I continue to be quite impressed with Wikipedia. While articles on politics or current affairs are sometimes biased, there are often lively discussions of any controversies between contributors. In the fields of science and history at least, there seems to be a quasi-peer-review process that I think is working, mostly. Still, I am trying to branch out, and link to other articles when I can. So – the following links are not to Wikipedia articles. Here are some good ones: Wars of the Roses, the British Richard III Society and its American branch, Henry VII, and the Stafford family.

The last two Plantagenet’s died during the reign of the viciously paranoid Tudor king Henry VIII. One of them – a 66-year-old widow – was executed for treason(!)

Henry VIII (Mercifully, not our ancestor - that I know of - yet)

The House of Stafford fared not much better, but the male line did survive. The late husband of the widow mentioned above was Baron Henry Stafford, grandson of “the” Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. I am checking on why their son was not considered a threat; his name was Richard Stafford; birth, death dates unknown. Not killed, but bitterly shunned by the Tudor’s, Richard Stafford died in poverty; his children and grandchildren were poor tradesmen. Perhaps generously, they could be considered part of the emerging Middle Class: not servants nor peasants, but having no property of their own. Documentation is poorer for the next few generations, but it appears that Richard’s 5th great-granddaughter was Martha Bennett, wife of Philip Myers.

Coming soon: Great-Grandma Martha Bennett and the Wyoming (Pennsylvania) massacre.

]]> http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/03/11/fall-from-grace-plantagenet-and-stafford/feed/ 0 http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/03/09/great-grandma-she-wolf/ http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/03/09/great-grandma-she-wolf/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:50:23 +0000 George http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/?p=2261 Well, not as in “raised by wolves,” but the nickname is still an apt metaphor for her life and career. The quintessential femme fatale. I speak of our approx. 20th great-grandmother, Isabella of France (c. 1294-1327). She was the daughter of King Philip IV of France, and in time, sister of three more French kings.

N.B. In the film, Isabella is the love interest of Sir William Wallace, a historical figure who led a long guerrilla war for Scottish independence during this period. However, although her birth date is uncertain, she would have been impossibly young at the time of the events fictionalized in the movie, and is not likely to have ever been involved with Sir William. Indeed, William Wallace was executed before Isabella even married Edward II (note below her age at marriage).

Promised from infancy, Isabella was married at around age twelve to the famously bisexual, inept, and newly crowned King Edward II of England, a young man (only) twice her age. In this way, Isabella was flung into what had every prospect of being a royally dysfunctional marriage.

In the early years (that is, once she reached puberty), things progressed as expected; Isabella bore to Edward four children, including our ancestor, the future Edward III. Her faithfulness is not taken for granted by historians; the couple’s itineraries nine months prior to each birth strongly support the children’s legitimacy.

In time, jealous of her husband’s male lovers, she tried with limited success to rid their court of them. Eventually, she took a lover of her own, at first discreetly, later quite publicly. He was Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March.

They had no children together, but in a supreme irony, Roger Mortimer is also our ancestor, through a child of his marriage to Joan de Geneville.

While in hiding in Flanders, Isabella and Roger conspired to rebel against her husband. This they did, successfully, in November 1326. Although they installed the 14-year-old Edward III as king, Roger and Isabella ruled as regents for several years. Accounts vary as to whether they had Edward II gruesomely murdered, or kept him in seclusion after their conquest. Roger and Isabella set about usurping many noble landholdings, by disgracing or executing the owners.

In 1330, supported by many nobles, Edward III, now 18 years old, asserted his independence, and Roger Mortimer was hanged without trial on November 30. Both Isabella “the she-wolf” and Mortimer’s wife Joan were pardoned and lived out their lives in retirement. Isabella was permitted by her son to dote on her grandchildren.

“No man ever excited her resentment who did not perish under its effect; the king himself forming no exception to this fact.” – Unattributed quote

References abound for the lives of Edward II, Isabella the She-Wolf, Roger Mortimer, and Edward III. Many of the articles on the linked search pages were consulted for this post. There is a somewhat controversial, full-length biography of Isabella by the best-selling historian and novelist Allison Wier, which I haven’t got hold of yet, as well as humorous treatments like this badass of the week award, and this hilarious spoof titled, “Support Group for Tragic Queens.”

Next: The fall of the House of Stafford.

Henry Stafford was part of the extended Plantagenet dynasty, which lasted from 1133-1485. Among other connections, he was, three times over, 3rd great grandson of King Edward III (lived 1312-1377). Of the 15 kings in the dynasty, here are five others who are my direct ancestors: Edward II, Edward I, Henry III, John, and Henry II. The last three are ancestors of both of Dan Myers’ parents.

These were dangerous times. While the kings and their relatives enjoyed lives of privilege, power, and luxury, deadly perils lurked at every turn. Of those six monarchs named above, at least one died by murder, another as an indirect result of his military defeat, and others ascended the throne following the premature death and/or violent overthrow of their predecessors. Besides their job hazards, they were as vulnerable as others to the prevailing pandemics; at least one died of the Black Plague. Some of their stories are apt to find their way into future posts. Stay tuned.

Not so, however, with Martha Bennett Myers’ paternal grandmother, Mary Stafford (1690-1782). From her father, Amos Stafford, the male line goes straight back to Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1455-1483). I haven’t got it in my data yet, but this character is approximately my 12th-15th great-grandfather.

Henry was a member of the royal family many times over; indeed, three of his four grandparents were descended from king Edward III, albeit through daughters or youngest sons. He never became king, but was a potent behind-the-scenes player, who may well have had his sights set on the throne. He maneuvered his kinsman Richard III into power following the death of Edward IV, by engineering the disgrace, disappearance, and presumed murder of the uncrowned Edward V and his brother in the Tower of London in 1483. These two were also Henry’s kinfolk, of course. The same year, Henry Stafford changed sides,  joining forces with Henry Tudor (a more distant relative) in a rebellion against Richard III. This rebellion failed, and Henry Stafford was beheaded for treason on 2 November 1483, at the age of 28.

Henry Tudor, however, successfully overthrew (and killed) Richard two years later, seizing the throne as Henry VII. This ended the Plantagenet dynasty of English kings, the house to which Stafford was most closely related (Technically, the dynasty ended earlier, but the two succeeding dynasties, reigning until Richard III, were extensions of the Plantagenet line). In the next post, we will make a quick survey of the several Plantagenet monarchs who happen to be our direct ancestors.

]]> http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/03/05/mary-stafford/feed/ 0 http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/02/15/full-pedigrees-updated/ http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/02/15/full-pedigrees-updated/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:31:35 +0000 George http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/?p=2074 About a month ago, I announced that I was “nearly finished” tracing all the threads of the European nobility to which a certain ancestor of Dan Myers had led me. At that time, Dan’s pedigree had over 800 names in my records. It took all this time, but now I really have finished, and the count stands at over 1,000! In the course of adding these names, and cleaning up some data problems, Anna Moen’s pedigree also increased to over 1,000 names. Isaac Larson’s increased by a handful, still in the low 200′s (but one line does go back to the early first millennium). I have updated the “Full Pedigrees” pages for those three individuals. Please visit them and let me know what you think.

One further ancestor of note: the Roman Emperor Constantine I.

Constantine, you may recall, was the first emperor to embrace Christianity and end persecution of Christians. He also conquered large swaths of territory, reunifying the fragmented empire for the final time. Soon after his reign, the Roman Empire went into steep decline. Constantine is not an ancestor of Charlemagne (surprise!), yet is an ancestor of both Anna Moen and Dan Myers by a very different path. which includes a marriage between a proto-Viking king and a princess of the Vandals(!)

A century and change after Constantine, his great-grandson, Valentinian III was murdered, and his daughter Eudoxia (438-530 CE) married to Hunneric, king of the Vandals, who, well, you know, “vandalized” Rome, big-time, in 455.  Hmmm. Not what I would call a peaceful union;  nevertheless they had children together. Eudoxia & Hunneric’s “Vandal” grand-daughter, princess Hildis, married a certain Valdar Hroarsson (b. 547), a king in some part of Denmark, who was one of the earliest Vikings. They passed their genes on through Scandinavian nobility for almost 400 more years, until one of their someteenth-great-granddaughters married Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and had sons named – OMG! – Harold Godwinson and Tostig Godwinson of 1066 fame, both of them 28th great-grandfathers of ours, by two different routes.

And now I just read that the Vandals themselves came from Scandinavia, centuries before they sacked Rome! Looking into this …

]]> http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/02/15/full-pedigrees-updated/feed/ 0 http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/02/11/1066-a-clean-sweep/ http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/02/11/1066-a-clean-sweep/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:13:44 +0000 George http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/?p=2049 Here is another link documented by cousin Orrin Moen, but overlooked by me until now due to a software glitch. The “loser” of the Norman Conquest, Harold Godwinson, had three children  who escaped to Denmark after Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings. One of those was a daughter, Gytha of Wessex, who later married duke Vladimir II of Kiev. Well, guess what? Vladimir II was Lovell Larson’s 26th great grandfather, the son of Vsevold I Yaraslovic, mentioned in a recent post. Therefore, Harold Godwinson is my 28th great. Also, Harold’s treachorous brother, Tostig, who joined forces with Harald of Norway in his invasion, had children who escaped to Norway.  One of them became an ancestor of Earl Skule Baardson, father-in-law and deadly rival of King Haakon IV, and so, another ancestor of mine! So here is the score:

William the Conqueror: ancestor of Reatha Larson via Dan Myers, through a succession of kings of England;

Harold Godwinson, Tostig Godwinson, and Harald Hardrada: all ancestors of Lovell Larson via Anna Moen, through various branches of the Fairhair dynasty of Norway.

Harald III Hardrada

Harold Godwinson

Lovell is related through Yaroslav’s son Vsevold I, whose descendant several generations later married into Danish royalty, then later yet, one of the Danish princesses married King Magnus VI (or V) “Lagaboter” of Norway (lived 1238-1261), our approx. 21st great-grandpa (those of us in the “Isaac Larson dynasty”).  This is at about the end of Norway’s Fairhair dynasty. Of the 38 kings and pretenders that Wikipedia lists in their article about the dynasty (click on the link), a goodly handful are direct ancestors; the rest are some degree of granduncle or far-removed first cousin.

Reatha, on the other hand, is descended from Yaroslav’s daughter, Anne of Kiev, who married King Henry I of France.

Yaroslav’s wife, the mother of both the aforementioned ancestors, was Ingeborg Olofsdotter. Hmmm. Obviously Scandinavian; could she be related to our ancestor Olaf II “the Saint” of Norway? Yes, but only as a sister-in-law.

Ingeborg’s father was Olof III “Skötkonung,” king of Sweden. His pedigree is in some dispute, but seems to be limited to Sweden and perhaps Denmark.

However, it seems that Olof III reached out to his neighbors in several directions. Not only did his daughter Ingeborg marry the Grand Duke of Kiev, but another daughter (this one illegitimate), Astrid, married “Saint Olaf,” and became our ancestor via a completely different line, i.e. the Fairhair dynasty of Norway.

Thus, Olof III Sweden is an ancestor of  both Lovell and Reatha by one line, and again of Lovell by a  different route. That is genealogy for you. And to further confuse, the father-in-law of Olaf II (Norway) is Olof III (Sweden).

So far, I have not managed to trace Reatha into Norway, but this gets us pretty close: Sweden, and possibly Denmark.

Years later, Skule Baardsson ended up rebelling and being put to death, and Ibsen makes a great fiction of it, complete with an arch-evil bishop (or was it an evil archbishop?). The opening scene is the mother’s trial by ordeal, which in the play is just the first of many ordeals.

Many basic facts are true, e.g. Haakon married Skule’s daughter Margrite to try to keep the earl on board (this fact makes Skule Baardsson my ancestor). The timeline may have been altered a bit, and some elements were no doubt made-up. But the best part is the (wholly fictional) dialogue and the vivid, three-dimensional characters. Quintessential Ibsen; I read it in one long sitting. Google books has it for free (English translation of course – as if I could read anything else!)

Norwegian Birkebeiner

The name comes from a political faction contending for power during Norway’s century of intense civil wars (1130-1227). During the multiple conflicts, forces coalesced into two main parties. The Bagler party, centered in Oslo, enjoyed the support of the Church, and superior military strength (most of the time), while the Birkebeiner were popular among the farming communities of inland Norway, and the fishermen and mariners of the Atlantic coast. Their name comes from the birch bark they used (according to legend) to protect their feet and legs, as many were too poor to afford protective armor or footwear.

So what, you may ask, is the connection to the sport of Nordic ski racing? It is a journey in January of 1206 to rescue a young prince from the oncoming  Bagler army. When King Haakon III Sverresson (a Birkebeiner) died on 1 January 1204, he left no legitimate heirs to his throne. Late the following year, an untitled woman named Inge of Varteig came forward with a young son whom she claimed was conceived with King Haakon a few months before his death. Her claim was corroborated by several associates of the late king, and eventually Inge successfully underwent a trial by ordeal, the 13th-century substitute for DNA testing.

This development was not taken well by the Bagler, who sent a force of soldiers to find and kill the boy. During Christmastide, as the contingent closed in on his hiding place at Lillehammer, a small group of Birkebeiner warriors set out on skis, carrying the toddler, in a daring midwinter rescue attempt. Beset by daunting blizzards, unable to use the less formidable route via Gudbrandsdalen, only the two strongest warriors were able to complete the journey, bringing the eighteen-month-old safely to the Birkebeiner capital city of Nidaros (Trondheim).  The rescue is depicted in this famous 19th-century painting, and is re-enacted in costume at some of the modern sports events.

The boy succeeded to the throne in 1217, skillfully consolidated his power during the next decades, eventually reconciling with the Bagler and ending a century of civil strife. The details of how the Birkebeiner chose Haakon over two other pretenders, I can only find in Norwegian. But this link will I hope bring up a partially usable Google translation. The same article is also the only detailed look at Inge of Varteig.

Under Haakon IV Haakonsson, Norway arguably assumed as much importance on the European stage as it had enjoyed even during the Viking era, since it was now a unified nation, rather than a handful of squabbling, if powerful, petty kingdoms, as in the heyday of the Vikings. Eager, it seems, to restore some of the Viking glory, Haakon sailed to Scotland, captured the northern islands, and launched an invasion to reclaim the mainland. However, his fleet was pounded by storms, forcing a retreat to the Orkney Islands, where he fell sick and died in December of 1263.

After his death, the status of Norway again gradually declined. The plague, or Black Death, in the mid-1300′s killed as much as half the population. Norway was merged by royal marriage with Denmark in 1380. The royal line died out, and Norway ceased to be an independent country for more than 500 years, until 1906. The core of this period was dubbed by Henrik Ibsen “the 400-year night.” Perhaps not coincidentally, the period from approx. 1400-1800 is now known by climatologists as the “Little Ice Age,” due to exceptionally cold weather throughout Europe.

And the punch line … Haakon IV … 22nd great-grandfather.

]]> http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/01/31/birkebeiner-past-and-present/feed/ 1 http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/01/30/disclaimer/ http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/2010/01/30/disclaimer/#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:12:16 +0000 George http://olelarsonsfolks.net/Blog/?p=1967 It is for me a source of amusement and fascination that so many historic world leaders are among my ancestors. (e.g. Marc Antony, William the Conqueror, Saint Olaf, Eleanor of Aquitane,  etc. etc.).

In trying to write about them in a way that illustrates their importance to Western “civilization,” I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I admire them or their accomplishments, or even approve of them. To achieve what they did, I know they had to be ruthless, cruel, and corrupt, most often in direct proportion to their power and importance.

In a world where the accepted path to influence was military conquest, if a leader had the means to subjugate his neighbors by force, then in the name of lifting up his people, he was expected to do so. That does not mean it was morally justifiable even then, only that it was “how things were done.” One point in respect of these ancient leaders: they were in the thick of their battles, risking their own lives alongside their soldiers, unlike the powerful leaders of the present era.

I dream of a different world, where leaders have learned that our collective survival depends on cooperation and compassion across all lines of language, race, and religion, not on the superiority of armaments and killing power of one neighbor versus another.

Now that I have set the record straight on that, there are one or two more of these “king” guys I want to tell you about. Stay tuned.