Pat here:
The wenches thank Jane Irish Nelson for this fabulous question: Have you traced your family history? If so, what interesting stories have you discovered? And have you ever incorporated those stories into your books? Jane, you’ve won a copy of one of my books!
Wenches, being the history nuts we are, have delved into the lives and stories of our ancestors where we can and have some fabulous tales to tell…
Except me. I may have mentioned previously that both my parents were orphaned, my mother at birth and my father when he was young. I never had biological grandparents and have no family stories to tell. But after doing the DNA search on one of the genealogy sites and consulting with a cousin, I’ve traced bits and pieces. My father’s ancestors were deeply rooted in the Hudson
Valley of New York, well back to the original settlers. (There was a good deal of intermarriage in these early families. The same names pop up frequently on the tree.) One of them has even written a small book with all the research he has done, although I seem to have lost the link. I have pages of research notes from family members, and all I can say is that I’m pretty sure that side of the family came from a lot of vain storytellers with too much time on their hands. <G> If I follow their irregular notes, I am descended from half of European nobility.
According to my DNA and actual documents, though, My father’s maternal ancestry descends from the Hasbroucks, Huguenots who fled persecution in France. (In the wikipedia article, my family descends from Josiah.) His paternal ancestry is English nobility, supposedly. However it came about, his ancestors acquired thousands of acres of land (apparently being rich before they sailed, which wasn’t unusual as Protestant nobility fleeing a mostly Catholic Europe), and then proceeded to sell/mortgage most of it to other settlers, setting themselves up as bankers before there were banks. So if George Washington came to town, he visited my family. We have records that the sons fought on the revolutionary side. From the looks of it, the women stayed home and raised broods of children. No mention is made of them beyond that. But I can imagine what it must have been like running acres of farm and the local store while feeding and clothing a dozen children. I suspect their efforts were as great in holding this country together as the soldiers who marched off to war.
But even though way back in my career I wrote a few American historical romances, I never wrote about my ancestors. I didn’t have the DNA research back then and knew nothing of them.
Mary Jo here:
I've had my DNA analyzed by two different companies, with similar, unsurprising results: I'm mostly British Isles with English predominating and a sizable serving of Celtic. Add in a dash of Scandinavian and Northwestern European and that's it. I don't seem to be descended from any kings or conquerors or great artists or musicians, alas.
But I do have one fairly prominent author in the maternal family line: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Dana_Jr.) who wrote Two Years Before the Mast, (https://amazon.com/Complete-Two-Years-Before-Mast/dp/195043589X/wordwench-20 ) I don't know my exact relationship to him. Presumably it's collateral rather than direct descent, but close enough that my maternal uncle and one of his sons had the first name "Dana."
Dana was born into a distinguished New England family that came to the new world in 1640, which sounds right for what I know of my ancestors. He was born in 1815 in Cambridge, Massachusetts into a family of lawyers, writers, and critics, so he was a Regency American! He had numerous teachers who are famous in American literary history.
As a consequence of measles, he was having serious vision problems and decided to travel, but instead of going on a Grand Tour of Europe, he decided to hire on as a common sailor on a merchant vessel. ("before the mast" in his book title refers to the fact that quarters for common sailors were in the front of a ship, "before the mast.”)
Dana's two year voyage took him to California and back. Dana Point and other things were named after him when he became famous for his book (Pat note here: We live next door to Dana Point and there’s a lovely statue of their namesake), which was gritty and realistic in depicting the brutal lives of common sailors. His account of the challenges of sailing around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, is apparently harrowing as he described waiting weeks for conditions to become passable, and doing things like climbing ice covered rigging. His friend Herman Melville said that section “must have been written by an icicle.”
On returning home, he promptly enrolled in Harvard Law School (it had a different name then.) He used the detailed diaries he kept on his long voyage as a basis for his memoir, Two Years Before the Mast, which was published in 1840. It was apparently a sensation. As a lawyer, he specialized in maritime law and was a fervent abolitionist as well as a supporter of all downtrodden and marginalized people. I would love to have known him!
I'm also proud of the great-grandfathers I know about, both born in Upstate New York and both of whom fought for the Union in the Civil War, so I think the abolitionism ran in the blood. My paternal great-grandfather fought at Gettysburg, then returned home to Western New York and farmed his land for the rest of his life. The maternal great-grandfather dropped out of his seminary studies at age 18 to enlist. After the war, he returned to the seminary and became a prominent Methodist minister and eventually the head of a seminary himself.
There are no individual ancestors who have shown up in my books, but I grew up on a farm in a farming community. During the Regency, much of Britain was agricultural. Fields, farm animals, weather, hard labor, limited social opportunities, isolation especially in winter—all of those are aspects of the farming life, and growing up in the country is a real plus since I write historical novels.
Christina: I’ve been researching my family tree for over 30 years now and have come across quite a few characters whose stories could easily be turned into novels. There were several who emigrated – one to the US where he operated a ferry across the Mississippi between St Anthony and Minneapolis, several to Australia (one family with near disastrous results!), and a few to New Zealand where they did rather better. Then there were those who were sent off as felons for what I would consider fairly minor crimes, although perhaps stealing lead off a church roof wasn’t the best idea a young man named George ever had … They all led adventurous and probably arduous lives, and many of them eventually prospered.
There was one man I actually attempted to write about once, but I eventually gave up because it turned into more of a serious historical novel and not the romance I had envisioned. The person it was based on though, James Tapper, definitely had an eventful life. The son of another James and his wife Mary, he was born in Blandford, Dorset, around 1775 and raised in the tiny village of Iwerne Courtenay (also known as Shroton) nearby. He was the oldest child in a large family and became a soldier in the 19th Regiment of Light Dragoons where he served for a total of 13 years from 1793 until 1806. He’s mentioned on a muster roll as a “recruit raised” in 1793, and after some basic training he was sent to India almost immediately, arriving there in 1794.
He appears to have taken part in the siege and battle of Seringapatam in 1799, fought in the battle of Assaye in 1803, and he was also on Trichinopoly Plain at some point (listed as James Tapper, private). In about 1805 he came back to England and was invalided out with “an incurable sore leg”, presumably due to battle wounds. To my delight, his discharge papers gave a precise description of him – “5 ft 8 ¼ in tall, red hair, hazel eyes, fresh complexion, occupation labourer, able to sign his own name”. In the absence of photos, this snapshot of him was like gold dust!
To add to the story, I believe he might have been press-ganged, because after he came back he was charged with running away and leaving his wife and family chargeable to the parish, but the case was dismissed “for want of prosecution”, ie. it must have been withdrawn. Perhaps he was able to prove that he didn’t leave them voluntarily?
In my fictional account of his life, he would have been ripped away from his young wife and child/children by evil men who went around tricking people into becoming soldiers. (I think we’ve all heard the stories of how they’d put a shilling at the bottom of a pint of ale and anyone not paying attention would be considered to have taken the King’s shilling if he drank it). In my imagination, James would have had lots of adventures in India that resulted in him being rewarded by some Rajah so he could return home with enough of a nest egg to buy an inn or other business for himself. And of course, there would have been a great romantic reunion with the love of his life, once the wife realised he hadn’t left her voluntarily. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what occurred in real life as he seems to have died alone (although living near relatives) in Blandford, where he was buried by the Independent Church (the Methodists), aged around 47. I would love to know what really happened but think I prefer my fictionalised version!
(The first photo is of some labourer's cottages in Iwerne Courtenay, the kind James might have lived in. The second is from Wikimedia Commons - an officer of the 19th Light Dragoons in 1792, although James's uniform was probably much less fancy as he was only a private.)
I have to add one fascinating thing - to our surprise Nicola and I have found that we are actually related by marriage since the wonderfully named Love Cornick married yet another James Tapper in 1831 at Blandford St Mary, Dorset! It’s definitely a small world sometimes!
Anne here:
I've never researched my family tree, though a genealogy-mad friend once drew one up for me, from just the names of my grandparents. But I have always loved the family stories told to me as a little girl. Sadly, as the youngest of my
generation, a lot of those stories died with people before I was old enough to be interested enough to collect them properly. Dad wasn't much interested in stories of his forebears, but one he did tell was how his great grandfather was a sailor on a ship with a very harsh captain, and he wasn't very happy. They docked in Melbourne, where he met my great grandmother, fell in love, and decided then and there to jump ship.
Mum's side of the family had a longer history in Australia. Mary Ann, my great-great grandmother was something of a legend. She was born in Suffolk, and came out to Australia with her parents as a young girl in the 1830's (the very early years of Victorian settlement/colonization). At the age of around 16 she married my great-great grandfather (who was pretty young himself) and they settled in the Western District of Victoria, where they cleared the bush and established a farm. She went on to have fourteen (!!) children, most of whom lived, while he became prosperous growing vegetables and selling them to the diggers during the 1850's Gold Rush in Victoria.
I said she was a bit of a legend, and not just because of those fourteen children. Her husband George spent a lot of time away from the farm, carting vegetables and other goods up to the gold fields, while Mary Ann worked on the farm, on her own in the bush with just the children. As more colonists settled in the district she also acted as midwife to the young women, and Mum told us several amazing stories about her adventures. It was a hard life, but both she and her husband lived into their 80's. And many of their descendants still populate the Western District.
When I was in my early twenties, I went on a holiday with three friends to explore the vineyards of South Australia — four of us, crammed into my little red Mini. We got to the little historic village of Port Fairy and my friends wanted to stop for a coffee and to stretch their legs. I said, "No, we're bound to run into one of my relatives, and then I'll be in trouble for not visiting them."
"Oh, Anne, don't be silly," was the general response. So we stopped. I found a parking spot just outside a chemist shop. There was a historic display in the window including a large Victorian-era photo of a woman, and after one glance, I said, "See, I told you this place was full of my relatives — that's my great-great grandmother, Mary Ann in the window." My friends didn't believe me, but when they got out of the car and looked at the display properly, yes, that was my Mary Ann. As I said, she was a legend.
I don't have access to any of my old family photos at the moment, but here are a couple culled from the web — one of a bullock team of the sort that George would have used to transport his produce to the gold fields, and the other of a house of the sort he and Mary Ann might have lived in.
I've never used my relatives' history in my books. Different place, different times.
Nicola here. I started tracing my family history a few years ago. Both sides of the family had already done plenty of research so I didn’t expect to uncover much that they hadn’t already found out. My maternal grandfather came from a long line of agricultural labourers in the East of England, and I was told that there was nothing much of interest on that side of the family, but that depends on what you consider interesting, doesn’t it? I found out that my fourth times great-grandmother, Susanna Simpson, who was born in 1786, was a single mother who ran her own chimney sweeping business. She later married a Thomas Pidgeon who became stepfather to her son John. John called his eldest son Thomas Pidgeon Simpson which I like to see as tribute to his relationship with the man who took him on as child of five in 1817. That same branch of the family produced a two times great-grandfather who was a bedesman at Ely Cathedral, which was someone who was given a pension in return for saying prayers of behalf of their benefactor. And I’m very proud of my great-aunt Blanche who has a plaque in the city of Ely commemorating her work as a nurse and British Red Cross Commandant during World War II.
That’s the less flashy side of the family. My mother’s maternal line are an interesting lot; they include a chess champion, Walter Grimshaw, who had a chess move named after him, the artist John Atkinson Grimshaw, and Thomas Chippendale the cabinet-maker. This side of the family also has one line that can be traced back to Jonas de Clapham, son of the Duc de Lorraine, who was given land in England by King Edgar in 965AD. A later Clapham was Master of the Horse to King Edward the Confessor and one of his daughters married “Tovi the Proud” (I’ve no idea who he was but he sounds interesting!) The family continued to be prominent under King Canute when Osgood Clapham is recorded as making a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Edmund and is quoted in a chronicle as “proudly bearing armlets on both arms, his gilt-inlaid axe slung from his shoulder in the Danish (Viking) fashion.” Wow.
However, if I was ever to incorporate any strand of my family history into a book it would probably be from my father’s side. When I was a small child, he told me we were descended from crusaders, which I took with a pinch of salt as he was a tremendous “storyteller” and frankly a lot of what he said was heavily embroidered. (Pat inserts herself here again—Apparently I’m not the only one who takes our family stories with a large cellar of salt!) However, when I looked into it, it did turn out to be true. One small strand of my DNA comes from a junior branch of the Harley family, Earls of Oxford, who in turn can trace their lineage back to all sorts of aristocratic and royal ancestors including Sir Edward Croft who was tutor to the children of King Edward IV, later the Princes in the Tower. And thereby hangs another tale… I am incredibly lucky to have such a rich and varied family history to explore!
Susan:
A few years ago we did DNA testing, and a family member has been working diligently on genealogy charts as well.
Some things were expected and some were fun surprises. My DNA shows a mix of Irish, English (tagged as "Briton, pre-800"), as well as French, German/Northern Italian, and a surprising 2% Ashkenazi Jew which dates centuries back. My father's side is French, Italian, Irish, and English, while my mother is wholly Irish and Scottish. Yet the Ashkenazi link lies somewhere in her very Celtic lineage. What is also interesting is that in some tests, Scottish DNA may show up as Irish, since ancient Scots were primarily Irish as well as Pictish in origin.
We were always told that my father's Italian side descends from Pietro Longhi, an 18th c. Venetian artist who has a place in art museums and textbooks (as kids visiting museums, my sisters and I would giggle seeing the Longhi paintings; his little doll-like people looked like our very cute Dad!). An earlier Longhi, another artist, was arrested with Baroque bad boy Caravaggio in a tavern brawl. My Longhi great-grandfather brought tales of the artists in the family when he immigrated from Lake Como in Northern Italy.
On Dad's French side, my great-grandmother (a tiny old French lady whom I adored) grew up in a village near
Domremy, Joan of Arc's home. Like generations of French in Alsace-Lorraine, my great-grandmother tended the sheep and dropped to her knees to pray in the fields when the bells rang out. Her stories about that life were wonderful and often mischievous. At 17, she immigrated with her siblings, and at Ellis Island met a handsome Italian in quarantine. They married soon after.
And Dad's English/maternal side was directly descended from Gov. William Bradford, who sailed on the Mayflower and became governor of Plymouth Colony.
My maternal grandfather's family, a minister, his wife, and four little sons, immigrated from County Cork, Ireland, while my maternal grandmother's family were Frasers from Inverness, Catholic Highlanders descended from Frasers, MacDonells, and MacGillivrays. Our Frasers settled in Upstate NY with other Scots who came to America. My Irish grandfather and Scottish grandmother met at Albany Medical College when he was training as a physician and she was in the nursing school. They were nearly expelled for secretly dating, and had to play it cool until graduation, marrying soon after.
My husband's DNA and genealogy came up with some very cool surprises. He's mostly Danish and English, factoring to about 85% Viking (he looks it!). His DNA also showed 2.5% Native American, reflected in his paternal genealogy, which traces back to the daughter of the chief of the Piscataway tribe in the 17th c., when "Princess Mary" of Maryland married an English settler and had three kids. Another part of his paternal English line includes William Carey and Mary Boleyn—we then discovered that our daughter-in-law is also descended from Mary Boleyn and William Carey, whose line traces back to Charlemagne. A later branch of my husband's line includes Scottish MacGregors who apparently changed their name to "King" when the English crown forbade the rebellious Gregorach to use their clan name. In response, some boldly took the King's name instead.
I love that we have some DNA and genealogical info to share with our kids, who are a healthy mix of Celt, Briton, Viking, and European, with a dash of Jewish as well as American indigenous. I wonder what future generations will bring to that blend!
Andrea: I haven’t done much exploring into my family, but my Swiss mother had—quite literally—had a
wonderful elaborately-drawn family tree of her family that her father had made, which goes back to the 1500s. She also had a number old photographs and copies of paintings of ancestors, which are fascinating to pore over. There are two ancestors in particular who interest me. One is an Johannes Suter, whose painting portrays him in the fancy uniform of a Napoleonic-era soldier. (The painting is dated 1797) I haven’t had any luck in learning more about him, as he married a Münch daughter, and I haven’t tracked down any Suter (or Sutter, as the spelling varied over the years) family tree. Family lore says, some of those descendants were part of the Sutter family who emigrated to America, made their way to California, and discovered the gold that started the famous California gold rush.
The person who intrigues me the most, however, is Ernst Josef von Münch, who was born in 1798. One of my mother’s brothers had done some research on him, as his portrait hangs in the Town Hall of Rheinfelden, Switzerland. He was an
academic, and wrote on religious and political philosophy. My uncle discovered that someone had written a PhD thesis on von Münch, as his writings helped to inspire the 1848 revolutions which swept through Europe seeking social and political reform. In one of those serendipitous “rabbit hole” moments where I was researching something else regarding scholars and libraries, I typed in his name on a lark—and lo and behold, google took me to a short entry on him, where I discovered he was also Librarian to the King of Württemberg!
Of course the next jump in the rabbit hole was to the King of Württemberg, which led to another fascinating discovery! King Frederick I (the very first king, as Napoleon elevated Württemberg from a dukedom to a kingdom) was son-in-law to George III, as he married the King’s eldest daughter Charlotte. (He was also related to Caroline of Brunswick, Prinny wife, as his first wife was Caroline’s sister.) There’s also a lot of political intrigue, as he sided with Napoleon against Britain and his in-laws early on and then switched sides ( more on all that in a later blog—I will explain why in a moment.)
Now, though my ancestor was Librarian to King Frederick’s son William, who was a much more admirable ruler than his father, I took some artistic liberty and made him a character in my current Wrexford & Sloane WIP, which involves some skullduggery in libraries during King Frederick’s reign! Herr von Münch encounters Wrexford during a murder investigation at Oxford, where he is doing research, and some of his scholarly knowledge may prove helpful in solving a very complex crime . . . So stay tuned! There will be more on my interesting ancestor in coming blogs!
So, there you have it, folks, the Wenches may all be related to each other somewhere back in the mists of time. . . As a matter of fact, Anne did a blog about that a few years ago if you’re in the mood for a good laugh!
Have you traced your family tree? Do you have family stories and Bibles to connect with the past?