Who's your gateway?

In response to a recent question I saw that I needed to learn more about "Gateway" personalities. That brought me to the discussion started by the ubiquitous Erica Isabel Howton last year, on my birthday no less. At the second entry in the discussion Lady Godiva entered the discussion as an example. So I thought, why not? I wonder if she is a direct ancestor or a cousin of some description. Geni did not make me wait long, quickly providing my path to her. She is my 24 great grandmother so I am a direct descendant. So now I have a question. Who among the names on this path should be considered the gateway personality? Or is Lady Godiva one of my gateway personalities to more distant ancestors?

Good question. I liked Nat Taylor's idea that a "gateway" is between one population group & another - the edge of two two worlds. That expands beyond the more traditional use of the term "gateway ancestor" (gateway to royalty, usually).

So did Lady Godiva "marry out of her class?". No, right? By Taylor's definition, you need the person(s) on your relationship path that is the exogamous relationship.

I guess one of my gateways would be my 10th GGF Thomas Dudley, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony

I've noticed in a ton of Genealogical societies that they have him listed as a gateway ancestor from Colonial Societies to Royal Societies going through a lot of Royal lines all the way to Charlemagne

My gateway ancestor is- Walter Palmer of Stonington Connecticut.
I was unaware of it, until I googled my grandmother's name back in 2007.
She was born in 1913.

By the way "Lady Godiva" is my 31st grandmother..according to Geni.

I was going to nominate my mother as thru her i am connected to the Croatian tree on Geni, but then hourglass image doesn't work very well when she only has 3 descendants :)

On my own personal quest my ggf was a "gateway" connection from my immediate family in their current industrial urban setting back to the rural provinces where it was relatively "easy" to tie in to existing extensive pedigrees that stretch all the way back in time ... well to the early 1600s when records began :)

Beyond that point i have one particular ancestor, Jochem Harms Hummelen my 8x ggf, he is not strictly speaking the oldest proven ancestor i have but he is the oldest member of the Hummelen family that i can prove a connection to. The Hummelen family is allegedly descendant from the van Steenwijk family who as minor nobility are descendant from every King/Queen/Emperor(ess) ever. A particular favourite being Gerberge of Burgundy, my 26x ggmother.

I seem to be related to just about everybody.

Arthur (what a lovely name!), I can't claim a direct line back to Gov. Thomas Dudley but Geni tells me he is my 4th cousin 12 times removed. My maternal line leads to him directly until I reach my 13th GG, Fulke Greville (b. c1503, Milcote, Warwickshire, England) and his mother - Anne Greville (my 14th GG) at Anne Greville. From there the line descends to you. I don't know if that makes Anne Greville a gateway ancestor or whether there is more than one gateway person in the sequence. At the very least Anne Greville seems tro be my gateway to you.

Charlemage is easier for me since he is a direct ancdestor, my 30th GG but via my father's bloodline, not my mother's this time. For persons back that far I wonder if there is a sequence of many gateway persons????

Beverley Ellen, thanks for the story that Lady Godiva is your 31st GG. That really surprises me since that seems to make her older than Charlemagne (my 30th GG). Geni reports that Lady Godiva is my 24th GG. I know I am an old guy so surely you are not 7 generations older than I am. We may have spotted a flaw in the line or lines back to the fine Lady.

Alex, Geni tells me at Jochem Harms Hummelen that Jochem Harms Hummelen is my 19th cousin twice removed. My patrnal line goes back with some solid documentation to Mary Osgood (born Clements), (1637-1710), my 7th GG per Mary Osgood. She was jailed as a witch in the Salem witch trials but earlier was an immigrant from England. I wonder if she or one of the long line of her Clements ancestors has one or more gateway positions.

I am stumbling to find where to look for gateway persons or sequences of gateway persons. Are others in this predicament?

A "gateway" is typically somebody who has a lot of descendants and a lot of ancestors, but is the only one (or one of the only ones) in a particular position - immigrant ancestors are very often "gateways".

I have a gateway *pair* three generations back - they both emigrated from the same little hill town in South Italy where their ancestors had intermarried for centuries, but they met and married shortly after immigrating separately (to the same immigrant colony in the US).

William Arthur Allen

There are specific definitions for a "gateway", some of which are linked to in the earlier pages of this (year old) discussion thread, but i think we are exploring a wider range than just Justin's old-man dictionary definition.

I very much like the hour-glass image representing a choke point as such, obviously there are no choke points in genetics, only in genealogy (i suppose inbreeding is an exception).

Charlie (aka Charlemagne) isn't really a gateway, as someone mentioned up-thread, because there is not much known about his ancestors so he is a very oft cited "common ancestor" rather than a gateway.

I don't know if a n-th cousin could traditionally be considered a gateway sideways from one population to another, i don't see why not though. Personally when i first started on Geni i was attached to the World Tree (and so a cousin of all other users) but i never really managed to work out where the connection was as it was some lateral path thru marriage rather than a direct ancestor of mine until i built the Moes-Hummelen link. Now almost all my relationship paths are via Dutch nobles, oddly this is even the case with many of my Finnish Collaborators even thought my wife's Finnish ancestral tree is built out all the way back to mythical Irish kings via Swedish royalty with some Estonian kings for balance.

"...even thought..." = "...even though..."

If we are going to be ultra-modern and flexible i would even nominate my gggmother Anna Kavalinović.

I did a Google search a few years ago based on names on my mother's handwritten (moderately accurate) family tree and Ana's name was the first to produce a meaningful result. That Google search brought me to Geni for the first time and so was my "gateway" from the indeterminite number of genetic relations that i have to the 70(?) million Geni relatives that i now have.

Yes, the immigrants from Italy & Croatia are among those I would think of as "gateways" between two worlds. I like the hourglass image but I think it's fine if it's imbalanced. I think of myself & my brother as gateways as we are the products of two different population groups, but my nephews are even better because their mother is yet a different one!

So I'm a "sideways" gateway to Charlemagne et al for one side of my family. And that WASP crowd can get to Italy from a cousin's (ex) husband. And to Mexico from my aunt's husband. To Cherokee from my uncle's wife. To Jamaican from my stepfather's second cousin. And more ...

Thomas Dudley & Walter Palmer are definitely traditional "gateway" ancestors. I have one (maybe - I have some skepticism on her ancestry but not enough info to prove / disprove). And I've fairly recently found a brilliantly obscure one - Arthur Mackworth, Esq., of Maine.

Here's a nice page in progress from Robin Patterson

http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Colonial_America_Gateway_Ancestors

Here's a slicker page

http://royalancestry.org/royqac.html

(sorry Alex these seem to be American centric which is part of the reason I like expanding the definition !)

Alex Moes you're up to 99 million relatives as of this week, and are likely to have 100 million some time in January...

There are some great concepts here including vertical and sideways hourglasses. My Geni profile today is showing 99, 059,826 relatives and 39,288 ancestors so there is massive scope for finding hourglasses and gateways. I need some concrete examples of hourglasses in my own tree to better understand gateways and hourglasses. Geni seems to allow me to see only my 5,000 most recent ancestors. Why is that?

William I don't want to guess at what you are asking. What do you mean u can only see 5000?

If you check YouTube for the Brooke Shields episode of Who Do You Think You Are you will see a classic example of a gateway ancestor. Typically for Europeans any noble ancestor will be a gateway. Immigrants are prime candidates but also are often dead ends instead.

William`s problem is universal, I am Connected to 99 Million people. Sometimes my ancestors are 21000 something and the next day 5000 again. The relatives grows slowly but haven't the hiccups. I think there is problem at "Head office"

Paternal Gateway Ancestor (3rd great Grandfather)
Haven't been able to locate much more on his parents, unfortunately. But he immigrated with them, to Puerto Rico, before Puerto Rico became an American Territory. After they were "American" my paternal family also, became American, by default. Fought in the American wars, for America... etc. Many also, moved to "the Mainland", where my father and his siblings were born.

Bonaventura Tosas Puig

Bonaventura's wife's father (my 3rd great grandmother and her father, my fourth great grandfather) was also, one of my gateways, from Naples, Italy.

Domingo Escotti de la Roca

Gateway Maternal leads to quite a few different lines.

One, for example, is this Gentleman and his wife Esther.
One set of my 9th great Grandparents.

John Grosvenor, Sr.

Another, this Captian, pretty well known... I'm guessing and one of my maternal 10th Great Grandfathers.

Captain Samuel Adams

But way too many gateway ancestors, to bore you all with, all at once.
😂
(And even with the great number of Gateway ancestors, located to date, some, I still have yet to find)

xoxoxoxTheresa Renée

Alex, thanks for asking "What do you mean u can only see 5000?"

A few minutes after you posed the question Dries Potgieter posted a helpful response when he said, "William`s problem is universal, I am Connected to 99 Million people. Sometimes my ancestors are 21000 something and the next day 5000 again. The relatives grows slowly but haven't the hiccups. I think there is problem at "Head office""

I am experiencing the same issue expressed by Dries. On my "Home Page" at the right side statistics panel Geni sometimes shows 6 categories of statistics and sometimes shows only 3 categories of stats (Family Tree, Blood Relatives, Ancestors). Today that statistics column shows Family Tree 88, Blood Relatives 100,000 and Ancestors 39,288. When I click on "Ancestors 39,288" Geni shows 250 pages of my ancestors starting with the most recent, 20 per page to a maximum of 5000 on page 250. I am unable to access the other 34,288 ancestors.

So it seems that Dries is correct. There is a problem at Head Office, or at least a policy of hiding those 34,288 ancestors from me.

Is Dries right that this is a universal problem?

I see that a little New Year's levity is circulating at http://www.knowable.com/a/31-things-americans-should-know-about-can... . I guess if Americans build a new wall between Canada and the USA we will need a few gateways to get through to one another. We Canadians are having a lot of belly laughs about that proposal.

Although I am Canadian and grew up in a border city I have far more American ancestors from the 1600's to 1800's than Canadian ancestors from the 1800's until now. In fact on both my maternal and paternal lines my multitude of New England ancestors help me understand the early colonial conquest of the northeastern part of the continent.

This is one way I look for "gateways."

In my newsfeed, William Arthur Allen updated a first arriver to the colonies, so i wondered how I am related to Hugh Clark (currently).

Geni says: Hugh Clark, of Roxbury is Erica Isabel Howton's 6th cousin 14 times removed!

(sanity check - # of gens may be a little off, I would expect 10-12 times removed)

Anyway, how I am related, through what line, and what's my confidence in this report?

http://www.geni.com/path/Erica-Howton+is+related+to+Hugh-Clark-of-R...

I see that fairly quickly the tree is showing landed gentry ancestry. The side I know is my side of the slope, the intersection of Anne Burbridge Musgrove (Pennington)

So, it passes a smell test (as the error in gens, if any, is likely to be down tree among the Clark descent) & identifies the gateway for Wlliam: not the immigrant ancestor actually, in my opinion, but his mother

Mary Clarke

Very interesting Erica Howton

Hugh Clark, of Roxbury is your fifth cousin 16 times removed.

I thought John Yelverton would be your gateway, like the turning point ?

Hugh Clark, of Roxbury is your 13th cousin 11 times removed
Hedvig Svantepolks PEAK FOR ME :)
his mother → Mestwin II, książę
her brother → Katharina of Pomerania-Gdansk
his daughter → Ludgarda - Lukardis von Mecklenburg-Werle-Parchim
her daughter → Bolesław bytomski, książę
her son → Elżbieta bytomska
his daughter → Margaret Felbrigge
her daughter → Helena Tyndale
her daughter → Sir Thomas Thyndale. Kt.
her son → Sir William Tyndal, Kt.
his son → Jane Blennerassett (Tyndall) recall these Blennerassett's
his daughter → Ellen Hobart
her daughter → Thomas Hobart, of Plumstead
her son → Mary Clark
his daughter → Hugh Clark, of Roxbury
her son

Interesting jump from here:
her son → Elżbieta bytomska
his daughter → Margaret Felbrigge

Have some "Hobarts" came to South Australia.

For me, the Hobart line lead to Musgrove, not the Clark. So if I'm looking for passages from one group to another, which is what a "gate" is, it's seems like a bigger, truer gateway - for me. What's interesting is if that doesn't hold true for others.

Hugh Clark is my 10th Great Grandfather and needs a merge on his wife's duplicates. i just noticed. I merged duplicate profiles today, for about 3 hours... straight. Some People have added the same person to their immediate Tree 2-3x themselves, even. #TheyJustDoNotGetItDoThey...?

http://www.geni.com/path/Theresa-Ren%C3%A9e-El%C3%A9na-Delgado-Toss...

LOL. I'm merging in the year 1000. Because no one else has ever charted it. :):)