Lovell and Reatha Were Cousins, Too!

Tracing back from the “Pilgrim connection,”  I uncovered not one, but two common ancestors of my parents, Lovell and Reatha (Myers) Larson.

One is the emperor Charlemegne himself (742-814 C.E.), whom Orrin Moen traced as the 34th great-grandfather of Lovell through Lovell’s mother Anna Moen, and Charlemagne’s son Louis I “The Pious.” And now, I have identified another son of Charlemagne, Pepin of Italy, as the 34th great-grandfather of Reatha through her father Dan Myers, making Charlemagne Reatha’s 35th great. This makes Lovell and Reatha approximately 35th cousins, once removed. This is actually a redundant connection, as Charlemagne is again an ancestor of Dan Myers through another marriage several generations later; this time the nearest common ancestor is Louis I. Yet another “nearest common” is Baldwin II, son of Judith Martel. By the time I  finished with all these threads, I ended up with at least eight different lines leading to Charlemagne .

The second distinct connection is in Kiev(!) Yaroslav I “the Wise,”(978-1054) Duke of Kiev, is the 28th great-grandfather of Lovell, and the 27th great of Reatha. By this line, my parents are approx. 28th cousins, again once removed. More proof that if you go back far enough, we are all cousins. These 11th-century rulers of Kiev were intermarried with at least one Scandinavian … perhaps my next project will trace Reatha’s ancestors into pre-Christian Norway.