Some Thoughts about Cindy Crawford on "Who Do You Think You Are?"

On 27 August 2013, TLC aired an episode of WDYTYA? starring  supermodel Cindy Crawford as the featured celebrity.  She discovered that she had a colonial lineage that traced back to Thomas Trowbridge, her 10^th great grandfather.  He was involved with the Siege of Taunton, England during their civil war in 1645.  She met with professional genealogists who presented her with impressive scrolls that outlined her lineage to Trowbridge, and ultimately a very fancy scroll that traced back about 30 generations to Charlemagne and early kings of Europe.

According to Matthew Deighton of Ancestry.com, the research team at WDYTYA? spent more than 1000 hours of research on Cindy Crawford’s story.  Imagine how many hours this would take amateur genealogists to research?  Most viewers watching this show have never done any family history research.  Do they believe that they can walk into a repository or archive and be handed generations of genealogy? Does this support the myth that you can connect online at Ancestry.com and immediately find an impressive lineage back to someone famous?

I’ve been at the Nashua Family History center and witnessed folks walking in off the street demanding to see their family history.  At the reading room at the NEHGS library in Boston I overheard a man requesting to see specifically “The last six generations of my family tree in book form, not microfilm, please”.  The ensuing discussion with the genealogist behind the desk was quite humorous. 

Although I am descended of too many farmers, paupers and simple laborers to count, I have found links between several colonial ancestors and royal lineages.  It took me hundreds of hours to reach that colonial immigrant ancestor, and then I relied on books such as Gary Boyd Roberts’ book The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies, or websites such as  William Addams Reitwiesner’s http://wargs.com/ databases of European royalty and nobility.  Using these resources is the closest thing I know to being handed an impressive lineage scroll.   Someone else has done the work, and you need to verify your connection.   Just go to the NEHGS website at www.americanancestors.org and try the library catalog search using the subject “families of royal descent” and you will find over 150 books and manuscripts. 

Never forget the hundreds, or thousands of hours it took to get to this point. And take this gift with a grain of salt.  I’ve pored over these genealogies and found many semi-mythical ancestors such as the Scandinavian descents from Odin, or ancient British king like Arthur or Beli Mawr, who also connect to biblical descents according to some genealogies (including Adam and Eve).  You must remember that historically the royalty maintained these written genealogies to prove they had “the blood of the gods” or inherited privilege.  Google the “Stone of Scone” to see how this tradition and myth is still perpetuated in the British Monarchy.

This episode seemed be about name collecting, which is something Ancestry.com and other websites are blamed for promoting.  There was no mention of the 1000 hours I learned from Matthew Deighton.  As a spokesperson for Ancestry.com, it would have been nice if the viewers knew that the verification of those many, many generations of Cindy Crawford's lineage took a long, long time and an entire team of researchers.Someone had to spend hours verifying this documentation. You can read all about this process at the ProGenealogist blog post here:
http://www.progenealogists.com/whodoyou.htm

Some resources for working with royal and noble descents

Europe:

The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies, by Gary Boyd Roberts, Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co, 2008

Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700, by Frederick Lewis Weis, Baltimore, Md: Genealogical Pub. Co, 2004.

American Ancestors and Cousins of the Princess of Wales by Gary Boyd Roberts, Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1984

Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists Who Came to New England between 1623 and 1650: The lineage of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and some of their descendants, by Frederick Lewis Weis, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co, 1982.

Ancestry of Catherine Middleton: Who Will Marry Prince William of Wales 29 April 2011, compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner,  edited by Christopher Challender Child  and Scott Campbell Steward, NEHGS, 2011.

The Magna Charta Sureties, 1215, The Barons Named in the Magna Charta, and some of their Descendants, by Arthur Adams, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 1964.

Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans: Many of the English Ancestral Lines Prior to 1300, by Carl Boyer, Santa Clarita, CA, 2001.

Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, Douglas Richardson, Baltimore, Md: Genealogical Pub. Co, 2011

Royal Families: Americans of Royal and Noble Ancestry, by Marston Watson, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2004

William Addams Reitwiesner  http://wargs.com/

Directory of Royal Genealogical Data by Brian Tompsett, University of Hull, UK

http://www.hull.ac.uk/php/cssbct/genealogy/royal/

Genealogical Gleanings http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~royalty/

The Official Website of the British Monarchy http://www.royal.gov.uk/Home.aspx

Royal Genealogies http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/royalgen.html

Polynesian:

Native Hawaiian Genealogy Society website

https://sites.google.com/site/nativehawaiiangenealogygroup/

Royal Lineages of Hawaii  http://www.keouanui.org/Menu.html

See the Brian Tompsett website above for other places in Oceania

Other places in the world:

Islamic Dynasties by Brian Tompsett , see above

Genealogical Gleanings http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~royalty/ (includes Africa, Asia, Oceania, Near and Far East, including India)

The Royal Ark website for the Royal and Ruling Houses of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas

http://www.royalark.net/

Of special interest:

Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes by George L. Williams, 2004

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

My Ancestors were Prisoners of War ~ Just like on “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Samuel Mears

GAR member

Beverly, Massachusetts

I was fascinated with the opening episode of the 2013 season of “Who Do You Think You Are?” on TLC last week.  When Kelly Clarkson found out her ancestor was a prisoner of war, I was jumping up and down yelling out “Me, too!”    I wonder how many Americans did the same thing?  Do you have prisoners of war in your family tree?

Over the years I've found the following eight prisoners of war in my family tree:

 1.       William Munroe (1625 – 1718) My 7^th Great Grandfather was a Scotsman, captured at the Battle of Worcester during the English Civil War.  He was sent on a prison ship in 1650 to be auctioned off as a servant in Boston, Massachusetts.  His descendants lived in Lexington, Massachusetts.

   2.    Johann Daniel Bollman (abt 1751 - 1833) My 4th Great Grandfather was a Hessian soldier.  At the Battle of Saratoga he was captured, but since he was an officer and a surgeon he was exchanged quickly.  He removed to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which was a German settlement, married a German widow, and left many descendants in Canada and the United States.

   3.    Levi Younger (1786 - 1858) My 4th Great Grandfather was a mariner from Gloucester, Massachusetts.  He was "impressed" during the War of 1812, and offered himself up as a prisoner instead of doing service for the British.  His father, (4) Levi Younger, my 5th Great Grandfather, was also captured as a seaman during the Revolutionary War and sent to New York on a prison ship. He was kept at Forten Prison in Portsmouth, England. He was released during a prisoner exchange.  This was a very lucky father and son!

     

5. William Stacy (1734 – 1804) My 2^nd cousin, 7 generations removed, was a shoemaker from Gloucester, Massachusetts.  He served in the militia during the American Revolution and was taken prisoner by Indians in Cherry Valley, New York in 1777.  He was a prisoner for four years, survived the war and went to Marietta, Ohio in 1788 with most of his children.

6.   Moises Rojo (1902 -1936) is my husband's Grandfather.  He was captured as a civilian (not a combatant) during the Spanish Civil War for unknown reasons.  All the men who had been rounded up were imprisoned in a wine cellar beneath the streets of the city of Aranda de Duero, in Burgos, Spain.  One day in 1936 they were taken to a forest, executed, and buried in a mass grave.  

7. John Ross Roberts (1925 – 2003) My father’s first cousin was a nose gunner of a B-17 Liberator in WWII.  He was captured on 28 February 1945 and served the duration of the war a prisoner of war in Germany.

8. Rufus Elvin Mears (1841 – 1864) My 3^rd Great Grand Uncle, brother to Samuel Mears (1823 – 1904), my 3^rd Great Grandfather.  Both brothers served the Union in the Civil War. Rufus was 21 years old when he enlisted in the 39^th Regiment, Company A, under Colonel P. S. Davis and Captain George S. Nelson.  He was in the Battles of Mine Run, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Tolopotomy, Bethesda Church and Petersburg.  He was taken prisoner at Wheldon Railroad on 18 August 1864, and died in the rebel prison at Salisbury on 26 October 1864.

It was the story of Rufus Elvin that I remembered most when I saw the TV show WDYTYA.  The story of the suffering at Andersonville Prison is notorious, but I remembered researching the Salisbury Prison years before this television show aired.  I was horrified then at the conditions, and those memories all came back to me when I saw the TV show.  

The Salisbury Confederate Prison was built in 1861 after the first battle of Bull Run at Manassas.   Prisoners from that battle joined Southern political prisoners, conscientious objectors and Confederate deserters. The prison was an old cotton mill with a large yard.  At first conditions at Salisbury prison were tolerable, but when it became overcrowded and there were no supplies to feed the prisoners, the conditions deteriorated.

In the stockade there was a creek that supplied water to the prison.  The lower end was a latrine.  In those days they didn’t know that bacteria could flow upstream to the area where the prisoners took drinking water.  You can imagine what happened next…

Many of the prisoners who died were buried outside the walls of Salisbury Prison, which became the Salisbury National Cemetery.   11,700 Union soldiers are buried in 18 trenches, each 240 feet long.   These mass graves are now marked by a head and foot stone for each trench.

At the end of the war, the prisoners from Salisbury had all been transferred to other places.  The Union forces burned the prison, and the commander, Major John Henry Gee, was tried for war crimes and found innocent.  The commander at Andersonville, Major Henry Wirz, was found guilty and hanged.

It is sad that young Rufus Mears died at Salisbury Prison, and exciting for Kelly Clarkson that her ancestor escaped Andersonville and lived a long life and left descendants.  My 3^rd Great Grandfather, Samuel Mears, the brother of Rufus, was a proud member of the GAR for the rest of his life.  His portrait still hangs in the GAR Hall in Beverly, Massachusetts. (see above)

For more information:

Who do You Think You Are?  http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/who-do-you-think-you-are

Salisbury Confederate Prison Association  http://www.salisburyprison.org/

Wikipedia article on Salisbury Prison  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Prison

Salisbury National Cemetery, Salisbury, NC  http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/salisbury.asp

Wikipedia article on Salisbury Cemetery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_National_Cemetery

The GAR Hall, Beverly, Massachusetts http://www.members.tripod.com/GARpost89ma/ 

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Who do You Think You Are? and BlogTalk Radio with Thomas MacEntee

Thomas MacEntee, the host of the GeneaBlogger website, author of many geneablogs, speaker and author decided he wasn't busy enough, and so he started up a genealogy radio show to follow each of this season's episodes of NBC TV's "Who Do You Think You Are".   The entire genealogy community has enjoyed these shows every Friday night.  Each episode follows the theme of the NBC TV show.  For example Thomas invited several Irish genealogy researchers to speak after Rosie O'Donnel's episode, and Jewish researchers were interviewed following last week's episode with Gwenyth Paltrow.  He also offers door prizes to callers, and there is a chat board so the peanut gallery can comment along with the broadcast.

Last week, the WDYTYA? episode followed Ashley Judd as she explored a Civil War ancestor and ultimately ended up in New England with a lineage that ended with William Brewster of the Mayflower.  Josh Taylor of the New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston was the star genealogist on the air, unrolling an impressive scroll with Ashley's Brewster lineage.  Josh was also the genealogist on the very first episode of WDYTYA? with actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

Josh and I had been at the NERGC conference in Springfield, Massachusetts all day last Friday when this episode aired on NBC.  Since Ashley Judd's lineage ended with a Mayflower passenger, Thomas MacEntee asked Josh Taylor, me and New England researcher Diane Rapaport to be interviewed on the April 8th episode of GeneaBlogger Radio.  Diane is an expert in researching New England court records, being both a lawyer and a genealogist, as well as a speaker and author.  It was fun being interviewed by Thomas, even though I had missed the WDYTYA? show and didn't see it until just last night!

Please click on the link for GeneaBlogger Radio and listen to the episode from 8 April 2011 on "Colonial Genealogy, Mayflower Ancestry and More!"    Yours truly is sandwiched in the middle of the more famous genealogist interviews, right in between Josh and Diane.  Thomas also asked me about my adventures at NARA with Abner Poland's document signed by George Washington.  Enjoy! 

Links:

GeneaBloggers website http://www.geneabloggers.com/

Thomas MacEntee's "High Definition Genealogy" Blog http://hidefgen.com/

Thomas MacEntee's "Destination: Austin Family" Blog http://destinationaustinfamily.blogspot.com/

GeneaBlogger Talk Radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/geneabloggers   (for archived and live episodes)

NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/  (watch archived episodes here, too!)

New England Historic Genealogical Society website  http://www.americanancestors.org/

Diane Rapaport's book website http://www.dianerapaport.com/

Diane Rapaport's genealogy website  http://www.quillpenhistorical.com/

The General Society of Mayflower Descendants website http://www.themayflowersociety.com/

The New Hampshire Society of Mayflower Descendants website http://www.nhmayflower.org/

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo