Pierce Ancestry

This is shockingly cool!

You should count up how many Shakespeare characters you have as ancestors.

I heard that one of my great-aunts did some interesting research a while back about my family. I'm told there's a samurai involved. But yours is way more impressive.

Jeremy,
Have you ever seen the tombstone or heard of the pirate that is buried on our family farm in RI? I found it as a kid and I can never remember his name. I asked Aunt Dot and my Grandfather Walter who he was and I do believe they said he was a relative of ours. The only thing that I remember is that he was around in the 1600-1700 time period. Thanks for posting this. It gives me alot to look into.

I've never heard about that. I bet my Uncle Steve (your dad's cousin) would know if anyone does.

St. Arnulf has a nice entry in the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, I notice.

This is really quite impressive; tracing back more than a few centuries is usually quite hard. You seem to have had a bit of luck and put in a good deal of work. As you say, having famous ancestors isn't particularly interesting in itself, but I always like genealogies, because they give such a sense of historical context, and also a sense of just how much the human race, for all its diversity and numbers, is still a family. For similar reasons I often say that the genealogies in the Bible are one of the greatest (although also one of the subtlest) portrayals of the work of divine providence we have. We really do take away something from them that we couldn't without them.

Jeremy, thanks for putting this up, it's quite remarkable. I must say it's well worth the wait. As my brother said above, it gives us a lot to check out.

Thanks for the link, Brandon. It didn't occur to me to link to online sources about some of these people, but I think I'll go back and do that now.

Jeremy, this is impressive. I thought I was doing well to get back to the 15th century in the male line, thanks to some hard work by a relative who put this together.

But bear in mind that if you widen things beyond the male line your number of ancestors increases exponentially, doubling in each generation. Very likely you are descended not only from the Roman Emperor Valentinian I but also from a high proportion of his subjects - almost every one who has any family line at all surviving today. In your case, some of the lines have clear links to famous people whose genealogies have been recorded, but most have not.

Also, given some of the names mentioned here, you can surely link yourselves into the Merovingians and thence into their claimed descent from Christ himself. I'm not suggesting that you believe the Da Vinci code rubbish, but then some of the links you list above may be just as tenuous. And of course the British Israelites have genealogies linking the British royal family to the house of David, and if you borrow from them you can trace your ancestry not just to David but right back to Adam.

Meanwhile you still have relatives back in the home country, that is, the one you adopted in the 12th century. The current Duke of Northumberland is Ralph George Algernon Percy, and is worth £300m. His son George Dominic Percy, Earl Percy seems to be close to the current royal family. According to Wikipedia as well as my own understanding, this is the same Percy family as Harry Hotspur.

I think most of the people alive today who are descended from someone in Middle Ages Europe will turn out to be descended from most people who were alive in Middle Ages Europe who have descendants alive today. When you extend that back to the Roman empire, you're probably right that it's virtually everyone in that part of the world with living descendants from that time. That's yet another reason to place little significance in ancestry in high places, because that's just the ancestry you know about because it was recorded. There's going to be plenty of ancestry in low places also, and some of the people in high places were some real scoundrels anyway, particularly some of the Percy family. But I do think it's nice when it can be traced out.

I'm sure the Mohammed stuff I linked to is tenuous. I'm guessing that most of what I listed is not, with some of the more ancient ones a little less sure. But enough of them are royalty of some sort (once you get back far enough that it might feel more tenuous) that it's probably coming from pretty good sources most of the time. The biggest worry I would have about it is that some of these children were fathered by someone other than their official father, i.e. their mother's husband, as may well have happened with Edward IV.

Something like seven generations back in the line of the current Duke of Northumberland, a Seymour changes his name to Percy for the sake of the title. His wife wasn't a Percy either. It's got to be way back that they connect up with my ancestors.

Sorry if my attempt to link you up with rich distant relatives doesn't in fact work out. But then could you have a better claim to the dukedom than the recognised Duke? Worth a thought!

Well, even if you just go back to my great-great grandfather, I can disprove that claim too easily. He only had one son, my great-grandfather, but my great-grandfather had two sons, my grandfather and his older brother Walter. Walter's son Don, my dad's cousin, is the father of Ken and Danny who commented above. Any title my great-great-grandfather might have gotten would now be rightfully possessed by my their dad. Their older brother Kevin would be next in line. It would have to work through all of their family (which includes four or five brothers, I think) before going to my oldest brother. Then it would have to go to my three other older brothers (two of whom have sons) before getting to me.

Now figure out what happens when you've got many of my ancestors in the patrilineal line who weren't olders sons going back before my great-great grandfather. I don't think I'd be the rightful heir to any titles short of some major disaster that wipes out much of western civilization.

Jeremy, have you followed all the matrilineal lines as well? If so did you go to the first wife and then follow that patrilineal line? Then move onto the next mother down the list and follow that patrilineal line? I followed the original patrilineal line back as far as it would go then followed the line to all the Kings. I was just wondering how far you went with following some of the other matrilineal lines. I understand this can be a huge undertaking (one which I plan to go through). Any suggestions on an efficient organized way to do this? I copy and pasted the lines to a document with all the biographies that were given. I did 2 separate documents. One was for the original patrilineal line and one that followed the Duchess Ermengarde/IrmgardIf patrilineal line. If this sight has the info this could blow up into one massive tree!! Again, thank you for the work that you did. It amazes me how many of our ancestor's had only one son and the line was able to continue. Also, do you have any hypotheses as to where our orignal patrilineal line went after Count Gilbert Brabant?

I tried to follow all the possibilities. It probably took me a few weeks to work through it all, and I'm sure I missed some of them. The way you suggest is as systematic a way as any.

I don't have information at this point before this particular genealogy, but I haven't tried any web searches on the names at the endpoints.

I'd love to get a copy of the document when you're done. I didn't keep careful records of what I was looking at.

The confusion about "Duke Godfrey I. "A La Barbe" Lorraine, Count of Brabant, France, 1060/1074" is not surprising. But the leader of the First Crusade was not him but another Godfrey who seems to have been born in the same year, Godfrey of Bouillon.

Now if you had been able to claim descent from Godfrey of Bouillon (unlikely, because he seems to have died childless), you might have had some kind of claim on an even exalted ancestors than Roman emperors and kings of England, Scotland, France and Spain. For according to "The Da Vinci Code", and I think "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", Godfrey of Bouillon was a descendant of Jesus Christ himself!

Unfortunately some of my favorite people whom I might otherwise have had a hope of being descended from died childless (or died with their children already having died childless, as in the case of Augustine). Dan Brown doesn't seem content with that sort of thing, though.

Well, Godfrey of Bouillon died childless, but his full brother Eustace III of Boulogne, who shared his ancestry, had a daughter Matilda who was the wife of King Stephen of England. She is not the Princess Matilda you have listed, and the immediately following kings of England were not descended from her, but she did have descendants including Henry II, Duke of Brabant (who also, and like you, was descended in the male line from Godfrey I of Lower Lorraine), who had numerous descendants among minor royalty of the Low Countries and Germany - and no doubt through some of them into the modern British royal family. But I can't find a link into your genealogy; the nearest is that Philip IV of France's stepmother was from this line, but his actual mother was Isabella of Aragon through whom comes your descent from Roman emperors.

So if we want to look for modern traces of God's DNA (I was going to give a Hat Tip for this link, but the comment which linked to it seems to have been deleted), we can't test you, but perhaps we should test the British royals! But then I wonder why I can't take seriously this bit of "Tomorrow's News Today".

Matilda? That's cool. I am so envious of how far back you and your family have traced. I thought I was doing good by going back to 1345, until we found a problem and had to come all the way back to 1658 when my ancestor first landed in Virginia.

Isn't it kind of thrilling to think one of your ancestors may have worshiped with early Christians?

Great stuff. I have also done this research, although took me to some different places as well... I am descended from CPT Michael Pierce. Maybe he's the guy buried in the back yard that blogger was talking about? I read he had been killed at the Battle of Rehoboth.
Anyway, it validates alot of what I have looked up. I also visted the family home at Percy, France. It still stands there, although a Pierce doesn't own it today, (not yet...)
The people who lived there were quite nice and I took some photos with my kids. They hadn't met any American Pierces. So it was cool to be possibly the first ones back, at least for awhile. As for the significance, I think it is siginificant in showing that many, many poeple from this line have done some pretty amazing things. Let's keep the rally going!

Not sure if you all had seen this, but if you go back to William de Percie's time and his grandparent or thereabouts is Rollo the Viking. from him I traced it right back up to a couple hundred BC, with the King of Kvenland (Finland) when he helped some Russian King and and his descendants became the Sea Kings.

I was busy raising an army to take over my rightful position as monarch of England. But then I noticed that Marguerite Coney seemed to be married to her son? And a Richard was 85 when he fathered his son. Pearce Hall is a little hard to find. I think I had it on Google maps but then I lost it.

Anyway, it is a great way to learn real history.

Jim Bullis

I am very interested in beginning a similiar project to what you've done here. I only have record so far back about 5 generations, so only back to the mid 1800's. Any general advice you can offer on where to begin would be greatly appreciated. Thanks alot in advance for any help you can give. Thanks!

Chris

Chris, I have some family records, but the only way I got all this information was from using Google. Search for the names of ancestors you know about, and try a few helpful keywords related to genealogy or family tree. You might get some sites that won't do anything for free, but if there's information out there you'll probably find something.

I just wanted to say that you have done a remarkable job on this site, and to keep up the good work. Richard Pearce born 1590 would be my 11th Great Grandfather. My grandmother was born and raised in Michigan.

Thanks

Jill McMillen

the peerage.com is very useful!