My sister does a
lot of genealogical research on our family, helped along by people in
other branches of the family who are also into genealogy. She
recently received a lot of new material from a different branch of
the Hardin family than ours. Our line split off from the Hardins
through a daughter that married into the Storms family in Kentucky in
1832. She moved to Texas with her children sometime after her
husband was kicked by a horse and died.
Two generations
later, our line jumps again through her granddaughter who married
into the Sims family, and again through her daughter to the Bace
family, and again through her daughter who married into the Abbott
family, to me. I'm still an Abbott but my children jumped again,
taking their father's name, Leva, and again as my daughter's children
are Russells.
Obviously, not
much work has been done on the male lines. My sister keeps hitting
dead ends. Our own paternal family name, Abbott, dead ends with my
great great grandfather. Some big rift during the Civil War era and
names possibly changed, with no further documentation of my twice
great grandfather. And the same trends true for the other previous
male lines, ending after several generations.
The Storms line
went back the farthest, to 1600 in Germany. The Halls, a close
second, went back to the 1600s in England. My female line of the
Halls married into the Storms in the mid 1700s.
Confused yet?
Believe me, it
can be very confusing.
The new
documentation and information takes the Hardins all the way back to
Olaf Bjornsson (ca 970 – 975), a semi-legendary Swedish king who
co-ruled with his brother Eric the Victorious, according to the
Hervarar saga.* When Olaf died of poison, his
brother, instead of naming Olaf's son, the prince Styrbjorn the
Strong, co-ruler, he named his own unborn (if it was a) son. It was,
indeed, and that son became Olof of Sweden.
Styrbjorn
the Strong married Princess Thyra of Denmark and sired Thorgils
Sparkaleg Stybrjornsson in 967 in Sweden, farthest 'official'
generation.
From
Thorgils Sparkaleg Stybrjornsson to me is 36 generations.
The
next several generations are pretty interesting and I'll post about
them next.
*
disclaimer: none of this may be true
i know an awful lot of work and research goes into this. yikes!
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a lot of work. I'm still thinking about the woman who moved to Texas after her husband was killed by a horse. If that were me, I think I would have moved to Manhattan. So fewer horses there.
ReplyDeleteYou're descended from royalty, though: wow!
Interesting, isn't it. In many ways. As I worked my way along a line of his cousins to reach my grandfather I could only think Damn, those Irish sure had a lot of kids!
ReplyDeleteOMG I read the whole thing and am quite impressed and then the disclaimer :). It's fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThe jury (me) is still out on this hobby. My mother was the third generation born in the same little cottage in North Wales - my father traced her family tree pretty easily (great-grandmother had a scrawly map in the family bible) They were all Welsh for generations and generations, water-diviners. His family were a somewhat more adventurous and scandelous ... grandfathers that ran off with call-girls etc - I've never really had any inclination to look further back ... scared of what I might find?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid to dip my toe into these waters - I have enough obsessions as it is! And I suspect poor farmers ad infinitum in my ancestry, so it will either be difficult or BORING to uncover that. Besides the fact that I'm almost positive that there is African American (or Native American) in my bloodline - & would I really be able to uncover that? It would be pretty cool if I could.
ReplyDelete(I think I might be talking myself into trying - ha!)
Beloved is related to William The Conqueror (12th C) and I am related to Charlemagne (9th C).
ReplyDeleteBut then, so is practically everybody in England and Germany. All you need to do is go back far enough.