Who Am I?

RHYS BOWEN: How much do you know about your ancestry? John’s very distinguished family has a tree that goes back to 800 AD. That’s right, back to a time when people were living in stone huts and running around in woad. There’s probably one branch that goes back to a particularly silky sort of monkey in the age of hominids.  His family includes the uncle of Queen Jane Seymour, the Welds of Lulworth Castle and a grandmother who was born at Sutton Place. (not the one in New York, the stately home).

My ancestry--not so brilliant. So I’ve never bothered to trace my lineage, until I was stuck in Arizona with too much time on my hands. Then I signed up for Ancestry.com and started getting all these leaves. It really was fun. But no surprises. I’m not really the love child of Charles II. A lot I already knew. My father’s father came from Crediton in Devon. And they stayed there, and stayed. I can trace them back to the sixteen hundreds.  My mother’s father was from Wales, which makes tracing more difficult as they didn’t keep records as readily as in England. I can trace them back to around 1800 only. His mother was French and I can’t trace her at all--at least not through Ancestry.com. I expect there might be a French site but I don’t even know what part of France her father left. I do know she died in New South Wales, Australia.

My mother’s mother’s family came from East Anglia, which is why anyone who met my mother while traveling in Europe always spoke to her in German or Dutch. Very blonde, fair skin. Typical Angle or Saxon. And again they stayed on their little farms in East Anglia. I can trace them back to the fifteen hundreds. It’s all very boring. No criminal records show up. They all seem to have married very properly in church.


So what was my only surprise?  My father’s father died when he was two or three.  His mother married again and had a daughter with her second husband. Presumably she lost touch with her first husband’s family. However I found that my great grandfather--the father of the man who had died so young, was still alive until 1953. My father could have visited him, if he’d known. I could have visited him! That is so annoying.

And Ancestry.com gave me one big treat. I had lost touch with a dear friend from my college years. We had studied in Freiburg together, traveled around Greece with a backpack for three months together. She married a Syrian post-doc student she met at Oxford. I kept up with them until they moved to Syria then I lost contact. Over the years I tried to find her, but no luck and I suppose I assumed they’d stayed in Syria. I worried they were okay. Then I put her name into the Ancestry search box and found her marriage details. AND I’d been spelling her last name wrongly. I found her husband had been chair of Arabic Studies at London University, was a well-known poet and her daughter was legal counsel for a publishing house. I contacted the daughter and I have found Ruth again. Brilliant!


So who has used an Ancestry service? Any surprises--good or bad? And have you had your DNA done? I never bothered because I always assumed mine was British Isles. Now I’ve done my family tree I am glad I didn’t bother. 


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No idea. None. I have never looked. I’m sure it’s Russia/Austria/Poland--but that’s the extent of it. I’ve mulled it over… but sigh. Never done anything more.


HALLIE EPHRON: My husband has deeply researched his ancestry using the databases at Ellis Island, ship’s manifests, and all kinds of material that’s now online. All of his ancestors are from Russia/Belarus/Poland. He’s connected with relatives in Israel and all over the US. Found others who are mathematicians and physicists (he’s a physicist). I confess, I am completely uninterested. My parents were enigmas enough.


JENN McKINLAY: I haven’t done any genealogy as it’s my mother’s hobby and she passes the information along to me. Not a lot of surprises except a few criminals hanging off the branches of the family tree, which makes me feel a bit more colorful. We’re a mixed bag of Russian/Polish/Irish/Scottish/English. Although, I did do my DNA and discovered there’s a small percentage of Israeli in there, too. I’m sure I’ll learn more as I’ve got Mom (former librarian) investigating!


LUCY BURDETTE: I have done both Ancestry and 23 and Me, researching for a future book of course. I was kind of hoping to find ancestors in Paris, as a friend of mine did. Alas, no Parisians but 49% French and German and Swiss, and happily, 31% British and Irish. When I retire, I swear I will spend more time getting to know my ancestors. My dad and cousin did a lot of work on his side, but my mom’s side is a mystery.


DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've done 23 and Me, and I was surprised, actually, at the percentage of Anglo-Irish DNA. Maybe there is some genetic underpinning for my love of Britain! So, about 80% English/Scottish, some northern French, which I had always suspected, and a smidgen of German and Eastern European. No Native American, which I, like Elizabeth Warren, grew up believing I had in my family background. Interestingly, I had ONE ancestor that was 100% Scandanavian, and ONE ancestor that was 100% West African. Fascinating stuff. Maybe one of these days I'll find time to do the genealogy.


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I haven’t gotten my DNA tested, but I’m the recipient of the work of several dedicated amateur genealogists (thought I suppose they’re all amateur, except for the folks at Debrett’s Peerage…) on both side of my family tree.


On the Spencer/Southern side, I can trace back to the beginning of the 19th century, with lots of Scots, Scotch-Irish and English names. No one stands out historically, although my great-grandmother Emily Pearl Payne Spencer had fourteen children while working as a nurse midwife  and  helping her husband Lemuel farm 400 acres in Tuscaloosa County. And she lived to be 91! I met her several times when I was a child; I wish I had been older and had been able to ask her about her life.


On the McEachron/Northern side, we can trace back to Neil McEachron who was born in Islay in 1680 and who emigrated to the Kakiate Patent in Orange (modern day Bergan County, NJ/Rockland County, NY) before settling in the western frontier of the American colonies in 1720 - the western frontier being the Adirondacks of New York. His grandson, Cornelius “Neil” McEachron fought in the American Revolution and married Katherine Acker (or van Aker) whose father, according to family lore, was from a well-off family in New York City and who served as an officer in the Revolution, and as soon as I confirm that, you BET Imma put my name in for the Colonial Dames Society. I trust you will all be suitably impressed.


Supposedly, all the McEachrons/McEacherons/McEathrons/McEacharn, etc., etc. in the United States (there are dozens of variations) are descended from the first Neil, so if you know someone with a version of this name, they’re probably related to me somehow.

RHYS: So how about you, dear friends? Any surprises? My daughter-in-law finds she is one percent Congo! Quite surprising for a woman who is Welsh, Croatian, Spanish and Mexican!  John found he was eight percent Iberian which confirmed that his Irish ancestry owed some input to the sailors from the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the coast of Ireland.