St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1897-09-11
BILLIONS OF ANCESTORS.
American Descendants from wiIiaaM
-.....s...

L
the Conaueror.
We can show mathematically thatth
child Of to-day must have had at tn
time Of Alfred the Great an ancestry O
a7o,672,0 100000 persons. In the tim,
of William the Conqueror Thirty gen
erationsl, this number reaches S,59S,
o94,592. This is shown by the ordinar,
process Of computation--tWo parents
/ four grandparents, eight great grand
parents, and SO on. AS the number o.
Englishmen in Alfred's time, or ever
in Williams, was but a very small frac
ton of those numbers, most of these
ancestors must have been repeated
many times in the calculation. EacI
4 person who leaves descendants is linl
in the great chain of life; or, rather
a strand in ife's great network. The
blood of each single person in Alfred's
time who left capable descendants en-
during to our day is represented II
every family Of strict English descent
In other words, every Englishman Is
descended from Alfred the Great, ais
| very like also from the peasant woman
whose cakes Alfred is reputed to have
burned. Moreover, there are few ii
any who do not share the blood of vii.
liam the Conqueror. Most ancestral
lines, il they could be traced, would
go back to him by hundred differ
ent strains. In fact, there are few
families In the south and east of Eng
land who have not more n Norrnan blood
than the present royal family. The
house of Guelph holds the throne, not
through nearness to William, but
through primog eniture, q thing very
different from heredity.
Mr.. Edward .. Edwards, of Minneap.
oils, has recently sent me some very
interesting studies in genealogy yet
unpublished. These concern the lin.
cage of his little daughter, my niece,
Mary Stockton Edwards.
Mr.. Edwards, finds that the little girl,
like millions Of others is descended
through at least two different lines
from William the Conqueror. The
lineage Of one of these leads in 80 gene.
rations through the family names
of Jordan Hawley, Waldo, Ell.
derkin, Drake, Grenville, Courte
ney, De Bohun and Plantage-
net to William the Conqueror
Sir Humphrey de Bohun married
Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of
King Edward /. In the ancestry OF
Kind Edward are the Saxon kings Ced.
ric, Egbert, Alfred and Ethelred, while
intermarriage with other royal lines
brings in Hengist, Hugh Capet, Charlie.
magne, 0tho the Great, Duncan, Rurik,
Igor, San Fernando and host of 9TH
er notables of whom one would have
less right to be proud. The Courte-
neYsA earls of paHnp p---a4Az :---zss-I | |
and PIantagenet again the Edwards rt1
lineage has been traced along another
and quite different line.
The 70 families named, more or less
traced in the first series, containing,
perhaps, i. 900 representatives, are only
SO many out of billions, if there were
no Implications. If there were no repe-
titions. there would be- instead of
the L 900 known ancestors, 4, 900 ,Ooo
Of persons between Mary Stockton Ed
wards and William the Conqueror
This genealogy is, therefore, but
strand from an enormous neIWorK,
which, if written out in full, would
cover the earth with names. Only
through the family pride Of the Courte-
news and brakes this fragment OF per
sonal descent and personal history
happened to be preserved By mere
chance the plebeian record of the pie.
beian descendants Of the Puritan John
Drake, Of Windsor, forms junction
with the sacred annals OF the English
peerage. {.
Most of the English people named IN
these records lived in Devon and Sus-
sex. from which region tlelr descend
ants came to America. The subordl-
nate lines traced out lead to the feudal
lords Of those two counties. The IN
teresting fact, however, is that in this
! there is nothing exceptional lhese hes
neop1e in America were New England
farmers for the most part, squires ano
] shipwrights, with a lineage or char. char.
acted in no respect singular. Their sole
i important heritage was the Puritan ia
conscience. DIR. David Starr Jordan II
4 Arena.
Heavy HAIR and INSANITY.
Someone has discovered that yer.