Who's your gateway?

Americans are strange.

Yup.

Alex, although not my choice of names Major has been used as a first name. Although I imagine this most likely was a mistype or something. Just saying! And why are we strange?

Another of my "Gateway Ancestors" is Martha Wilder (1590-1652), widow of Thomas Wilder, 9th great grandmother of William Arthur Allen.Martha Wilder
She arrived as a widow in 1638 in the "Confidence". I love having a "Wilder Side of the family". I trace the Wilders back to John Wilder (b. c1418, d. bef 1489 in Normandy), my 14th great grandfather, who is the first person I have found in my family born in Bohemia, Czech Republic. John Wylder, of Nunhide
Maybe we should label John as John Wilder "The Bohemian". I suspect that his birthplace was not called Czech Republic in 1418 so we may need to "cacel Czech" as the birthplace but I am leaving that to others who are more knowledgeable than I am re history of Bohemia. Although Martha Wilder is a Gateway back to England her daughter Mary Underwood (Wilder) also was born in England so qualifies as a Gateway ancestor to British North America too. Mary Underwood
Indeed it is preferable to consider Mary Underwood (Wilder), my 8th great grandmother, as the real "Gateway Ancestor to Bohemia" since it is through her and her father that I trace back to Bohemia.

William, Martha Wilder is connected to me as well . My 13 th Cousin 8 times removed. Martha Wilder

Another Gateway Ancestor who is very important to me is Stephen Wing (1621-1710), my 8th great grandfather Stephen Wing .
It is through Stephen Wing and his mother that I trace one of my longest lines in one family name - 13 generations and 3 centuries of Shirleys - back to Fulcher de Eatington (c1020-c1062), my 26th great grandfather. Fulcher de Eatington

The Allens and Wings of Sandwich of the 1600's were both members of the same Sandwich Monthly Meeting at the Sandwich Quaker Meeting House. To get a sense of the values of the Sandwich Quaker community watch and listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJL15wSXZYs . Sandwich is the place where some of my own personal value system is reflected - religious tolerance, non violence, equality of men and women, respect for Native people and care for the less fortunate. The Allens and Wings produced multiple marriages between members of the two family lines and continued to do so for generations, even after the Sandwich Quaker community moved to Maine after the American Revolutionary War.

The peaceful and respectful relationship of Allens, Wings and other Sandwich Quakers to the local Wampanoag Indians of the larger Algonquin Nation, likely was the reason that Sandwich remained relatively unscathed during King Philips War (Metacomet's War). In my own case this tolerance and respect for Indigenous people has been a central theme of my life and has led to many friendships and much mutual sharing over the years.

In the early 1980's my wife and I visited Sandwich soon after Ken Taylor, Canadian Ambassador to Iran, at great personal risk, rescued some of the Americans during the tense Iran Hostage Crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_D._Taylor .

At Sandwich's Dan'l Webster Inn I was invited on stage to sing the Canadian National Anthem and was cheered and given a royal welcome when the crowd learned that the purpose of our trip was to learn more about my ancestor George Allen of Sandwich and his fellow community members in Sandwich, including Stephen Wing.

During our stay in Sandwich we visited Stephen Wing's "Wing Fort House" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Fort_House and subsequently became involved in OWL (Our Wing Lineage) and the Wing Family of America Inc. http://www.wingfamily.org/winglinks.html.

I have Wing family members too. Did you know they started out in Saugus/Lynn, mass and then went down the Cape area? There are still Wings in Saugus.

Yes, I expect there are Wings all over the continent and beyond, probably millions of us. The list of 14 Wing districts is on the right column at http://www.wingfamily.org/reunions.html. Big reunion in Ohio in June this year. Every Wing relative seems so kind - must be a family trait..

My gateway ancester is my 8th great grandfather, Captain Anthony Eames (b. 1 DEC 1595, Fordington St. George, Dorset, England; d. 6 OCT 1686, Marshfield, Plymouth, MA. Son of Thomas EAMES and Millicent. Married Margery Pierce. Anthony came over on the pilgrim ship "Recovery" in 1633.
PLUS, I would like to claim Martha Wilder also but there seems to be DNA evidence that her sons Thomas and Edward Wilder were really not brothers. I am a descendent of Thomas Wilder, The Immigrant. He is my 8th great grandfather and is considered my gateway ancester but to whom it is not known for sure. I have quite a bit of evidence that supports his line to Nicholas, but who really knows for sure!
By tracing back two lines in my tree, I go way back to 4 subsequent Kings of Sweden and 3 subsequent Kings of Finland!

Barbara Anne:
One of my gateway ancestors is Captain Anthony Eames (b. 1 DEC 1595, Fordington St. George, Dorset, England; d. 6 OCT 1686, Marshfield, Plymouth, MA. Son of Thomas EAMES and Millicent. Married Margery Pierce). He is my 9th great grandfather whereas he is your 8th great grandfather. The Geni relationship path from me to Capt. Anthony Eames is at Capt. Anthony Eames

There will be many other people who share Anthony as a gateway but they just have not identified themeslves yet in this discussion.

Now that you have come forward in this collaboration Capt. Anthony Eames becomes an even more important gateway. That is because he sheds light on "Implex Relationship Paths". Within a few days I will be starting a new Geni discussion about implex paths so I will give you a heads up now.

I have many, many gateways on both my maternal and paternal lines. When I go back a few generations (or centuries) before 1600 in Capt. Anthony Eames' tree and choose a personality Geni will give me a relationship path but it often will not be through Anthony. That's because all of us have a complex twisting of multiple relationship paths. Geni arbitrarily chooses only one so that really confuses and slows the research unless we work with one another.

Here is an example I invite you to try. Enter the name "Robert de Den" who was born circa 990. He is a 27th great grandfather of mine and is in Anthony's tree. Since you have only one gateway and that gateway is Capt. Anthony Eames, Geni will include him in the long pathway between you and Robert de Den. However, because I have multiple gateways Geni will arbitrarily choose one and there is only a very slim chance that it will be through Capt. Anthony Eames. This is the kind of feature of Geni that I will be inviting people to discuss when I set up the new discussion. People need to understand the implex dynamic or else they can make misjudgments and have mistaken misunderstandings.

We know that every single one of the people in Captain Anthony Eames tree is an ancestor of both yours and mine. Every single one. So try this. Pick any person in Anthony's tree and get your relationship path from Geni. Send me the path and I subsequently will show you a DIFFERENT path that Geni does not tell you about. I can provide you with a service that Geni does not offer.

The bottom line is that Capt. Anthony Emes can be quite important if you and I work together to illuminate "Implex Relationship Path" issues in the weeks and months ahead.

A Gateway Ancestor of particular interest to me is Thomas Pearsall (1586-1642), my 10th great grandfather as recorded by Geni at Thomas Pearsall . I call him "Thomas Pearsall (Tobacco Magnate)" but have not made the change on Geni pending expression of opinion by other collaborators. As a gateway personality Thomas Persall exhibits the position of the narrowing of the classical hourglass configuration with significant features among both his ancestors and descendants.

I have several reasons for my interest.
1. Thomas Pearsall had a significant presence in Virginia by 1613, seven years before the Mayflower's first voyage to America in 1620. As such he is an earlier American ancestor than my several ancestors who travelled on the Mayflower. (Remember, the Mayflower intended to sail for Virginia but harsh December weather caused the ship to stop in Massachusetts.) Being a mobile trransAtlantic merchant Thomas Pearsall did not actually settle in Virginia until 1630 but that does not disqualify him as a Gateway Ancestor. He died in Virgina Colony in 1642.
2. For lines of ancestry stretching back to mediaval times there is a greater certainty of accuracy if the same surname is present through the entire line and especially if the line covers nobility where more records are available. The Pearsall line, including the long line of Staffordshire pedigrees, meets these criteria, albeith with cognates of slightly adjusted spelling back to Robert de Peshale (bef 1182), the first person to adopt the surname from the name of his manor. The surname was variously spelled Peshale, Peshall, Pershall, Persall, Pershale and Pearsall. See relationship path back to Robert De Peshale, my 25th great grandfather per Geni, at Robert de Pershale
3. The descendant line has gateways from Virginia to New England, from New England to Maritime Canada as Empite Loyalists, and a final gateway from Maritime Canada to Upper Canada/Ontario.

I suspect that myriad Geni users will be able to tap into individuals along the ancestral relationship path between William Arthur Allen and Robert de Peshale via Thomas Pearsall (Tobacco Magnate) (1586-1642). Please post a note in the Gateway discussion if you are one of those people.

I guess you are right W.A Allen

ROBERT DE PESHALE is my 7th cousin 22 times removed.
http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+ROBERT-DE-PES...

Thomas Pearsall is my 13th cousin 14 times removed.
http://www.geni.com/path/Ulf-Martinsson+is+related+to+Thomas-Pearsa...

William, Thomas Pearsall is my 13th cousin 15 times removed.

I think rather than making him some significant person it rather proves my previous point that everyone who is connected to the World Tree is a n-th cousin x times removed.

I've been following your postings to this Discussion but i fear that you may eventually list everyone of your ancestors! :)

Pray tell, what is an "Implex Relationship Path"?

I am afraid to ask but Google doesn't know either.

Alex,
I am interested in direct lines to grandfathers, grandmothers etc., not so much in lines via cousins for the very reason you mention. Thomas Pearsall is my 10th grandfather, not a cousin of any type removed or not. He is particularly significant for me for the reasons I outlined. In Canada we give particular status to United Empire Loyalists who stood by their convictions in standing up to Americans during the American Revolutionary War by leaving and travelling to Canada where they were welcomed. My relationship to Thomas is directly through such a family so highly revered in Canadian society and taught as heroes in our school systems, not through an implex relationship path. For more on UEL see http://www.uelac.org/

Google does know what implex is.

Implex: a.
Intricate; entangled; complicated; complex.

I AM A DIRECT LINE TO Robert pERSHALE. hE IS MY 25TH GREAT GRANDFATHER

> I am interested in direct lines to grandfathers, grandmothers etc., not so much in lines via cousins

It takes all kinds. Ancestors are interesting, but you don't really get to explore the depth and breadth of history until you start looking at all the off-beat cousin relationships ;)

It's the diversity that appeals to me. I even have an ancestral line to some United Empire Loyalists, even though I'm an American. Cool for me, because Revolutionary soldiers are a dime a dozen in my ancestry.

Any of us can determine a relationship path of some kind to Robert Peshale. Fewer of us have the relationship DIRECTLY as solely a grandfather relationship i.e. without reference to a cousin relationship in the path. What I see already is that, in terms of relationship to Robert de Peshale, Judy and I both have a grandfather relationship which Ulf does not have so my dilaogue with Ulf will be about issues other than the Pearsall line. I am related to Judy by myriad relationship paths and most of those are implex and "a dime a dozen" to use Justin's term. Geni arbitrarily choses one path to report in my relationship to Judy and it is not at all clear how Geni priorizes that choice. Not everyone will be interested in understanding how many generations of descendants of Robert de Peshale are identical for Judy and me but Judy and I might be interested in that. Like Justin says, "It takes all kinds". One of the beauties of Geni for me is that it allows me the freedom to identify which aspects of the myriad relationship paths I choose to study. For me it is collaborators' identification of gateway ancestors which leads to such dialogue. Ergo, a website devoted to identifying gateway ancestors is very important. So, Erica, please keep up the good work.

Justin, you claim that "you don't really get to explore the depth and breadth of history until you start looking at all the offbeat cousin relationships." I disagree. ALL the offbeat relationships??? Really? Even eternity will not provide enough time to do that! As a guy in his 70's I feel that I am able to examine a solid sampling of aspects of the depth and breadth of history by devoting most time to my direct grandfather/grandmother lines. For instance, thanks to you yesterday I found my first Italian ancestry because I am related DIRECTLY to a very old king of Italy whose files you merged. That was great.

I have a couple of different direct path paths to Pershale.I'd have to look the other's up to tell you how. Geni only shows one of the paths

Although I do like to check out cousins too. Sometimes you can find another direct line that you never knew was there.

Robert de Pershale is my 24th great grandfather.

Erica Howton

Isabel Howton
11/8/2014 at 12:29 AM wrote"
"I was wondering if other people had tree building stories anything like mine.

I was struggling along many months tree building without being able to connect to the Geni World Family tree."

I am not quite sure how or why this thread suddenly appeared in my feed. But I was reading through these responses and what you wrote back in 2014, about connecting to the World Tree.

Last year, 2015, I started working on my mom's side of the tree, which I have neglected. Since my dad's side is pretty much a brick wall [ unless I can travel to France] that is all the further I am getting there. And I dreaded working on the female line, because those women end up untraceable most of the time.

I was pretty proud of myself for finding my G.Grandmothers Bartlett side. Not really expecting much.

Richard Bartlett, of Newbury

Then I came home one day and my profiles had been merged to the big tree. That connected my 9th Great Grandfather to the big tree and profiles all the way to Charlemagne, " if the connections are true". I still question all of the leads, and I know fully well that, I will never have the money to travel and find authentic records of their lives. Though it is fun to read the histories of those people.

I could possibly believe one connection to royal blood, but not as many as the Geni has led pathways too. And most of the Magna Charta surety signors are great grandfathers? Probably completely impossible.

Isn't it awesome to suddenly connect to (now 99 million plus) people? Amazing.

You will need more a genealogist than I am to answer more precisely about "most of the Magna Charta surety signors are great grandfathers, surely impossible"?

But my amateur impression is that it's not only possible, it's expected. There are only so many people to descend from known in records and their families intermarried time & time again.

I will phrase this in more my comfort zone. There were 21 surviving families of the Mayflower passengers, 1620. If you find a connection to one, you'll find a connection to all.

For example, the actor Richard Gere has been traced to 6 Mayflower passengers

http://mayflowerhistory.com/famous-descendants/

It's called "endogenous relationships.". Can be a result of geographically isolated population groups. Can also be a result of an "eligible marriage pool" (european nobility).

Anyone else able to explain better why when we connect to one, we connect to many more?

William Arthur Allen, when you are looking at an ancestor as far back as Robert de Pershale you probably want Itto do some scoping first.

He is your 25th great grandfather. Mine as well. In that generation we have a total of 33,554,432 ancestors. To put that in context, the population of England was only about 2.3 million people.

It's very likely that everyone with English ancestry is descended from him, whether they know it or not. If you do a bit of probing I think you will find that almost everyone on Geni with English royal and noble ancestry can link to him as a direct ancestor.

That's not the same as saying everyone will link to this specific profile. This one was just added last July, which is always cause for suspicion when you are working this far back. (Really? In all these years no one ever thought to add him?) An almost certain sign he's either a duplicate or a fake. And a quick check shows that indeed there are at least two other duplicates, one of them with with 21 managers.

Going back through his ancestry, I also see many duplicates for his supposed ancestor Guillaume de Corbeil.

This line needs a lot of cleanup and merging before you can even begin to think you're getting a true picture of his descendants on Geni.

Then too, parts of the line might be fake. In one of my many paths I see a Adam Richard de Pershale. No one in his generation had two given names. This profile has probably been smashed together from two different people, so there is a high suspicion of problems in the surrounding area.

> Anyone else able to explain better why when we connect to one, we connect to many more?

I would say "explain better" but it's an idea that's often new to people, so hearing different explanations can help get the point.

The further back you go, the more likely you are finding records of people who were more affluent than average. That's because those people are more likely to leave records.

So, there is a "bias" built in to the records that makes it more likely you will find prominent ancestors.

Then too, you have so many ancestors that far back that the odds are you're descended from everyone (say in England) who was alive then and who has descendants living today.

If you can prove back to an early period, say the 1200s, there is a good chance you'll end up finding yourself descended from a big chunk of the people from whom there are any documented descents.

All of the Magna Carta Sureties were already closely inter-related by blood and marriage. Their descendants continued to intermarry. If you find a connection to one, you're already connected to them all. If you find a descent from one, you probably have descents from others in the same part of your tree. And if you never find any descents, you're probably still descended from them all, whether you know it or not.

One way to think of it is that once you find this kind of connection, you now have the same ancestors as everyone else ;)

Justin Durand According to Geni Robert de Pershale is my 5th cousin 24 times removed. :-)

You wrote: "Then too, parts of the line might be fake. In one of my many paths I see a Adam Richard de Pershale. No one in his generation had two given names. This profile has probably been smashed together from two different people, so there is a high suspicion of problems in the surrounding area."

I find that to be true /\ /\ . I recently found someone who had two first names but could not make the case with what little facts I could find to make a change in that profile. They might be the same people intertwined in local history, and just like our own memories, bits & pieces are forgotten or somehow morph into each other. Even with old books, closer to the actual histories. Those genealogies found in old books are just as much subject to error as modern books written today.

I also recently read an article about Charlemagne, explaining how all those notables were related. Considering how many children he had. I am rambling now and forgot the point of my message. So I will stop now. :-)

We'll get old Robert merged up and cleaned up in the next few days, then you can check back and see how you're related to him.

I did some merging and cleanup on this line. It will take a lot more to turn it into a reliable line, but I'll leave that to the rest of you.

Hi, everyone! This is a very interesting discussion.

My maternal grandmother's line goes back to David Boies in colonial Massachusetts. I was told that the Boies were French Huguenots that came to the U.S. by way of Scotland and Ireland, and that appears to be true. However, I have found a goldmine of ancestors by looking at the maternal lines, especially by way of the Blairs and the Boyds, who in turn bring in royal and noble lines from all over Europe (and beyond).

However, I do believe that I am running into implex relationship issues. People who should be direct GGRs through another branch are showing as a spouse, aunt/uncle, or some other relation.

It will be interesting to see what my percentages are from my DNA test.

For many years my genealogical research has stretched back only as far as my New England ancestors of the early 1600's. I recently identified as "Gateways" several ancestors with earlier links to English nobility. Thanks to Erica I have expanded my notion of gateway to find pre 1600 English ancestors who arrived in England from other countries. I now am on a serach for these gateway personalities so I can gain a better understanding of the range of countries in which I have DIRECT ancestry (cousins not eligible for this study).

With the help of Ulf Ingvar Göte Martinsson I have come to understand that there is a series of gateways. Based on Geni my distant Norse/Danish ancestors came to Ireland for several generations, then moved on to Wales for several generations, then moved to England for several generations before moving to North America. One of my gateways from Wales to England is Sybil/Isabel Isabel Clements Sybil N.N. . She was born in Nanhoron Issa, Lleyn, Caernarvonshire, Wales in 1483 but married Robert Clement of Croft, Leicestershire, England per Robert Clement . I am descended from a son of Robert and Sybil and that son was born in Croft, Leicestershire, England. Since Sybil was born in Wales but gave birth in England I am considering her as a gateway from Wales to England.