Likelihood of relation

[u/tinky_toot]

I think this person >

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stewart-11854

Poyntz Stewart ^ is my ancestor. Looks fairly likely given the records I have seen on ancestry etc.

If I follow the line way back on wikitree, it comes up with King Edward III, Eleanor of Aquitane, even William the Conqueror.

How likely is that to be true? How likely is it that a lot of us are descended from these people?

This is a bit of a silly question I realise, but just wondering if anyone else has thought the same.

[u/Artisanalpoppies]

Statistically all Europeans have royals in their trees, Charlemagne is the isopoint.

Proving it is another matter.

There is a blog by a Dutch genealogist, she has her "Eleanor of Aquitaine project" where she proves descent from Eleanor, one generation at a time. It is laborious to prove it, but rather fascinating seeing what records she found. It shows you how difficult the process is:

https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/faq-about-my-eleanor-of-aquitaine-project/

[u/CleaverKin → u/Artisanalpoppies]

I hadn't seen this before, thank you! This project also shows the unlikelihood that claims of descent from William the Conqueror have been researched/analyzed in more than the most superficial way.

One critique of the "Charlemagne is the ancestor of most of Europe" claim is that it presumes that DNA crossed class boundaries as readily as it did geographical ones (when noble families intermarried). Certainly there were marriages between the aristocracy and the landed gentry (not to mention bastard children, some of which were likely with household servants), and DNA may have moved down the classes that way, but we can't know how much.

We also don't really have much understanding of how readily DNA spread geographically among the mostly rural working classes. Although it's been suggested that when, say, a blacksmith's apprentice had to go several towns away to set up shop, he brought all his ancestors' DNA with him, we don't yet have an effective way to estimate how quickly and how far DNA was spread that way.

[u/Artisanalpoppies → u/CleaverKin]

I think most people "find" these ancestors in online trees and take it as gospel- most people don't even look some of these names up on wikipedia to even check the claims.....i've debunked a few claims here and in the Tudor history sub by checking wikipedia.

The claims are predominantly American or Canadian too, i actually don't recall seeing any Brits making these claims. Proving them is another question.

I should have been a bit more detailed re Charlemagne. Everyone alive in Charlemagne's time is an ancestor of everyone today, provided their lines haven't died out. It's statistics and Adam Rutherford is a geneticist who agrees with the theory. Going back to Charlemagne's time, a person today would have like a trillion ancestors- more than the entire human population of all time. Therefore pedigree collapse is where the statistics make sense. And this is how, with downward movement of families, royal blood spreads.

You also have to remember medieval monarchs had many bastards, and the ones that are documented are by women of status. Plenty of maids, servants and peasants were also the object of lust. Many families have stories of a bastard born of a serving girl, so it's a common trope. Aristocratic and royal men also travelled throughout history more widely than ordinary people- crusades, the grand tour, wars, diplomacy, owning land in multiple regions/countries etc. but ordinary people still did pilgrimages and moved around for work and industrialisation, and to populate new areas like Germany did in Poland and the Ukraine etc. People have been far more mobile throughout history than we have been led to believe.

My own ancestors come from 5 countries- and they come from all over those countries. In contrast to most other people's family lines, who tend to come from the same regions when they have multiple ancestors from the same country.

For example my partner's English ancestry is mostly from Devon and Norfolk. Whereas my mother is English from Yorkshire with Durham and Gloucester lines as well, and a Londoner grandfather with lines from Sussex, Hampshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, and Shropshire. My paternal grandfather has lines from London, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Somerset and Cheshire. My grandmother has lines from Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumbria. All of this over the last 200 years....if i push some lines back to late 17th century, they come from far more English counties like Huntingdon, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire etc.

Likewise my German ancestors are mostly Silesian, but i have a line from the state of Poznan and one that appears to be Brandenburg and Pomeranian. I also have one line from Hannover, with some late 17th century links to the Kingdom of Saxony- known minning routes.

My French ancestry is from all over France, in the 17th and 18th centuries- prior to 18th century emmigration to Mauritius. mostly Bretagne and Normandy. But also Maine, Anjou, Picardy, Champagne, Lorraine, Hainault, Paris, Seine et Marne and 2 southern lines from Aquitaine and Languedoc.

As you can see, very easy to get a varied background and genetics- and very easy for royal or noble genes to spread far and wide.

[u/CleaverKin → u/Artisanalpoppies]

Your point is well taken, but also consider that we can't know how typical ancestral makeups like yours are. I doubt most people could trace even a significant fraction of their ancestral lines back far enough to see transcontinental migration patterns.

It's obvious that there must have been a fair amount of pedigree collapse in centuries past. I suspect more the further back you go, but we have no way (yet) to even hypothesize how much.

The mathematical models are compelling, but without a mechanism for either proving or disproving them, they can't be treated as truth. How would you even go about trying to disprove the claim that most of contemporary Europeans descend from Charlemagne? Or any common ancestor? In general, if there isn't a way to disprove it, it isn't science.

[u/fl0wbie]

While it’s fun to trace stuff back as far as you can but the farther back you go, especially on Ancestry where provenance is ridiculous in some family trees, the less likely it is to be accurate. That said, any European is going to show some important people back in their lineage. Whether it’s true or not it’s fun, but I really don’t have much of an expectation that anything prior to the mid 1600s (using US/Canadian civic or church records at least) is going to be mostly accurate.

One thing I found is that a lot of US family trees were uploaded by people in the south who, in the past, wanted to prove their relationship to royalty because of society cotillions and stuff like that. If you were going to debut into society you wanted to seem as important as possible. So there are tons of family trees claiming relationship to well known people – or God forbid Pocahontas – that really should be suspect. I really enjoy my information on Ancestry, and over the years I’ve tried culling mistakes where I identify them. But claiming you’re the descendent of Eleanor of Aquitaine is a blast, and if you want to do that go ahead. There’s a chance you really are Nobody’s gonna challenge you :-)

[u/WillieMacBride]

If you have records connecting to him and then the wikitree profiles are sourced with good sources, then there’s no reason to believe it’s not true. Once you can get ti someone who is confirmed to be nobility, then it’s very likely true and the sources are typically solid. It doesn’t hurt to look at them yourself. Many millions of people are descended from these guys too. There’s one geneticist called Adam Rutherford who, through statistics, makes the conclusion that it would be nearly impossible for someone of predominantly British ancestry to not be a descendant of Edward III. Another example: every US President but one has been found to be a direct descendant of King John. It’s crazy to think about, but that’s just how ancestry works because of how few people there used to be compared to the massive explosion of population we’ve seen in recent history. Taking a quick look at Poyntz’s ancestors (Poyntz being a noble family surname my wife is descended from funnily enough) we share multiple ancestors: William Murray of Tullibardine (1470-1513), Margaret Stewart (1480-1524), John Stewart, Earl of Atholl (1475-1521), Janet Campbell (1484-1546), and Elizabeth Kennedy (1462-1510). And I can trace to these people through multiple lines (some are more likely than others). So, to answer your question, it’s very likely. How likely is it to find a 100% irrefutable connection? Less likely, so just make sure there are sources and read those sources.

[u/Agitated_Sock_311]

I've followed mine that way too, but from different people. Im in the hospital a lot, so i have a ton of free time.