It's been awhile since I've posted. To make a long story short, I went for a job I
really wanted... gave it a lot of me, and I've just been feeling exhausted since I didn't get it. What king of person with 5 years experience goes for an entry level job anyway? But this isn't about that, or what I've been doing in the past few weeks. I went to Whistler, which was awesome, so maybe I will post about that later.
I stumbled across ancestry.com today, and to be honest, I got pretty addicted. I decided to see how far back I could "trace" my genealogy (though the hints function) before it runs out. I thought I ran into that with a guy named John Peryns from Somerset, England born in 1401, but it turns out we have a much more interesting history when I hit the Scottish branch of the family.
Finding links to the past through other people's family trees was pretty difficult once I got out of the family I knew, sometimes there would just be a first name or last name and a date of birth. No place or date of death or much else. But that all changed when I stumbled upon a man by the name of Carnegie in late 14th century Scotland. I figure that since he's probably THE Carnegie's ancestor somehow, that someone really researched this. The trees/records became pretty precise, with the actual day of some of the people's deaths.
Currently, I have discovered 5 castles (Dindonald, Dundaff, Rosslyn, Montrose, and Inchmurrin), four Earldoms (including
Fergus, Lord of Galloway, via his possible marriage to an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England), and a whole slew of history. Who knew?? I'm not related to General McClellan, but this is so much cooler.
The entire Fergus storyline fascinates me... according to wikipedia his orgins are kind of a mystery, so I am going to say what my family tree tells me. His father is Gudrod (Godfred) Cronan from the Isle of Man (who died in Iceland in 1095) and his mother is Maria Haardraada Haraldsdatter from Norway. And his wife, which the tree names Elizabeth of England, is the illegitimate (?) daughter of King Henry I Beauclerc of England (William the Conqueror's son) and Matilda, Princess of Scotland. Anyone else confused? I am... here's a picture to help (if its too little try clicking on it):
So according to Ancestry.com, not only do I share a 10th great grandmother with John F. Kennedy, but I am descended from royalty! After discovering all this, I gave up on seeing how far back I could go. A king has ancestors to infinity (and so does the legend of Fergus for that matter). But do I stop looking? Of course not... I dig a little deeper, and see that there is a lot of activity from the Norweigans pre-1100. Which, as we all should know, is the viking era, which explains why their is a Norse in Scotland and someone ending up in Iceland. I delved a bit more into the royalty as well, but if you're truly interested in that there are plenty of history books for that.
I think thats enough digging for the night... the oldest date I could find was right at about 1000 AD, because before that, they just didn't worry about the dates. Its pretty late now, but be patient with me, I will update again eventually!
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