I'm descended from royalty!

That’s a rather exciting revelation! 

I’ve been able to trace one English line back to 1590 because of their unusual name. I didn’t get very far back with my Irish ancestors because they mostly have common names.

When I get time, I hope to do a deeper dive into the records to find out if our ancestors were friends or foes at Clontarf or elsewhere. I have some family surnames that correspond with those in Brian Boru’s line, how to trace an unbroken line is challenging.

I’ve done two different DNA tests with different companies and the only royalty DNA reveals is an Eastern European prince and a possible link to Marie Antoinette.

The way I went so far back was when the records ran out I asked co-pilot who owned the land and traced it back through land records, was the settlement they lived in, in the doomsday book. Surname searches can reveal quite a bit too.

With the Irish you can ask questions like is the name Gaelic or Anglo-Norman? The religion of the people can be telling too, catholic and they're more likely to be Gaelic or old Anglo-Norman, rather than Protestants coming later with the plantations.

It's all going to be fairly approximate without records or DNA matches, but it is possible to take it a lot further back in time although the information might be more general.

As ever I'm more interested in the history rather than any living relatives I might have. I guess Brian Boru had a lot of children by a lot of women, if you think mathematically then we're all descended from a few people, but sometimes you can trace a direct linl to someone famous, or even infamous. To be honest I never thought I'd be able to go back as far as I have, I thought we'd all be peasants nobody ever bothered with, we were peasants, but because we were and nobody much bothered with us, our traces are in parish records all in the same place for centuries.

That’s a useful tip to use AI to identify the land records. When I have time to get back to researching I’ll try that. I’m stuck with a few of the English lines but there is one Irish line that is really frustrating me because I can’t find birth, marriage, occupation, tenancy or land records anywhere. It’s as if they didn’t exist but It’s probably just that the records were lost or destroyed. It doesn’t help that each generation seemed to have moved about a lot.

TheCatWoman said:

if you think mathematically then we're all descended from a few people, but sometimes you can trace a direct linl to someone famous, or even infamous.

Exactly! Also, nowadays people who are adopted are often aware that their mother/father isn’t a birth parent. Years ago, people didn’t always talk about such things and ‘illegitimate’ births may have been kept secret, so some people might be barking up the wrong tree on their ancestral search. Thank goodness blood lines aren’t important any more. 

That’s a useful tip to use AI to identify the land records. When I have time to get back to researching I’ll try that. I’m stuck with a few of the English lines but there is one Irish line that is really frustrating me because I can’t find birth, marriage, occupation, tenancy or land records anywhere. It’s as if they didn’t exist but It’s probably just that the records were lost or destroyed. It doesn’t help that each generation seemed to have moved about a lot.

TheCatWoman said:

if you think mathematically then we're all descended from a few people, but sometimes you can trace a direct linl to someone famous, or even infamous.

Exactly! Also, nowadays people who are adopted are often aware that their mother/father isn’t a birth parent. Years ago, people didn’t always talk about such things and ‘illegitimate’ births may have been kept secret, so some people might be barking up the wrong tree on their ancestral search. Thank goodness blood lines aren’t important any more.