One thing I find quite startling after having been engaged in genealogical research for the past few years is the fact that many Americans really, really wish that they were descended from royalty. This seems odd; I mean, the reason a lot of our ancestors came here in the first place was to get away from royalty of various ilks. And a lot of the "nobles" you meet in history are not really the kind of people you want to be associated with.
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| Warwick Castle |
And one thing DNA technology reveals is that it's not exactly unusual for certain early monarchs -- I mean, you would have to call Genghis Khan a monarch, wouldn't you? Not to mention the Irish Niall of the Nine Hostages -- to have descendants numbering in the millions. So what's the big deal? I can understand being proud of some great leader, like Charlemagne, but ordinary, garden-variety royalty? Why should an individual be admired for an accident of birth?
I will admit that as a person of Swedish heritage I'm sort of proud of the Swedish royal family; they seem to be modest, hard-working royals, and don't make any trouble. And in typical Swedish progressive fashion they have changed the primogeniture rules so that the next monarch will be Queen Sophia. The main stories I know about them are about the time the present King rescued a lady from a snowdrift on a skiing holiday, and the romance of the prince and the showgirl, which is rather sweet -- when Princess Sophia was officially named the heir, the King's brother was able to marry the former actress who had been his lady friend for about thirty years, because he was no longer in line for the
throne. But I'm sure I'm not related in any way!
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| Pretty fancy Anglo-Saxon metalwork |
I have also been rather charmed to discover that some few ancestors were, apparently, descendants of old Saxon nobility, before the Norman Conquest; this is pretty cool. But it's mainly because they all sound like characters from Ivanhoe -- Wigot and Gunhild and Edgitha. And being related to characters in Shakespeare -- not just people of the same name, like Lovell and Percy, but the actual guys -- is also pretty cool, but more for celebrity value than anything else. All of these people eventually picked the wrong side in English dynastic wars, so lost all their power and prosperity, anyway.
What I am proud of in my ancestors is a pretty strong tradition of usefulness and providing goods and services the community found desirable. The "noble" ancestor I
am intrigued by was the last in the direct line of an old English family named Petley. By the early 1500's they had dwindled and only the widow and Agnes, the young daughter of the last Petley in the direct line, were left -- and to me, their next move was something of a triumph, because this aristocratic girl married John Manning, the head of one of the most prominent families in the area. And this family went into trade -- really, really skilled trade; one of Agnes' sons. Henry Manning, became the armorer to Henry the Eighth, and held several other pretty profitable offices; I'm a direct descendant of his brother, George.
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| Henry VIII's armor |
It seems that this opened up a whole social world associated with the latest technology -- metalworking. Henry Manning's daughter, Phebe, married a promising young man, James Waters - an ironmonger. They had six children. James died in 1617. And then came what might have been quite a romantic story; Phebe's oldest son, Richard, married Rejoice Plasse, the daughter of widowed ironmonger William Plasse. And then Phebe married William, thus causing a couple of centuries of confusion for their puzzled descendants.
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| The Massachusetts Bay Colony |
The whole group decided to move to the New World, probably not for religious reasons but because their skills were very much in demand in the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. Metal tools and equipment -- and especially guns, of course -- would probably have been prized above rubies, if there had been any rubies. The colonial governor, John Winthrop, wrote to his wife about what she would need to bring with her from England, and topping the list is a frying pan. Imagine what it must have like in the colony, having to make everything from scratch without even a metal cookpot! The fascinating wills that are available freely online now usually mention disposal of all sorts of iron goods, from kettles to fireplace accessories to axes and muskets. And Richard Waters was a gunsmith, leading to his being provided with housing in Salem.
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| Very fancy pistols from 1650 |
Through the years the Waters family took up many skilled and indispensable trades, up to and including bootlegging hard cider. My branch of the family moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, where there is still a historically preserved Waters Farm -- where they did everything. They had a stand of timber which supplied firewood and building materials, which were milled right on the farm.
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| The Waters Farm Shingle Mill |
They produced apples and cider, and had sheep and cattle for wool, food, and for use as draft animals.
In my family tree, the Waters family joined with the Carpenter family, who had both a comb-making business and later a broom factory.
Imagine how valuable all of these things were in early New England! You could make your own food from scratch, and to some extent your own clothing; but metal cookware, planked wood, cider, combs, and brooms -- how welcome they must have been! These people did more for their neighbors in the future Unites States than a dozen kings and queens.
