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Show Charlemagne's Blood in Most of Us OCCASIONALLY some one is heard to boast of his descent from Charlemagne or from Alfred the Great. It is Interesting, therefore, to know that all of those who have British blood In their veins can claim both of those kings as ancestors. Dr. David Starr Jordan. President of Stanford University, California, makes this seemingly extraordinary ex-traordinary assertion quite simple, when, in the Scientific Monthly, ho discusses a chart of American Amer-ican genealogy, worked out by Miss Sarah Louise Kimball of Palo Alto. Here are a few extracts from his article: "The simplest numerical calculation gives bewildering be-wildering results. As each person has bad two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grand-pafenfs. and so back endlessly in geometrical progression, every aduit of to-dnv allowing three senerattons to a century, would (if facts permitted) count not less than 131.192.256 separate sep-arate ancestors in the year 1100 Furthermore, as in the Indicated progession with a ratio of two. the sum of the series is equivalent, minus one. to its highest term. nch descendant should have 134.1 92.23 intervening forbears, making 2CS -384.511 In all "Again, each child of this generation has twice as many ancestors l either parent that Is, 536.70,022 In all of which Incalculable number not one would hnve died in infancy or without issue This computation, however, has led us to figures manifestly Impossible in view of the fact that the total population of England n 1100 did not exceed 2.000.000. and that probably not one-tenth one-tenth of these. bect as they were by war and "ctiiencp fft permanent descendmfs 'The simple e; planat l- is, of course, that every nnr'ent forbear must be counted over and over tbousards of times n each individual case. Indeed no one can guess bow manv fancied lines lead down to him from a sinsle pair in the days of Henry T. "Conversely, if any one couple of the twelfth century and their successors left on an average four children, thus doubling the number three times to the century, their descendants alone, facts permitting, would count 134,192.256. as would tho descendants of every other pair similarly simi-larly fertile tho whole making a nominal total far exceeding the present population of tho globe! Thus. In this computation also, intervening inter-vening Individuals must be reckoned over and over again almost to infinity. "Miss Kimball's chart shows plainly the methol by which the diffusion takes place. Tho daughter daugh-ter of a king, for example, marries a nobleman; one of her descendants takes a squire or younger son; a daughter of the squire marries a yeoman whose children are accordingly of kingly descent. de-scent. And every farmer of English lineage may boast of as much of the "germ plasm" of William, Will-iam, Alfrpd or Charlemagne as any royal household house-hold In Europe; r--veredly plebeian blood may be mlneled with the "bluest," usually to tho betterment bet-terment of both As a matter of fact, indeed very few Englishmen or Americans of English origin are without royal blood; nor Is It likely that the coat-of-arms of any klne llvlnz does not conceal tho bar sinister of the pensant." The principal and most easily traced route by which descent from Charlemagne is traced is that by way of Isabel de Vermandols. daughter of Prince Hu'rb the Great, Duke of France and Burcundy. uro was descended by six separate strains from Charlemaime She died In 1131 She was married first to Rohert de Bellomont, Earl of Leicester: second to William de Warren. Earl of Warren and Surrey, the latter a descendant descend-ant of Alfred the Great. To each husband she bore two children. mong the thousand American families whose descent is traced by Kimball directly back to one of these are those of C.eorce Washington. Abraham Abra-ham Lincoln. Grover Cleveland Robert E Lee. Jonathan Edwards, Henrv Adams. Phillips Brooks. Admiral Dewoy, U. S Grant. Patrick Henry. Thomas Jefferson .1. Plerpont Morgan. John D. Rockefeller and Oliver Wendell Holmes. As an example, take that of Abraham Lincoln, as follows; Robert de Bellomont. Earl of Leicester; m. Isabel de Vermandols Elizabeth de Bellomont. m. Gilbert do Clare. Eorl of Pembroke. Richard de Clare. "Strongbow." Earl of Pembroke Pem-broke Isabel de Clare, m. William le Marechal. Earl of Pembroke. Eve do Marechal, m. William, Baron do Braose. Maude de Braose. m. Roger. Earon Mortimer. Edmund, Baron Mortimer. Roger, Baron Mortimer Maude Mortimer, m. John, Lord Charleton. Jane de Charleton, m. John. Baron Le Strange. Elizabeth Le Strange, m. Gryffydd Wychan. Gryffydd Wychan. Lowry Wychan, m. Robert Puleston. John Puleston. Margaret PuleBton, m. David up Ievan Einion. Elnion ap David. Griffith ap Llewellyn. Catharine Griffith, m. Edward ap Evan. Lew's ap Griffith m. Ellen Edwards Robert ap Lewis. Evan ap Robert Evan ap Evan Cadwallader Evans (Pennsylvania. 1700). Sarah Evan- m John Hank. John Hank Joseph Hank (Virginia about 1740) no. Nancy Shipley. Nancy Hanks, m. Thomas Lincoln Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Jordan has a theory that every one of ns combines in himself the sum of the characters of his ancestors and "among all these combinations one, here and there, spells true distinction, and from bumble f though never feeble) ancestry spring many of our greatest, the elements so mixed in them that the blend is especially favorable. favor-able. For originality rests not on new traits but on new adjustments of the old." |