On September 29, 2004, I celebrated my 61st birthday (in 2007, my 64th), and
on October 7, 2004, 30 (now 33) years of association with NEHGS. Recently K.
Todd Johnson of Smithfield, North Carolina, former head of the Johnston County
[N.C.] Heritage Center and a fourth cousin once removed, reported his findings
(with much more in 2007) that my long-elusive great-great-grandfather, Calvin H.
Roberts, was the Henderson Roberts who married Mary Elizabeth Dodd in Johnston
Co. in 1854, the Calvin H. who was non-taxed for insolvency in neighboring Wayne
Co. in 1852, and very probably the Calvin Roberts who married Sarah Freshwater
in New Hanover Co. in 1851, was sometime associated with Wilmington [N.C.], and
was the son of a local Polly Roberts, probably the Polly Snipes who married John
Roberts in Johnston Co. in 1816. I shall play with these possibilities (and my
colleagues will no doubt enjoy doing so likewise) but the more defining recent
discoveries, given my interests and published works, are the likelihood of
descents from both Edward III, King of England (d. 1377), and the famed Spanish
“gateway” ancestress Sancha de Ayala.
Both of these discoveries were developed, and have been argued to me at
length via telephone, by Douglas Richardson, author of Plantagenet Ancestry
and Magna Carta Ancestry. In my own RD600 (The Royal Descents of 600
Immigrants, 2004, 2006, 2008), p. 259, and in New England Ancestors
5 (2004), 3:34, I mentioned the possibility, developed by Doug in
Plantagenet Ancestry, pp. 78-79, 263, that Katherine Stradling, wife of
Morris (Maurice) Dennis, was a daughter of Sir Edward Stradling
legitimately, i.e. by Joan Beaufort, daughter of Henry, Cardinal
Beaufort (and, it is usually said, Alice FitzAlan or Arundel, later wife of John
Cherleton, 4th Baron Cherleton of Powis), legitimized son of John of Gaunt, Duke
of Lancaster (and Katherine [Roet] Swynford), son of Edward III and Philippa of
Hainault. In Foundations 1, #4 (July 2004), Brad Verity argues at
length (pp. 246-68) against the Alice FitzAlan/Arundel connection and somewhat
against the Dennis such, but further discussion with Doug and the late Marshall
Kenneth Kirk, the latter sometime of NEHGS, convinces me that the line is still
likely. Certainly Cardinal Beaufort obtained the wardship of Morris Dennis for
his son-in-law Stradling, and that he would do so for a granddaughter—known from
16th- and early 17th-century visitations but not contemporary records—makes
logical sense given overall context (a confirming document would indeed be
wonderful). Morris Dennis and Katherine Stradling are ancestors of Col. Thomas
Ligon/Lygon of Va. (my forebear), Maine founder and Lord Proprietor Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Va., Rev. Edward Foliot of
Va., Henry Norwood, treasurer of Va., the Deighton sisters of Mass.—(Brahmin
forebear) Mrs. Katherine Deighton Hackburne Dudley Allyn, (Taunton ur-mother)
Mrs. Frances Deighton Williams, and Mrs. Jane Deighton Lugg Negus—Elizabeth
(Throckmorton) Dale, wife of Sir Thomas Dale, governor of Va., and Mrs. Bridget
Lisle Hoar Usher, wife of Leonard Hoar, third president of Harvard College.
In early preparation for his Magna Carta Ancestry, Douglas
Richardson also traced the matrilineal line of my second royally-descended
immigrant forebear, Acting Gov. Jeremiah Clarke of R.I., to Sancha Blount,
daughter of Sir Thomas Blount and Margaret Gresley, and granddaughter of Sir
Walter Blount and the famed Sancha de Ayala, sister of a great-great-grandfather
of Ferdinand I (1452-1516), generally considered the first king of United Spain,
husband of Isabella of Castile and sponsor of Columbus. For more on Sancha, her
Spanish ancestry and her immigrant American and presidential descendants, see
National Genealogical Society Quarterly 51 (1963): 235-38, my
Ancestors of American Presidents, 1st ed. (1995, hereafter AAP), pp.
365-68, and Register 152 (1998): 36-48, the latter a brilliant piece by
Nathaniel L. Taylor and Todd A. Farmerie. Sancha Blount, granddaughter of Sancha
de Ayala, married Edward Langford and had a daughter, Alice Langford, who
married John Stradling of Dauntsey and Richard Pole of Isleworth, later Sir
Richard Pole, husband also of Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury and
niece of Kings Edward IV and Richard III. John and Alice left a daughter, Anne
Stradling, who married Sir John Danvers. From the 1895 English Danvers
genealogy, plus a recent successor, and the 1878 English Chester of Chicheley
genealogy, the line to Clarke is clear. Sir John Danvers and Anne Stradling had
a daughter Anne, wife of Thomas Lovett and John Wyke and mother in turn of
Elizabeth Lovett, wife of Anthony Cave. Mary Cave, a daughter of these last,
married Sir Jerome Weston and was the mother of both Richard Weston, 1st Earl of
Portland, Lord Treasurer under Charles I, and Mary Weston, wife of William
Clerke and mother of Acting Gov. Jeremiah Clarke of R.I.
Thus not only is my long-unknown patrilineal descent beginning to be known; I
am also much more closely related than I previously thought to late Yorkist and
Tudor kings of England and to Habsburg kings or emperors of Spain or Austria
(the Holy Roman Empire) and Bourbon kings of France. For Joan Beaufort, a full
sister of the cardinal, married Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmor[e]land, whose
ninth child listed by Richardson was Cecily Neville, wife of Richard
Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, mother of Edward IV and Richard III, and
grandmother of Elizabeth Plantagenet of York (daughter of Edward IV and
Elizabeth Woodville), wife of Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England, and
mother of Henry VIII. And Juana of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,
married Philip of Habsburg, and was the mother of the Emperors Charles V
(father, by Isabella of Portugal, of Philip II, King of Spain) and Ferdinand I.
The latter, by Kerdeston-de la Pole descendant Anne of Bohemia, left among other
children Joanna, Archduchess of Austria, who married Francesco I Maria de’
Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was the mother of Marie de’ Medici, wife of
Henry IV, first Bourbon king of France. For a few more details see my
Notable Kin, Volume One (1998), chapter 5 (pp. 38-39 esp.),
originally published in NEXUS 9 (1992): 148-53, and AAP, pp.
360-64.
Previously I was only a descendant, via both Thomas Ligon and Jeremiah
Clarke, of Edward I, King of England (d. 1307), plus earlier Capetians,
Hohenstaufens, kings of Castile and Aragon, Eastern Roman Emperors, etc. Like
millions of Americans, I now find myself very probably a second to fifth cousin
a dozen or more times removed of Yorkist and Tudor kings of England, and a
fourth to eighth cousin of the king whose marriage united Spain, of Holy Roman
Emperors, and of an Italian queen of France. These kinships were by far my best
60th and 61st birthday presents, and a fitting capstone to thirty (now 33) years
of genealogical service at NEHGS, forty years of work on The Mowbray
Connection, my lifetime study of the royal descents of noted figures in the
history of Western Europe and its colonial offspring, and fifty years of passion
for genealogy. As a child I often drew and read about these kings and queens, as
an adolescent and young man I studied their historical place in the world, and
since about 1966 they have been centerpieces of my genealogical research. Even
my 2004 updated-article anthology, The Best Genealogical Sources in Print
(vol. 1, 2004), contains several chapters on the evolution of royalty,
nobility, and gentry; the development of royal descent patterns; and the best
literature (to 2004) for studying them. My interest in various other subjects is
developed in this volume as well, and Roberts/Snipes research continues. I even
hope for some solution to the ancestry of my Memphis, Tenn.
great-great-grandmother, Caroline Pool(e), wife of Ephraim H[ough] Root and
daughter of George and Martha (Mitchell?) Poole of Holly Springs, Mississippi,
who died in the early 1840s, leaving Caroline an orphan; she quickly married the
much older Root and was in Texas by the early 1850s. As a gift from my
genealogical colleagues, however, the likelihood of these new royal connections
could hardly be topped. I am grateful, and wish to end this short column by
reminding readers and NEHGS patrons with whom I have worked for the past 30
years, that discoveries late in life, sometimes by others, can add enormously to
your genealogical “identity” and self-definition. I will forgive any colleague
who disproves these new descents but I would much prefer, as you can imagine,
final documentary confirmation.