The diamond drill. (Crystal Falls, Iron County, Mich.) 1887-1996, 1897-08-21
BILLIONS OF ANCESTORS.
American Descendants from william
the COnqueror.


We can show mathematically thatthe |
child of to-day must have had az the
time Of Alfred the Great an ancestry of
s7o.672,000,O00 persons. In the time
OF William the Conqueror Thirty gem
erations), this number reaches $685.
094,592 This is shown by the ordinary
process of computation-two parents
four grandparents, eight great grand
parents, and so on. AS the number of
Englishmen in Alfred's time, or even
in Williams, was but very small frac-
ton of those numbers, most of these
ancestors must have been repeated
many times in the calculation. Each
person who leaves descendants is a link
in the great chain of life; or. rather,
a strand In life's great network. The
blood Of each single person in Alfred's
time who left capable descendants en-
during TO our day Is represented In
every family Of strict English descent.
In other words, every Englishman is
descended from Alfred the Great, as
very like also from the peasant woman
whose cakes Alfred is reputed to have
burned. Moreover. there are few IL
any who do not share the blood of Will
liam the Conqueror. Most ancestral
lines, II they could be traced, would
GO back to him by n hundred differ
ent strains. In fact, there are few
families in the south and east OF Eng
land who have not more Norman blood
than the present royal family. The
house OF Guelph holds the throne, not
through nearness TO William, but
through primogeniture, a thing very
different from heredity.
Mr.. Edward j. 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unpublished.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 30 gene
rations through the family names
of Jordan Hawley, Waldo, FL
derlSin, 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, Ohio the Great, Duncan, Rurik,
Igor, San Fernando and host of 9TH
err notables Of whom one would have
less right to be proud. The Courte-
neys, earls OF Devon, are again de-
scended from the royal lines of France
| Hugh Capet) and Russia, but not from
William the Conqueror. To Courteney
and Plantagenet again the Edwards
lineage has been traced along another
and quite different line.
The 20 families named, more or less
! traced in the first series, containing,
perhaps, 1000 representatives, are only
so many out Of billions, II there were
no Implications. II there were no repe-
titions, there would be, instead Of
the 1000 known ancestors. 1000, 900, 900
of persons between Mary Stockton Ed
wards and William the Conqueror.
This genealogy Is, therefore, but n
strand from an enormous network,
which, IL written out in full, would
cover the earth with names. Only
through the family pride Of the Courte-
neys and brakes this fragment of per-
sonal descent and personal history
happened TO be preserved BY mere
chance the plelbeian 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 their descend
ants came 90 America. The subordi-
nate lines traced out lead 20 the feudal
lords OF those two counties. The In
teresting fact, however, is that in this
there is nothing exceptional. These
people in America were New England
farmers for the most part, squires and
shipwrights, with n lineage or char
acted In no respect singular. Their sole
important heritage was the Puritan
conscience.-Dr. David Starr Jordan, In
Arena.