The Family.

Ancestry.com blog update & Sir Ralph Verney, 1st Baronet, of Middle Claydon

Since I last posted about the ancestry.com official blog; they’ve made a few announcement that I’m going to share with you- along with lots of other things!

On April 18, Tana L. Pedersen posted about Family Tree Maker Message Boards. She discussed how the message boards help people share their success stories and find professionals who could help answer any questions people might be having. This is also a great tool that can be used on the ancestry.com application.

She made a post on April 19, announcing that the ancestry.com application has officially been downloaded one million times (I’m one of those one million) to people’s iPhones, iPads as well as iPods. As far as the application goes, it’s a really nice one and I would recommend it to anyone who is a member of ancestry.com!

On April 27, Jeanie Croasmun made a post announcing that winner of Our Family History Journey Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes prize of $20,000 went to Michael F., a resident of Illinois. Not only will he be winning a ton of money but he will also win time with a professional genealogist and historians as well as a free year of ancestry.com.

The most recent announcement was posted on May 3 to talk about The World Memory Project. In honor of the victims of the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum along with ancestry.com are set to launch a free internet resource full of information about all of the victims and survivors.

My Finding:

Sir Ralph Verney, 1st Baronet, of Middle Claydon; also my 16th great grandfather.

Born in 1613, Verney was known as a baronet and English politician.

His parents were Sir Edmund Verney and Margaret Denton.

His political career took off in 1640 when he entered the Short Parliament and it is known that he was at the trial of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford. (After his trial he was condemned to death by King Charles I.

During the trial Verney opposed the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud; but when Verney wouldn’t join the Covenanters (a Scottish Presbyterian unit), Verney had to go into exhile to the Netherland and France then eventually Italy. Everything he earned was taken from him but while in France he met his wife who died shortly after in Italy.

By 1653 he was allowed to return back to England but was captured and put away in prison for two years.

In 1661, King Charles II made him a Baronet, and he was elected into the House in 1681 where he represented Buckingham until 1690. During his time in Parliament he was very vocal about being opposed to William of Orange becoming king of England.

Eventually he married again to Mary Blacknall and they had three sons and three daughters. His son John was “raised to the Peerage of Ireland” and became Viscount Fermanagh.

Verney died when he was 82 in 1696.

Verney

(wikipedia.com)

King Charles II (restoration period)

(wikipedia.com)

Currently reading…

Currently reading “Gangs of New York”…and wondering if I have any lineage I can trace back to the five points? Anybody out there who can?

Ashley Judd & the Mayflower

Last Friday was the season finale of NBC’s genealogy show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” The show centered around helping Ashley Judd trace back her roots.

Ashley Judd started her journey with a trip to visit her father, Michael Ciminella. She gathered information from her father about her grandmother and great-grandmother; as well as her great-great-grandfather Elijah Hensley, who fought in the Civil War. She learned that he was a prisoner and lost his leg because of a war injury. She found out that he was in the 39th Kentucky Infantry, Company I. After Judd went to the Kentucky State Archives she decided she wanted to learn more about the stories behind the records she had found so she talked to professor Brian McKnight, also a Civil War historian. When he reviewed Judd’s records he helped her understand that Hensley was captured about a month after he enlisted, then was returned to the Union as a prisoner. Hensley was finally discharged at the age of 18.

Next up on Judd’s journey, she visited Saltville, Virginia. There she met George Wunderlich, who is the director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. They mainly discussed Hensley’s leg amputation and talked about lack of anesthesia.

Judd then ventured to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston. It was here that she was presented an ancestor scroll showing that Judd descenden from William Brewster (who came over on the Mayflower).

She began learning about William Brewster. He was a bailiff for the Archbishop of York. Judd decided to take a trip to York. When she arrived in York she met with professor Bill Shiels and he filled Judd in with historical facts about the religious turmoil during that time and why exactly Brewster would have wanted to leave. Judd called Brewster a “religious refugee.”

Her next trip was to Boston where she went to Guild Hall to view the jail cells that Brewster and William Bradford were held in 1607. She then went to Cambridge and met with professor Anthony Melton and he showed Judd letters that talked about Brewster saying that he was being pursued by the English government. He finally sailed on the Mayflower in 1620.

My findings:

So since we are on the topic of the Mayflower, I’ll share with you my connection.

The Fuller Family.

Thomas Fuller is my 9th great-grandfather. Now, he didn’t come over on the Mayflower but his brothers did. Edward and Samuel Fuller were passengers on the Mayflower. They are also my great-grand uncles. They were the children of Robert Fuller and Sarah Dunthorne.

Samuel Fuller was known as the Mayflower physician. Both brothers signed the Mayflower Compact. However, Edward Fuller and his wife, Ann died during the first Plymouth winter in 1621.

The Fuller home on Leydon Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Here’s the link to the official ancestry.com blog:

http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/

Gwyneth Paltrow, Focus Group & Maud FitzJohn

Last week on “Who Do You Think You Are?”:

Gwyneth Paltrow was featured on “Who Do You Think You Are?” last week. She found out that her ancestor was a rabbi who stopped a fire from burning a village. She also travelled to Barbados to find that her great grandmother was born on the Caribbean island. She learned that her great grandmother left Barbados with her sister to go to New York in search of a better life. Rosamund Stout, Paltrow’s great grandmother, was orphaned at 13. There was also more women than men on the island of Barbados, so there was a lot of competition for a husband during that time.

She then wanted to look into the background of her grandfather, Buster. Buster had always described his family life as unstable so Paltrow dug around for information only to find that Buster’s mother, Ida, who was very smart and going to college to become a teacher, ended up getting kicked out of college for bad attendance because during that same year she had lost her mother to cirrhoosis of the liver as well as losing her brother. Then she found that Ida had also lost a daughter at the age of three because she was run over by a wagon- all at the same time, Ida was pregnant dealing with all of these losses. This caused Ida to become severely depressed and had trouble supporting her family; which is why Buster had always described his family life as being unstable, but he never knew any of these things about his mother.

The most exciting for Paltrow was when she discovered that her great-great-grandfather, Simon Paltrovich was a rabbi. She also found out that his father was a rabbi too and in a memorial book by Holocaust survivors in a Polish community, they always felt that he had incredible powers. The book specifically said, “he was a great holy man and master of Kabbalah.” They believed the way he stopped the fire was that he, “went out to the balcony of his house, waved his handkerchief towards the fire and the fire was extinguished.”

Today “Who Do You Think You Are?” aired the Ashley Judd episode and as soon as I get the chance to watch it this weekend I will update you on her findings!

Recently, the ancestry.com blog made a post about viewing changes in your tree. This was mainly to announce the new tool they’ve added that allows their users to miss a week or two of their research and be able to come back where they left off. Sometimes if a user stops for a week or two it can be a little hard to figure out exactly where you left off, and with this new tool it makes it really easy.

Another post was about a family tree maker focus group that announces a focus group for their uses to attend in Charleston, South Carolina on Thursday, May 12 at 12:30 p.m. It is sponsored by ancestry.com and being held by National Genealogical Society. It’s a focus group to allow all genealogists to come and talk about their family and their findings.

Now, for my findings!

Maud FitzJohn:

24th great grandmother.

Maud FitzJohn, Countess of Warwick, was known as an English noblewoman and daughter of John FitzGeoffrey, Lord of Shere and Isabel Bigod. Her first husband was Gerald de Furnivalle, Lord Hallamshire. Her second husband was William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick (he was a celebrated soldier). She had two children with Beauchamp.

-Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick: he married heiress Alice de Toeni; and they had seven children.

-Isabella de Beauchamp: married Sir Patrick de Chaworth and Hugh le Despenser; and they had four children.

Through her daughter, Isabella, Maud FitzJohn was the maternal grandmother of Hugh the younger Despenser, who was the favorite of King Edward II of England but very unpopular amongst the court.

Her mother, Isabel Bigod was a descendant of Strongbow and Aoife of Leinster.