Vicissitude and life's puzzles

In April, I listened to Douglas Richardson talk about his work. As well, I had a brief chat with him. He is a descendant of Damaris, Thomas' last wife.

One point that he wanted to make dealt with the "vicissitudes" of life. Earlier, I mentioned, while talking about numbers (meaning how many of your ancestors that you know), that Prince William has a fuller tree than most. Some of us have a very little tree.

The vast majority are in the middle; some there quibble about whose lineage is better (? - let's put it this way: that is my observation from six years of doing this type of research).

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There will be lots to talk about, but, as a digression. we'll look at Elizabeth II. On Monday (June 15, 2015), she had her usual busy day. She attended the 800th celebration of the Magna Carta sealing. Later that day, she was garbed up for the Order of the Garter. ... I had wondered if Edward III had made that date. But, no, the Garter Day observance is on the Monday of the Royal Ascot week which is in mid-June. It is by chance that the MC 800th and Garder Day lookbacks fell on the day.

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Now, about the Queen. This page on Wikipedia says a whole lot: Descent of Elizabeth II from William the Conqueror. It looks at the thirty-ish generations from the Norman to the present. And, there are several bits of analysis that relate to the theme.

If you look at the senior direct line, you will see several generations where the ancestor was not of the crown. Or, was crowned in other than England. Then, there is a table that shows why there was a gap (so to speak). A little further down, there are several "shortest paths" given that are of interest.

Finally, there are lines that show how she descends from various known royals, such as Alfred the Great; too, there are enough of these to be interesting from the viewpoint of our work, which is mapping those who came over (whether they stayed or not) back to those times.

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The prime reason for looking at this is that these lines of Elizabeth II are proven. Of course, everyone here (in this day and age) descends from someone who was there (note the English monarchs of each generation - some material dates things relative to a reign) and who was involved. Knowing that there are threads of these types can help us to flesh out the past and to learn.

So, anyone filling in their tree needs to prove (provide sources for relationships, dates, etc.). We will explore how one does that a little more next time. In the meantime, work in progress can still support reporting a number (with the appropriate proviso). What we want, ultimately, is the best number that we can obtain, albeit a lot of times the work in progress has snags (the proverbial, to wit, the brick wall).

Remarks:  Modified: 03/30/2022

06/20/2015 -- With Dr. Frank's maternal grandparents as the root of the tree, we have five generations to consider. We have almost 100% known for Lucy and for Benjamin. In both cases, there is a name known for someone in the 5th generation, but we don't know the parents, yet. And, there are a couple of more unknowns in the 6th generation even though we know something about the related person in the 5th. It is in the 7th generation (not shown) where (currently) unknowns increase a great deal. ... In the table,  we show the counts for the generation of the parents, grandparents, etc. (out to the 3rd ggps). For Benjamin, that would be the generation of Samuel Gardner, son of Thomas and Margaret.

07/12/2015 -- Okay, turtle speed. But, we get there. Announcing a new project: Sherborne, Dorset. No doubt, it is about time. When finished with the data collection and analysis, we will present the strongest story (the prerogative of the family) that the facts, and abductive reasoning, will support. As such, we hope to demonstrate some very much needed research viewpoints.

03/30/2022 -- While researching for GB XII, 1, we were looking at the descendants of Miriam and added Lorenzo Dow who was an itinerant preacher (circuit rider). He married Peggy Dow who wrote Vicissitudes Exemplified (1814).