.

The definition is from Sewell Wright [Effective Population Size] ...

Effective population size is "the number of breeding individuals in an idealized population that would show the same amount of dispersion of allele frequencies under random genetic drift or the same amount of inbreeding as the population under consideration."

The effective population size is always less than the actual population (N_e < N). Sometimes it's a lot less. In most vertebrates, for example, the long-term effective population size is calculated to be about 10,000.

Why is this important? It's important because evolution is important for understanding biology and in order to understand evolution you need to understand population genetics. One of the important lessons from population genetics is that the relative important importance of natural selection and random genetic drift is dependent on effective population size. This is a major theme in Michael Lynch's book The Origins of Genome Architecture.

He argues that the effective population size of most large multicellular animals (e.g. Homo sapiens) was small enough to render natural selection impotent for most alleles that might have been somewhat beneficial in larger populations. This led to loss of such beneficial alleles by random genetic drift and to frequent fixation of mildly deleterious alleles by drift. Thus, even if the accumulation of large amounts of junk DNA, for example, was slightly deleterious, it cannot be eliminated by natural selection when the effective population size is small.

Furthermore, many alleles with small beneficial effects cannot possibly become fixed in such a population so it's silly to construct a model that relies on fixation of alleles with a small advantage. This leads to his theory of the evolution of genome complexity by nonadaptive processes. According to Lynch, the default explanation is random genetic drift and because this accounts for much of genome architecture, there's no reason to invoke natural selection to explain what we observe.

Lynch devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 4) to Why Population Size matters. I'm hoping to get more people interested in this subject by giving them a simple example of the difference between actual population size (N) effective population size (N_e).

This isn't only important in genome evolution. As most of you know, the effective population size is an important consideration in recent human evolution [From genes to numbers: effective population sizes in human evolution] and many other disciplines.

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1. The reason we focus on nobility isn't because they are more important, genealogically, than the 8,000 other soldiers at the battle. It's because we don't have any records of those other potential ancestors.

2. This doesn't mean that all of the alleles in the other 20 individuals were lost because many of them could have been passed down from siblings, aunts, uncles etc.

Daniel Belden and the Deerfield Massacre

William Beldon (1609-1655) was born in Heptonstall Parish, Yorkshire, England. He settled in Wethersfield in the Colony of Connecticut in 1641. (Wethersfield is just south of Hartford.)

William Beldon married Thomasine Sherwood (1615-1655) and they had the following children.

1. Samuel Beldon (1647-1737)
2. Daniel Belden (Belding) (1648-1732)
3. John Belden (1650-1713)
4. Susannah Beldon (1651-1706)
5. Mary Beldon (1653-1724)
6. Nathaniel Beldon (1654- )

I descend from John Belden (1650-1713) and his wife Ruth (Hale) Hayes (1646-1700). But this is a story about his brother, Daniel Beldon (sometimes known as Daniel Belding).

Cousin Lucy

We've been at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York for the past few days learning about Iran. On Wednesday afternoon we took a short trip to nearby Jamestown and visited the cemetery where Lucille Ball is buried.

Lucille Désirée Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, in 1911 and she died in Los Angeles in 1989. Her ancestors moved to Chautauqua County in the early 1800's from Connecticut. Lucy and her mother, Désirée Evelyn Hunt, are descendants of Thomas Sherwood (~1586 - 1655) and his second wife Mary Onge (?).

I descend on my mother's side from Thomas Sherwood and his first wife Alice Tiler (1585 - 1635). My ancestors moved from Connecticut to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. They were supporters of the British during the conflict. (The colonists who left are called United Empire Loyalists.) Lucy and I are 10th cousins twice removed.

The original Sherwood family came to the colony of Connecticut from Suffolk, England, in the early 1630s. They may have as many as one million living descendants so it's not that unusual to find connections such as the one between me and Lucille Ball.

What's really fascinating is what it tells us about populations and their internal genetic structure. I'm sure that many of the families from Fairfield Connecticut have few or no living descendants and the difference between them and the Sherwoods is probably a matter of luck and not genetics. That's what random genetic drift is all about.

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Losing Charlemagne

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.

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One of the cool things about studying your genealogy is that you can find connections to almost everyone. This means you can celebrate dozens of special days. In my case it was easy to find ancestors from England, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Belgium, Ukraine, Russia, United States, and, of course, Ireland.

We will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day tomorrow at the pub. It's rather hectic keeping up with all the national holidays but somebody has to keep the traditions alive!

Here's my Irish connection.¹ The shortest connection is to the parents of my grandmother. My great-grandfather was Thomas (Keys) Foster, born in County Tyrone on September 5, 1852. He immigrated to Canada in 1876. Thomas married Eliza Ann Job, born in Fintona, County Tyrone on August 18, 1852. She immigrated to Canada in 1877.

Thomas and Eliza settled in Saskatchewan in 1883 and that's where my grandmother was born. Other ancestors in this line came from the adjacent counties of Donegal (surname Foster) and Fermanagh (surnames Keys, Emerson, Moore) and possibly Londonderry (surname Job).


Happy St. Patrick's Day 2010
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2009)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2008)
Happy St. Patrick's Day (2007)
Niall Nóigiallach - Niall of the Nine Hostages

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1. You don't have to be Irish or have Irish ancestors to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

God Designed My Great-Grandparents

On the thread Impossible Molecular Machines we are being treated to a lesson in probabilities from several creationists. Here's an example of a comment from Livingstone Morford.

By Darwinism I mean the notion that everything we observe in the biological world are purely the result of stochastic processes, and I am critical of that notion.

On a different topic, I might add that intelligent design proponents need only demonstrate that the odds of a particular biochemical system evolving are 10^-40 or less in order for intelligent design to be a more adequate explanation for the origin of such a biochemical system. This is because there have been no more than 10^39 bacterial cells in the history of life on earth.

Speaking of stochastic processes, the average number of sperm contributed by a man in a mating process is 100,000,000 (10⁸). That means that every single human is the product of a single sperm cell uniting with a single egg cell and the probability that one particular sperm was successful is 10^-8.

This probability of existence applies to each of my great-grandparents.

Johann Betker was born in 1859 in Volhynia in the western part of Ukraine. The probability that he was produced from a particular sperm cell is 10^-8. His future wife, Amalie Schmuland, was born in 1868, also in Volynia. This was also an improbable event from the point of view of sperm selection. The probability that BOTH of my grandparents were born is (at least): 10^-8 × 10^-8 = 10^-16.

The same probabilities apply to Thomas Keys Foster born 1852 in country Tyrone, Ireland and his wife Eliza Ann Job born 1852 in country Tyrone. Their two births were very lucky with a total probability of only 10^-16. Now, if you combine all four of these great-grandparents you end up with a probability of 10^-32. Add in the other four great-grandparents and you end up with the total probability that all eight of these individuals would be born = 10^-64. (The real probabilities are much, much lower when you take the eggs into account.)

Since this total probability is a lot less than the total number of bacteria that have ever existed, it follows that God must have intervened somewhere. Two of my great-grandparents must have been designed by God. I wonder which two it was? My bet is that it wasn't any of the four mentioned above because they were all born outside of Canada. It was probably the two grand-parents who were born in Canada 'cause God likes Canadians.

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Our Ancestor Charlemagne: Taller than Average?

 
John Hawks found a paper analyzing the height of Charlemagne (742-814). Rühli et al. (2010) looked at measurements of Charlemagne's left tibia in order to determine his total height and robustness. The result indicates that he was 1.84 m tall (6' 0"). This is considerably taller than the average height of his male contemporaries at 1.69 m (5' 6"). Thus Charlemagne was taller than 99% of the men around him and qualifies as "great" in more ways than one.

The average height of Germans today is 1.78 m (5' 10") and Belgians are a bit taller at 1.795 (5' 10½"). (Charlemagne comes from the area around Liege in Belgium and Aachen in Germany.) Charlemagne would be taller than average in today's society but not notably taller.

The average height of Europeans (men and women) has increased by about 9-10 cm (3½-4") over 1200 years. This isn't as much as most people believe but it's still significant. (Most people who have visited Medieval Castles take note of the small doorways and assume that contemporary Europeans could pass through them without bending over. Not true—they also had to stoop to get through.)

Is this height increase due to evolution or better nutrition? When presenting this question to my students, I point out that you can only answer the question if you have a good definition of evolution. The definition of evolution I prefer is, "Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations." The key word here is "heritable." In order for average height to be an example of evolution you have to show that the genetic composition of today's European population is different from that of 1200 years ago. In other words, a change in frequency of "tallness" alleles accounts for the change in height.

That's not very likely, so we're not talking about evolution here.

Recall that Charlemagne is almost certainly your ancestor as long as you have some Europeans in your family tree [Are You a Descendant of Charlemagne?]. I happen to know how I'm connected to Charlemagne [My Family and Other Emperors] but he's almost certainly your ancestor even if you don't do genealogy.

Does that mean we all descend from a taller-than-average 9th century European therefore it's no surprise that all Europeans are taller today? No it doesn't mean that at all. Charlemagne is your ancestor—if you are of European descent—but so is everyone else who lived around him. That includes the pig farmer who lived in Herstal, and the midwife in Aix-la-Chapelle. They were average people. Some of them were much shorter than average.

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[Hat Tip: John Hawks: Charlemagne the Tall.

Rühli, F.J., Blümich, B., and Henneberg, M. (2010) Charlemagne was very tall, but not robust. Economics & Human Biology 8:289-290. [doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2009.12.005]