Her Highness - Stories from the Tree

If you climb far enough out on your ancestral branches, there's no telling what you will find. I've already reported about being related - somewhat distantly - to Pretty Boy Floyd, and to Bob Will's piano player, but my discovery this past week tops everything.

Barb is descended from royalty. It's the real deal. She may even be in line for the throne of England - behind a few other people, of course.

I have been working her side of the family, and I had established a line from her grandmother Anna Black Wesson, through a line of Bucklers, and then through a line of Allens, which in earlier generations was spelled  Allin, then Alleyn, then Alleyne, then came a bunch of Fitz Alans (who by the way were Earls of Arundel), then who should pop up in the list but William I? That would be William the Conqueror, crowned King of England in 1066! Never mind that he was actually French, illiterate and never spoke English. Oh, and there was that little matter of his momma and daddy not being married. But still, we are talking King here!

But it gets better! If you climb Williams tree eleven more generations you wind up on Charlemagne's doorstep!! Charlemagne Carolingian, Duke of Bavaria, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Holy Roman Emperor, born 1 January 747 in Belgium to Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon.  And he's Barbs umpteenth great granddaddy! Sweet!

Of course, I'm thinking about how to best benefit from this new-found information, so I'm doing some more research and I found this unsettling fact: If you are of European descent, you, too, are probably a descendant of Charlemagne! Just do the math - about 12 centuries from then to now and if there were only 4 generations per century that's 48 generations and my calculator can't even compute how many people 48 generations would be, but it's safe to say old Charley has a bunch of descendants!

Charlemagne had twenty children over the course of his life with eight of his ten known wives or concubines. Genealogists have shown that fourteen presidents of the United States, including George Washington, Ulysses Grant, Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, and the Bushes are all descendants of the King of France. Others in that list include the current Queen of England, of course, and notables such as Manfred Albrecht, Freiherr von Richtofen (the Red Baron), Nicholas II Romanov (Tsar of Russia), Bill Gates (Tsar of Microsoft), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cary Elwes (the Dread Pirate Roberts), Brad Pitt, and Justin Timberlake.

And probably you and me. Oh, and Barb, who has to stop lording it over me now.