I wanna be related to Eleanor of Aquitaine, I thought to myself yesterday.
This wasn’t entirely random.
I had read through a copy of my ahnentafel (genealogical) table, compiled by my grandfather many years ago. I have piles and piles of material from him, arranged in not always helpful ways (more on that in future posts).
My table goes to the 17th generation (if you count me as Gen 1). There are 19 ancestors listed in that generation.
In other words, my grandfather had traced us in various countries to the 15th century; this was his retirement project (and he retired in his forties). His greatest achievement was tracing our Finnish line back to the 1500s.
I hadn’t had a close look at my table in a while–I wanted to go through this one because it had info I didn’t know about my birth father (more on that later too).
As I was flipping into the more distant past, I noticed one of my Holland ancestors (gen 15) was noted as a bastard son of a Duke.
In the Gen 16, section, Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, was listed, with his death year. It’s just a line.
That same section has a few paragraphs under a German relative’s name, with information about the town, German spelling, and how one guy can’t be another guy’s father.
So this Duke seems pretty unimportant, since there are no notes.
But, I realized, if he’s a Duke, we know who his parents are, surely.
Which took me down a rabbit hole. Henry Holland (and his ancestors and relations) were all heavily involved in The War of the Roses. Henry was an asshole by all accounts. He worked as a Constable at the Tower, and the rack (torture device) was nicknamed “Exeter’s daughter.” He ended up in the Tower much later, when his wife’s family (York) was in ascension, since he was loyal to the other side. (His wife? Richard III’s older sister.)
It was perhaps this disloyalty to the Yorks that enabled his wife to eventually divorce him (something rare at the time).
While my (Grand)Daddy recorded the death date, he didn’t note that most historians think he was likely thrown off a ship on orders of the King (while doing a job for him). (The official story was that he fell off and drowned.)
But what does Daddy go into on that page? How the now nonexistent German village’s name might have been spelled.
Henry Holland’s parents aren’t even on the Gen 17 page, though of course we know who they are (he was the third Duke of Exeter, after all).
Henry was a descendant of King Edward III on both sides of his family.
Why have I always been obsessed with the Order of the Garter?
Now I know I’m descended from one of the original knights–and from a Lady of the Garter.
I know about some beheadings.
About being descended from “the Unready.”
And yes, through my relation to this guy:
. . . I am related to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her husband, Henry II.
Today, I’ve traced us back to the 800s, to generation 38. There are other veins to follow, but since they don’t lead to English kings, they probably won’t go back so far.
One name on the tree caught my eye. In Gen 27, Henry I was married to Matilda of Scotland. Her dad was Malcolm III, whom I know as a boy who flees after Macbeth kills his father in the eponymous play. Thus, in addition to the Scottish line I can trace through the Andersons on my maternal Grandmother’s side and the Pagans also in (Grand)Daddy’s line, I’m descended from King Duncan, this guy:
My Masters was on Macbeth, my favorite Shakespeare play.
There are a lot more cool stories in my tree now.
I will read them the way you should read Shakespeare’s Macbeth (not quite history). I will also read them knowing that there are likely mistakes in the record and at least a few men were probably raising children they only thought were theirs.
My (Grand)Daddy was obviously not really interested in these stories of English and Scottish kings. My son’s guess is likely true: once he hit a royal, the fun was over. Everyone else had already built the trees. It was the search that drove him. His discovery that a sale of land happened between his wife’s ancestors and his many generations back was further proof for him that they were meant to be.
He was interested in what happened to the laborers, the peasants, the bastard children, the ones not famous to have a coat of arms.
The bastard son of the 3rd Duke of Exeter, Thomas Holland, had a grandchild (Gen 13) who immigrated to America. And then a long time after that, Bessie Christina Holland married Waito Walter Waltonen (Gen 4). They had my (Grand)Daddy.
Then I went and had a bastard son, shown here, being fed by his Great-Great-Grandma Bessie.
