Talk about a guy who probably deserves rehabilitation in history: John III Comyn, Guardian of Scotland, son of John II Comyn, who held the same office, and Robert Brus succeeded William Wallace [who had that office for one year] after the Battle of Falkirk, which Wallace lost…and Robert ended up killing John in front of the altar of the church at Dumfries—some distance removed from this area (Kinross, outside Perth) —so John could have lost this ornament at some time prior to his murder.
The Scottish chroniclers of this period were pro-Bruce and anti-Comyn, and slanted their account, even putting people in scenes where they were not present.
Wiki the names: John II Comyn; John III Comyn; Robert the Bruce; William Wallace; Edward II; Guardians of Scotland.
I’m not as well-informed on this as I should be: I know most of what I know about this era via geneological research. But every time I hear one good thing about Robert the Bruce (Robert Brus) I then hear two negatives. My impression of him is self-interest above all else.
Contrary to the recent movie, Wallace was well-travelled, well-educated, and wealthy. I have no doubt that the victors traduce the historical truths.
I suspect most of the southern Scots were pretty much indistinguishable from the northern English at that time; neither would have been wearing woad and deer hides. (Along the border, it’s still hard to separate them; people married across that line in the grass all the time.)
The two historians that record the Robert Bruce business (Falkirk, where Wallace lost, ca. 1302) and who are pretty well THE original source material, really bollixed the account up. And the movie portrays the Scots as unwashed blue-painted barbarians. I think it’s another case of Gibson mistaking his concepts for absolute truth.
When King Harald died at Hastings and the Normans came in, the Saxon aristocracy headed for Northumbria, where they dealt across the border (if there was a border in those days) with the Scots, married into the royal line of Scotland, thus creating a claim that predates the Norman kings of England. And before that, they’d been dealing with the Vikings.
The Brus and the Balliol families had roots in Normandy; the Cummings clan (Comyn) has apparently some connection to Wales, which is a pattern often followed by Celtic/Irish/Scottish/Welsh families: they seem to pop up here and there—I have a couple of ap Comyns (ap is the Welsh ‘son of’) in my own tree, born in Wales. A lot of history books don’t mention the connections of the Saxon kings of England with the Carolingians (Charlemagne et al) but there were some dealings—witness another find, a rather risque ring involving a marriage. The whole relationship of the French Capets/Burgundians to the Normans, and to the Saxons, is left silent, but it covers the roots of those family relationships. There’s an instance in Jane’s family tree where AFTER William left for England, a power vacuum in Normandy (French coast) where William had been suddenly attracted the ambitions of Burgundian French, who were anti-Capet. This came to nothing as William’s descendants claimed this was now part of England.
But the Brus and Balliol and Umfrevilles and other folk that became all wrapped up in a desire for the Scottish crown—which itself has so many Saxon (pre-William the Conqueror) connections it makes you wonder which power people were supporting…they started in France, became entrenched in Scotland, and the French/Scottish/Danish/Norman/Normandy/Belgian intermarriages were creating a web of claims on various crowns and lordships. This all blew up (again) in the bid of the Scots to establish a border (Wallace) and let the English king (Edward) go on with his quarrel with the French over Normandy.
It didn’t work—the English king diverted himself to stop Wallace. And Scotland then fell into a civil war between the two Guardians of Scotland that succeeded Wallace…which led to the reign of Robert the Bruce, whose historians wrote the history.
Things were still not good. The border was always troublesome. There was also regional to-do over other family claims: the Percys of Yorkshire—etc, etc. The Plantagenets ran out with John, the Magna Carta established limits on the king; but it didn’t stop the tug of war between powerful baronial families and the royal lines.
Then just to frost the cake, the Black Death hit, the Protestant-Catholic feud began to run rampant in Europe and play out in Henry VIII’s feud with the Church, ca.1500, which led ultimately to a declaration that the English King couldn’t be Catholic and the English Civil War, which, coupled with economic devastation from the bouts of Black Death, began to make the risk of typhoid on a ship to the colonies seem do-able.
After the terrible events of Culloden (Bonnie Prince Charlie, 1746), when display of the tartan was banned and certain clans were wiped out, the poverty and the hardship and loss of connections, in my own opinion, led to a significan loss of information, even as to what the lost tartans were, for instance; but also involving the part various clans may have had in their own history. There was apparently nobody left to reconstruct the tartans—or to give certain historical details. Hard times followed that, leading ultimately to the forced deportations into places like Nova Scotia…Jane’s MacPhails were involved in that unhappy scene.
But there ARE records here and there, buried in family histories, attached to minor players. I’m sure there’s a good historical novel in the Comyn story. I’m not the one to write it. I’ve probably bollixed up some of the account above: I have most of my history of this period from my genealogical research, as I’ve got more than one relative in this messy feud, and what I know is what’s told about various small players in the goings-on, so relatives of OTHER participants may have a different view. But I think a really well-researched novel would be something I’d want to read on this period.
I think it’s another case of Gibson mistaking his concepts for absolute truth. Do we think that is unusual?
The royal Stewarts were descendants of a Breton immigrant, Alan fitz Flaald; even more fun.
My mother’s mother married a MacBeath, her sister Lethial, (pronounced lethal), married a Stewart. I was told that we marry them, but don’t become them! Given our mother line’s habit of marrying as far out as possible, that seems a good idea.
My family name is disputably either dialectal northern Saxon English from near the Scots border, or else a dialectal older German or Dutch name, the same sounds. They all translate to “white man, one with pale hair or complexion.” (Blond or white hair, with a medieval folklore idea that such fair hair and complexion, or changeable hair color (summer blond) or else (white blond as a child, darkening into adulthood) meant a changeling or a friend of the elves.
Regardless of how friendly they were to the elves (fine by me) — The one or two sources that claimed this could be a northern Saxon English dialectal form, from near the Scots border, gave examples of other words that had the same sound changes: f to f or v, t to ss, and so on, as given in words like “vixen” and a couple of others from Shakespeare, Chaucer, or other older sources.
But it didn’t really say how that related to historical sources such as dialect groups, English counties, Old and Middle English kingdoms and duchies prior to unification of England, and so on. It also didn’t give any reasons or citations of where these supposed ancestors bearing the name lived, who they were, how they got there, social connections, any of it. The source claimed there was a coat of arms. I’ve since seen two supposedly medieval documented coats of arms for my family name as English. So I really don’t know quite what to think, there.
I’ve always assumed that American ties to German, Dutch, English, and Scottish relatives in the family tree on my dad’s side, were from *after* coming to the Colonies, rather than either off the boat, or existing ethnic or friendship / blood relative / in-laws ties. — There are at least two German and/or Dutch names, families who were close friends and intermarried, so the families became kin as well as neighbors. To me, that would lend some credence to the idea the family name is German or Dutch, not English. (That the first two to arrive in America who are known or likely ancestors, have both English and German or Dutch spellings for their given names, Phillip and John/Johan/Johann, is also inconclusive. — One of the related family names was spelled several ways on gravestones: “KOPENHAVER” being the main one, but C instead of K, and (rarely) U instead of V, were also used. (Go back far enough, and you get the ancient habit of V = U, and Kopenhauer was likely the name, but maybe Kopenhaver. — I’ve asked German and Dutch speakers, and they have all said that was a strange name, either with the U or the V. (I’d love clarification on that.) — My own last name is not Kopenhauer or the others, though. — And somehow, my last name “does not compute” for most people. I once counted at least 20 spellings from 1984 alone, where people had tried and missed my name. 😉 (I get four mispronunciations plus the “correct” pronunciation, even from people who’ve known me for years. I am always surprised when someone gets it right.) I’m so used to that, it doesn’t bother me. It just puzzles me a little.
That Saxons headed across the border into Scotland and set up housekeeping and married with Scottish folks, would add a bit of explanation towards the northern English theory for my family name.
On my mother’s side, there is at least one, possibly more, ties to Scottish family names.
I ran into an odd fact there that I don’t know whether to interpret as coincidence or relatedness. If it’s an actual family relation, then hmm, I have more ties to the Cherokee and other Indians in Oklahoma than I know of beyond family rumors / legends / old wives’ tales. — CJ, I think I’ll email you and ask that. My maternal grandfather was a Thompson. My maternal grandmother had a brother whose middle name was Adair. Apparently, the Adairs and Thompsons were very close allies / friends and/or married with Cherokee people. The photo I still haven’t relocated shows an Indian woman in a pioneer dress who was married to a Thompson ancestor. IIRC, she was a great-grandmother to my mother, a grandmother to my mother’s father and his siblings, rather than a great-aunt. But I don’t recall what was written on the back of the photo. I think it didn’t give her name or relation or a place or date where the photo was taken. (Northern Texas or in Oklahoma, I think, late 1800’s.)
Tell you what you ought to do: take your free week of Ancestry, armed with every datum you can scrape together, particularly dates and places. Plug in every name you know and see if something pops up from the database: it will try to match.
“Adair’ might be significant. The Cherokee were moved into eastern OK by the Trail of Tears march. On the eastern border of Oklahoma is Adair County. THere is an Adair town in Mayes county. Wm Penn Adair and his brother Walter Thompson Adair were brothers, and Cherokee. The town is named for them. Here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adair,_Oklahoma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn_Adair —with picture.
I think I’ve seen that photo before. Hmm. At some point fairly soon, I should run across that box again. If/when I find the photo of the woman in question, I’ll scan it in.
My grandmother’s brother (middle name Adair) was senior to her in birth order, well after the 1880’s. That at least says it could’ve been a popular / respected name, if not a connection.
On my maternal grandfather’s line, Thompson, I’m not aware of them (besides the woman in the photo) being Indian. — But for William Adair Thompson and his brother to have “white” English names, born in the 1830’s…. Hmm…. I’m not sure there’s a connection, but it bears further research.
My grandmother and grandfather weren’t cousins, so her brother’s middle name would need to be friend or kin somehow, or an admired or popular name. — Heh, my grandmother’s parents weren’t partivcular about spelling, it was an approximation, and might differ from time to time.
Many Native Americans took ‘white’ names to be able to deal with ‘white’ rules, blanks, applications, etc, but retain a ‘personal’ name which they tell only to friends. I know one that is so ‘that-guy’ you just have to smile and say it’s far more descriptive than the name he has on his birth certificate.
My family had a lot of dealings with the tribes—first that the paternal side was in Oklahoma before any land runs, (before they were allowed to be, but hey, they’d been in Texas before it was legal, either) running cattle and probably living with, I would guess, the Creek, based on where they were living and where I think great-grandfather’s grave is. I have a photo of the stone, but have no idea whether it’s even in a cemetery.
When the land runs started, and great-grandfather died, and only the youngest son (my granddad) and my great-gran were left, they moved more westerly, where they settled.
My maternal relatives, coming in from Kansas maybe a little before the Land Runs, too, made an independent deal with the Kiowa for a homestead over in the southwest: as things settled, they had Kiowa neighbors, very good neighbors, too. I played with the kids when I was young—we got into things we shouldn’t and did other kid-ly things that should have seen our hides tanned. The two families got together: I don’t have a smidge of Native American except for one back in the 1600’s, back in the first landing, and suspicious as I’ve been of that connection, as often as I toss it out, it comes back in the data base.
I’m beginning to doubt the admixture results Ancestry gave us, 12.8% Uralic. That’s either one great grand parent, two in the next generation, and so on. Yes, there is one great grand father we can’t trace yet, and being a man there’s some better change of him being an immigrant than a female. But IIRC the DOB was supposedly around 1817, not long after the Napoleonic wars. But were there so many Finnish or Hungarian immigrants in those days? I’m beginning to be suspicious. It’d have to be him.
My point being, be a little careful about believing everything. 😉
Hmm. Odd. I’d write and question them about it. It is worth noting that Hungary figures in some Crusader genealogies, and I’m still trying to puzzle that out. There’s a Polish woman in the Capet lineage. But it does sound as if there was somebody with a requisite number of grandfathers/mothers in there. I know that my MtDNA gives me an origin somewhere in Bulgaria or Serbia or Southern Italy, but also Holland, and I’m trying to figure that one out…but then so are the science folk, who really aren’t satisfied with the distribution on the H’s.
The autosomal test goes on snippets of DNA all across the genome, as I understand it, so it’s possible there’s something going on in the migratory paths of Europe that’s odd…or that you have Attila in your background. Still—that background, the missing great-grandfather: “The Hungarian Diet (English: Parliament) had not convened since 1811.[2]
In 1825, Emperor Francis II convened the Diet in response to growing concerns amongst the Hungarian nobility about taxes and the diminishing economy, after the Napoleonic wars. This – and the reaction to the hot-headed reforms of Joseph II – started what is known as the Reform Period (Hungarian: reformkor). But the Nobles still retained their privileges of paying no taxes and not giving the vote to the masses. It was in this time that Hungarian became an official language instead of Latin as had been used formally before.
The influential Hungarian politician Count István Széchenyi recognized the need to bring the country up-to-date. The Hungarian Parliament was summoned once again in 1825 to handle financial needs. A Liberal Party emerged in the Diet, which put its attention on providing for the peasantry. Lajos Kossuth, a famous journalist of the time, emerged as the leader of the lower house of Parliament.
Kossuth’s aspiration was to build a modern democratic, liberal state with a constitution, ensuring civil equality. The people supported him in this modernisation, even though the Habsburg monarchs obstructed all important liberal laws about their civil and political rights and the economic reforms. Many reformers (like Lajos Kossuth, Mihály Táncsics) were imprisoned by the authorities.”
IE, there was a heckuva lot of ferment in Hungary in the 1820’s, leading to outright revolution in 1848.
[input any date in wiki, followed by the name of the country, and you can get some sense of what was going on then.]
Re Uralic: If this is a genetic percentage, they needn’t be associated with any currently independent Uralic-speaking population, need they? There are various language enclaves within Russia to this day; one supposes many more were assimilated over the centuries, in a region that was the path of migrations from west to east before it became the site of any decent written records.
Although, if it were a migration that far back, I’d expect its results to be way spread out. But it’s tempting to imagine a village somewhere in central Europe, with a German speaking population, settled by a band of Hun (I notice CJ mentioned Attila) or Goth soldiers, originally recruited from some eastern-European Finnic group.
But to be more accurate: beats me, what do I know. Returning to lurk mode.
The “spit test” doesn’t determine mother tongue. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Indeed there is. Our 20th GGF Edward III (yours too?) has a “Violant of Hungary” as a GGM. But 2**-22 is vanishingly small.
But I was wrong (note this date 😉 ). It’s a GGGF we can’t trace, 5th generation, one of 64, so a 6% contribution, and we know enough about the other 63 to know there’s no significant Finno-Ugric contribution from them. My sister was supposed to call them months ago. Still waiting.
My dad’s middle name is “Adair” but his mother said he was named for a popular song, “Robin Adair” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51cI0_exnLU ) which may date back to the 1750’s. He was born in 1922.
Speaking of rehabilitating history, this reasoned examination of 1960’s film and video tech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU pretty conclusively shows that it was far simpler to actually go to the moon than to fake it.
Yep. Trying to fake low-g is NOT easy—even for NASA.
I have one family story, proved false by research, that I intend to keep putting about as the truth, since its moral is needed by the next generation…
A ten year old girl for some reason, (and these vary from illness through an unkind stepfather), could not continue to the golden west with the rest of her family. A stranger family took her in and reared her as one of their own, even to giving her the same dowry as their own daughters. Therefor, those who treat ours as though they were their own, are defined as family.
That is the official version. The truth is that her widowed mother married in to the family, and her other children were all boys. Since one of my sibs had to have children put in to foster care, and resents the foster families bitterly, I intend to keep telling the ‘official version’. Does that make me one of the victors?
One of my friends has a woman on her tree who somehow got separated from her family and was raised by another one. The family version was that they were crossing a river and the rest of the family drowned, but research showed that wasn’t true. We’ll never know what really happened.
I could almost swear I’ve heard that story in relation to my mother’s line. Do you have relatives from Oklahoma or Texas?, but right now, I can’t place who. IIRC, my mother’s father’s father, Felix Thompson, was supposed to have been orphaned early enough not to know much about his family, but kept, I think, his birth family name. But right now, I can’t recall if the bit about a girl being separated from her family in a river crossing, a wagon lost, I think, was my mother’s mother’s side or mother’s father’s side.
South half of Louisiana. Rose Koch and the Pilaud family… my grandmother’s grandmother… On the other side, Vanderhoof, there are so many of them, that I am probably related to the entire USA and half of Canada…. a family reunion where most of them couldn’t come had over a thousand people…
My great-grandmother, Missouri Duff, whose birth name was Isobel, said that her entire family but her ‘drowned in the stream’, apparently a flatboat accident, and she was the only survivor. I have found a mother and son who lived and died in Ohio, I think it was, who seem to have been part of a larger family in a census in, again, off the top of my head, Tennessee—and at that time, Isobel seems to be part of the family. She married great-granddad and moved into Oklahoma before official statehood. My entire family on both sides seem to have been ‘Sooners,’ meaning people of European extraction who were living and homesteading in Oklahoma while it was still Indian Territory, and before they were supposed to be there. My paternal side was way early: they were in the Louisiana Purchase before the ink was dry, and kept on going into what was then part of Mexico: Texas. My great-great-grandfather had apparently failed at tobacco farming, lost his shirt and the farm, had to move with a pregnant wife, and seems to have set a speed record getting across several borders: my great-grandfather was born in Texas, ran cattle in Indian Territory with his father, married the daughter of a lawyer/Civil War spy and left a dozen offspring, the youngest of whom was my grandfather.
I’ve always said that Texas was mostly settled by outlaws and ne’er do wells from everywhere else. You could come to Texas and totally reinvent yourself.
Lol!
Then either I’m some distant relative to some of you, or there were many wagon and flatboat accidents, either of which seems likely. On my mother’s side, her grandparents’ family names were Rayburn, Baggett, Thompson, and (uh-oh, I can’t recall the fourth). In Texas, Oklahoma, and one set came from Missouri before that. The family story from my grandmother has her parents and whichever kids if any in one wagon crossing into Oklahoma when it was opened for settlement, but they may well have been Sooners. If the Thompsons were related to Cherokee in Oklahoma, then it gets even more interesting. My impression was that they, including the Indian woman in the photo, were in Texas. And friends as well as reading tell me that the Cherokee place women as important as men, or matriarchal but maybe patrilocal.
My dad’s side were all from Virginia, with Virginia and Pennsylvania before that, though even the colony (later state) borders were shifting in the 1750’s up until independence. Dad’s relatives, including my grandpa, seemed to have periodic itchy feet to go traveling, sometimes but not always relocating, before heading back home or resettling in a new place. So though my family name is not common, there are distant cousins all throughout Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and then two concentrations in Kansas and California. Funny enough, there was a family story that my grandpa had met a man while out traveling, maybe while in Kansas visiting his brother and sister-in-law, and the man (not my grandpa’s brother) was heading out to California. So this may have been a stranger or a relative, though it was conveyed to my dad as “a man.” My guess is that there was at least one move of siblings or cousins out to California in my grandpa’s younger days, around the turn of the 20th century or a bit thereafter.
And that guess about Texas being settled by whoever, they’d accept anyone? Largely true. Mexico was actively trying to get European and American settlers for the huge Mexican state of Tejas/Texas. There were some, like Stephen Austin, who were real supporters of Americans and others becoming genuine, lawful Mexican citizens. Austin was granted leadership of his colony by the Mexican government, but later imprisoned as that government kept shifting, and thus, their strongest Anglo ally was convinced toward independence. Meanwhile, in the USA, leaders were pushing to colonize Tejas/Texas with the aim of the territory becoming an American territory or independent and allied. Want to move to Texas? Why sure, let’s move in all the warm bodies we can get, and push for American territory. Unfortunately, things in Mexico soured so badly, they lost their biggest supporters among the American settlers, and among plenty of Mexicans themselves, eventually even leaders of large cities like the alcalde (mayor) of San Antonio. The Mexican government had a bad habit of suppressing its own people (and settlers), up to and including imprisoning or killing people. (It wasn’t just the Alamo in San Antonio.) So eventually, everything boiled over after a long process of going from bad to worse, and Texas became an independent republic briefly, rather than immediately an American territory or state.
So sure, if’n ya wanna “Go To Texas!” no one, not the Mexican government and even less so the American government, was looking too closely at just what your public record was. Many were just ordinary folks looking for a fresh start, American and European settlers. Some were, well, they might have reasons to want to avoid entanglements with the authorities and go where they could live like they wanted, or make a new start too. Those European settlers included German-speaking colonists and Czech and “Bohemian” settlers, as well as Irish, Scots, French, and others. Heck even (Asian/East) Indians settled in Texas, and that increased in the late 1800’s and into the 1900’s, with Chinese and other Asians increasing then.
So, definitely not an exaggeration. Heck, they let my ancestors in….
Itchy feet. Does anyone else’s family call it ‘the gypsy foot’?
Much of my mother’s mother’s family came out of a large German enclave near Fredricksburg, TX, who were invited to settle there by the Mexican Government. Landless German nobility got land grants from the Mexican government. The more people they could get to come over and settle, the more land they got. Some of them ended up with huge tracts of land.
BCS said: (Blond or white hair, with a medieval folklore idea that such fair hair and complexion, or changeable hair color (summer blond) or else (white blond as a child, darkening into adulthood) meant a changeling or a friend of the elves.
Yay! I’m a friend of the elves! (white blond going deep auburn brown). To the best we can tell, in our family there are several marriages where the wife’s ‘white name’ was entered in the family bible. There were generally no photos from those families so we are left to ponder.
Tow headed to dishwater blond to white. Does that count as changeable even if it’s taken a long time changing? With their propensity to live in holes in the ground and not being very tall, I think this Taurus/Gemini burrowing WOL must have hobbit blood.
When it comes to Culloden, another dumping spot for the wholesale deportation of clans was the Carolinas — one friend traced her family back there who had been on the losing side.
BCS, don’t let the ‘white’ names of AI ancestors throw you. At least with Canada, the good Fathers dubbed folk with appropriate European names which they may or may not have used interchangeably with their tribal name(s), which may or may not have had a social AND a private version. All this causes headaches and thoughts of getting out the single-malt when I poke at a major part of the family. My mom’s side has been in Quebec for 350+ years via Normandy and I just found out that my dad’s Cree mother has an Iroquois ancestor who was born outside of Montreal in 1782 (Louis Kwarakwante [Callihoo with several variations]) to a Thomas Anatolia (Kanakonme) and Marie-Anne with a totally unprounceable last name. Louis signed on with Frobisher and trundled out west, ending up working for The Bay mostly in what is now Alberta and had three wives and a passel of kids concurrently (two of which were sisters) — what is politely referred to as ‘country wives’. Apparently being a good Catholic didn’t interfere much with cultural norms of either the Iroquois or the Cree.
Your Adair brothers may have been subjected to missionaries either before or after the Long Walk — I’m iffy on the time frame for when the forced relocation happened. If the Catholics were involved you might be able to track down some interesting records.
The long walk was during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, closely following the discovery of gold in the region from which it started…
Wkipedia link, The Trail of Tears, a series of forced relocations of Indian peoples from the eastern US to Oklahoma Indian Territory, from 1830 to about 1838. The main Cherokee removal was in 1838.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_tears
One of the worst events in US history.
Notice from the pictures in the article, one of the ironies regarding Indian removal was, many had adapted to, partly assimilated to, white culture. They traded with whites, married, took English names (and often retained their Indian names and culture). They achieved a blend of the two. They wanted to coexist peacefully, as long as their white neighbors were friendly. Another was that several of the Indian nations along the eastern American coast were the “Five Civilized Tribes” and other nations, with longhouses, agriculture, laws, things that were recognized by moderate whites as advanced, civilized, or like white culture. On the white side of things, there were whites who traded with, married, and adapted to include the culture of their Indian neighbors. They were allies, friends. — There were, however, people on both sides who did things from self-interest or active hostility. There were also cases where white and Indian cultural norms clashed and where neither side quite understood the other, or wanted to try, in some cases. Relations worsened because of those, and even moderates on both sides couldn’t tolerate some of the abuses. — And then enough whites got superior, prejudicial, racial attitudes , or simply coveted the land and any wealth from it, and found ways to take it.
One of the ironies of history, though, is that, one way or another, many whites and Indians have ancestors from intermarriage or more, ah, temporary contact. As time goes on, the truth of the era has come out. Both sides lost a wealth of knowledge, traditions, folklore, so much.
However, there were those who worked together, found ways to get along, liked and loved each other, despite sometimes rabid opposition. That takes a lot. Though they’d likely say they didn’t see any alternative they could live with, other than tolerance, co-existence, friendship, trade.
—–
And it’s a curious thing how what amounted to “tribal rivalries” among European nations also resulted in discord that carried over to the American continents, and some of these also found ways to set those differences aside and create a new way, alliance. (As a way to steer back toward the English and Scottish discussion I’d veered from on a tangent.)
One of the worst events in US history.
You probably don’t want to read “My Brother’s Keeper” then. 😉 (Lomg out of print I should think. I read it maybe over 40 years ago.)
There were some pretty vicious forced relocations of whole groups of people throughout history. The one I’ve sort of started looking at was an early group of French settlers (the Acadians) in the Prince Edward Island area. Some French trappers and such were in North America as early as the 1500s, and they learned from and worked with the native tribe until the British conquered them in the early 1700s. The Acadians were given a choice to agree to fight against France in the French and Indian War, and when they refused for many reasons, the British shipped them to France. Most of these families had lived in New Brunswick and PEI area for a hundred years at this point, so they really had no connection to France! About 1/3rd ended up dead, either drown or from disease, and some were shipped out to Louisiana. My own ancestor married from this group married a British man and stayed in the PEI area. Eventually, many Acadians returned to the PEI/New Brunswick area or went to Louisiana, where they became blended in and became ‘Cajun.’
I must say, a genealogy link makes history MUCH more interesting. I never really CARED back in grade school what the stupid wars were all about, but now doing genealogy, I’ve learned things about history I don’t remember learning before!
I agree with that last paragraph. It would have been much more interesting if I’d known! (But probably if I’d known I’d have said something about the family history in class, and the rest of the kids would have thought I was “showing-off”.) “War of the Roses”? We’re descended from the First Duke of York. My sister got “The White Queen” to read before she knew it was “all in the family”. Also Edward Longshanks. Ethelred the Unready, and the Normans too. Henry VIII and the “Other Boleyn Girl”, Plantagenets and Anjou/Angevins. Several Kings of Leinster and, call me O’Brien, Brian Boru.
Even if it’s an irrelevantly long way back, it does give one greater interest if it’s family history too.
Fancy that! Looking through our charts I found Marjorie Bruce, Robert’s daughter. According to Wikipedia, her mother is descended from GGF Madog ap Maredudd, who is on another chart of ours, William Comyn, and (Bad) King John (Lackland).
BTW, that badge looked considerably eroded for gold, and what? Enamel?
The Celts used enameling on hot metal, and I think this was similar, a hard, durable finish, but the projections were more subject to ‘popping off’ their color bits due to heating and cooling.
Yes, that looks more like damaged enamel than anything else. And horses’ decorative gear was usually brass or some other lesser metal.
Kissing cousins, Paul. John and old Madog.
Mebbe closer than that. 😉 Don’t I remember you have some de Bohun’s? We get an Elizabeth de Bohun (1350-1385) thru the mother of John Howard (yes those Howards), Duke of Norfolk, Margaret de Mobray, and her mother Elizabeth fitz Alan.
omg. Me too! I’ve got Elizabeth as my 19th grandmother, but I go thru daughter Elizabeth Fitz Alan and her daughter Joan Goushill. Eventually that line wanders down to my paternal grandfather’s mother who was a Ross.
Yep. Lots of de Bohuns. Jane has a de Bohun, too. The Boones (great-gran) trace back to a George Boone who may or may not have been related to the de Bohuns, but I’ve got relations to them going every which way, from other families, both maternal line and paternal line. Thing is, these families married each other in multiple generations.
The double cousins story: Two sisters married two brothers. Their children married one another, and so did the next generation and the next. By the time I met this couple in the early 1970s, first cousin marriage had been outlawed, so they just lived together and brought up their children. The rumor was that any of them could walk in to any house in that grouping, whether they had ever been there or not, and know just where everything was kept. On the other hand, they didn’t seem outstandingly bright when I met them. Supposedly they were relatives, but I never did find out just how we were related.
My 20th Great Grandfather had only four great grandparents. His parents were double first cousins. Dynastic marriages.
According to chancellor and chronicler Pero López de Ayala, he had a pale complexion, blue eyes and very light blond hair; he was tall (1’83 m.) and muscular. He was accustomed to long, strenuous hours of work. He was well read and a patron of the arts, though in his formative years he enjoyed entertainment, music and poetry. (He wasn’t “Spanish”, but of the House of Burgundy.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_of_Castile
Yeah, we’re finding that out too. “You can’t tell the players without a score-card.” OTOH, the vast majority of people from the 14th-16th centuries left no permanent trace in history. The ones that did were the aristocracy and royals, and they were making dynastic marriages. So the odds favor finding these situations.
My Aunt’s husband’s family had one of those brothers marrying sisters situations. Two brothers married two sisters; in one couple, the brother died, in the other couple, the sister died, and the remaining two married each other and had my uncle, so my uncle had cousins from both sides who were also his half siblings.
Then there’s the redoubtable Ada de Beaumont, who seemed to birth babies with ease and had serial husbands all over the map. Everybody who was desperate for an heir, I think, wanted to marry Ada. In an age when childbirth was risky—there were a few women who defied the odds in spectacular fashion.
Or at least few gentlewomen. As I understand it, the problem with lower classes was not death due to childbirth, but death in childhood.
Plenty died in childbirth, though: poor nutrition among the very poor, sanitation lacking, techniques of delivery if there began to be trouble…there were plenty of women whose death date corresponds to the delivery of the last child, be it their firstborn, or the fifth, undertaken at age 30+. Deliveries after 30 in which the mother lives are scarce. And there’s no birth control to speak of, only a few garden-variety (literally) abortifacients.
Archaeologically, human life span seems to be 35 until the mid/late 1880s in the West. I remember seeing that the average age span in 1900 was 47, so ‘modern’ medicine seems to have started having an impact by then. But for women, IIRC, the average life span was only about 25. Pregnancy and childbirth was incredibly risky as CJ notes — not to mention the general strain on the body from the pretty much expected annual pregnancy.
When it came to terminating a pregnancy, there’s a wide variety of plants what will do the trick — several will also kill the mother. But other forms existed too — I remember reading a book which mentioned Catharine Lepere and La Voison. The common term was Angel Maker.
“Uncle Henry”? 😉
My, my, I remembered it as one of the clues in one of Dame Agatha’s mysteries. She knew her poisons!
But here comes Thuja, back into the conversation! 😉
“(Wikipedia) – Artemisia vulgaris (mugwort or common wormwood) is one of several species in the genus Artemisia commonly known as mugwort, although Artemisia vulgaris is the species most often called mugwort. This species is also occasionally known as felon herb, chrysanthemum weed, wild wormwood, old Uncle Henry, sailor’s tobacco, naughty man, old man or St. John’s plant (not to be confused with St John’s wort). Mugworts are used medicinally and as culinary herbs.
“(Wikipedia) – Mugwort oil contains thujone, which is toxic in large amounts or under prolonged intake. Thujone is also present in Thuja plicata (western red cedar), from which the name is derived. Mugwort herb contains a very small percentage of oil, so is generally considered safe to use. Pregnant women, though, should avoid consuming large amounts of mugwort. The species has a number of recorded historic uses in food, herbal medicine, and as a smoking herb.
“(Witchipedia) – Mugwort has also been used in Europe to induce abortions. It helps strengthen contractions and it is used in a compress to promote labor and help expel the afterbirth. It is also used to help regulate the menstrual cycle and ease painful menstruation and the onset of menopause. Use in combination with ginger in a tea to soothe difficult menstruation.
Well, there was half an orange, lemon, or half an apple if you were not well to do, used as a diaphragm. I understand that works as well as the rubber one. In Much Ado About Nothing, when Claudio says, “Give not this rotten orange to your friend!” he is calling the bride a used diaphragm at the altar in front of the whole of their local acquaintance. No wonder Beatrice wants him dead!
And Hamlet telling Ophelia to get to a nunnery had nothing to do with her entering a convent. It was an euphenism for a brothel. For the diaphram subsistute, I do wonder what the general populas would use — wouldn’t you think citrus was very expensive?
I seem to recall the ancient Egyptians used a concoction that involved crocodile dung. . .
@ryanrick, piece of apple, though that sounds uncomfortable to me, and extended lactation, five years being the longest word of mouth example in my family…