Who's your gateway?

Katherine Akulicz:
Because a lot of my ancestors lived in colonial Massachusetts I checked my relationship to your relative David Boies. Geni provided the most colourful pathway I have seen to date (6 colours). It is a mouthful but Geni reports that "Capt. David Boies is your fifth great aunt's brother's wife's sister's husband's sister's husband's niece's husband." See Capt. David Boies . In this relationship path are members of the Putnam family, a family which is very familiar to me. As a result I think you will find a Gateway personality for you will be John Putnam Sr (1580-1622), a man who was born in England but died in Salem, MA when he was relatively young, dying suddenly between family prayers and bedtime. (I guess praying about our transgressions can be stressful. So I call him "Praying John") If you are interested in the Salem witch trials you will find Praying John's son Lt. Nathan Putnam, Sr., Deacon (1619-1700) who was only age 3 when his father died. In turn you will find his son John Flint Putnam Sr. (1657-1722) who "during the witchcraft excitement, he was constable and must have taken a more or less active part in the proceedings" Ref:http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=ryder10&id=I... .

In short, Katherine, if you do your own search of these early Putnam relatives of yours from Salem, you will find lots of interesting stories and you may decide that John Putnam Sr (1580-1622) is a GATEWAY back to lots of English nobility who are your ancestors.

Thanks for the info, distant cousin William Arthur Allen! (I have a few of those "colorful" relatives, myself.) :)

I have actually found a ton of relatives by clicking through on links posted on the "Celebrities and Historical Figures" page, which can actually turn out to be pretty interesting. (For example, William Wallace is my 19th great grandfather. Which is kind of cool, until you realize that you have over two million 19th great grandparents.) I'm sure that I will not be finding the majority of them, since most won't have an kind of record.

But if you go back far enough, you stumble across a noble or royal line, which opens up even more of the same, since they tended to marry their kids off for some kind of alliance or another. And because of stepping back through these lines, I have found ancestral lines in unexpected places (Moorish Spain and Portugal, the Roman Empire, Eastern Europe, Vikings and Ancient Celts, etc.).

For me, this is great fun, and a lot of detective work.

My real learning Experience was with Jacob Rich . He was appearing on so many trees as the father of James Rich .. Rebecca Barkers husband that drowned and then I accidentally bumped into one of Jacobs gggrandsons in Tennessee . It was online and the experience was not pleasant . But he did share the documents and it was true that there was no way that James Rich could have fit into Jacob Richs family scenario .
Then I started learning to do some heavy research and I still catch mistakes . Mostly if I get tired and I am just checking in information and not verifying it .

is it this James Rich

I found Lt. Jacob Rich, Sr

This was fun Thanks.

One of my Gateway ancestors is John Jennings (1590-1664), one of my 10th great grandfathers. John Jennings, of Colchester . John Jennings is interesting, not just because he was an immigrant from England to "Province of New York" (one type of gateway) but because it is through him that I trace my relationship to some families of mixed race (another kind of gateway) because of the widespread mingling in colonial times of Native Americans, African Americans and Whites. For instance, it it through John Jennings that I am related to people such as Valentin DUBROCA (1805-1882) per Valentin Dubroca

I recently found out that three of the main surnames in my family come from Norwegian Vikings who were part of William the Conqueror's legions. A Melville (mom's side) went on to become Sheriff of Edinburgh, Scotland; the surname Welsh (dad's side) came from the combined Norman-Wales mercenaries who eventually invaded Ireland; and Rowe (both sides) comes from Rollo, one of William the Conqueror's dukes who invaded Dorset and Cornwall, England. He eventually settled in that region.

Geni shows John Gooch, 1 (1600-1667) as my 10th great grandfather on my mother's side of the tree. John Gooch, of Wells . This man is a "Gateway Ancestor" of mine, leading back to many interesting people on both his paternal and maternal lines. But there is a problem. There are 2 issues used differently by various researchers which lead to confusion about the Gooch ancestry. The first is the use of a the capital letter "I" by some researchers and the use of the number "1" by other researchers. The Geni Master Profile opts for using the capital letter "I" so a search for "John Gooch, 1" leads to a Geni message which states, "No results found. Try changing your search criteria." There are so many nodes in Geni where "I" or "1" are part of the name that the "John Gooch, 1" node is a window on a much larger Geni problem. Is there a way that Geni can arrange a policy so that "1" means "1" and not "I" for all nodes where the number 1 is the inteded label? The second issue with the Gooch ancestors earlier than "John Gooch I" is the variable way that different reseachers record the two spellings of Gooch found in primary records. It is not clear what format researchers should use when documenting names that are spelled two or more ways in primary records about the same person. Does Geni need a policy to help researchers reach a standardized format to avoid merging of accurate profiles which have names recorded in different formats?

You'll find a continuous but scattered stream of discussions about these issues. The short answer is that people disagree.

We can all agree it's the "genealogical standard" to use a person's birth name (or earliest recorded name). However, that's where agreement ends.

Some people think the use of post-nominal numbers should be avoided unless the person used them in their lifetime. Other people think they should be included, for disambiguation. Traditionally, Americans have used Roman numbers in all cases. Brits and academics have used Arabic numbers when the person didn't use a number during their lifetime. Notice, too, that very people have ever called themselves 1st or I or 1 until there was a II ;)

And, some academics even use Arabic numbers for regnal numbering -- Henry 8, not Henry VIII. But, French and others use Roman numbers for succession numbers -- III. duc de Bretagne, not 3rd duke of Brittany.

So, there is a sharp difference among national usages, as well as academic versus non-academic.

Then with spellings of names, until the computer generation of genealogists it was usual to standardize the spelling of names. If someone appears as Gooch, Goche, Gooche, the name would be standardized to one spelling. The selected spelling might different from genealogist to genealogist but would normally match the modern spelling. Nowadays, many people interpret the "name at birth" standard to mean adopting the spelling from that record, no matter how many variants appear in a person's life and no matter whether it is different from their parents and children.

The only way to deal with problems like these where people disagree is to work for consistency but don't expect or demand it. Put variations in the AKA field so they will come up in a search.

(And, in my personal opinion, never use two different variations of the same name for the Last Name and Birth Name unless it is a modern person can be demonstrated to have changed the legal spelling.)

actually most genealogist I know say use all spellings of names because then you have a varieties of names to help in your search. I mean some people have used example Fernald , while others use Fennell. You can not tell peopleto stop using their name. Look at William the Conq. , they spell his name all kinds of ways. You have to record and use them all , so people can follow the line.It's what each person is use to,

http://www.geni.com/projects/Coalition-for-the-Standardization-of-G...

My wife has an immigrant who came from Ireland DANIEL DUNAGAN (aka Donaken, Donecan, Donekin, Dunican, Dunigan, Dunikin and more). The variable spelling of his surname is credited to: - Daniel was totally illiterate. - He spoke with an accent (Irish or Scotch) in which the letter "g" was sounded as "k" or "c" as in cat. - In records his name was written by clerks who determined spelling from how he sounded it.

Interesting stories. I found I was related to Charlemagne and many other famous people this way:

With a free Geni membership you can do this:
If you think of a famous person that you think you might be related to-- Google the name and Geni.com. When something comes up, click on it. It will take you into their Geni profile. Then on the top middle of the page, it will ask if you want o find out if you are connected. You click on this and it automatically takes you through numerous generations and gives you the connection on their family tree (connection to you). Unfortunately with a free membership--it will not save onto your Geni Family Tree. but you can cut and paste and keep the string of relatives in your own files on your computer. It is kind of a fun find.

Interesting stories. I found I was related to Charlemagne and many other famous people this way:

With a free Geni membership you can do this:
If you think of a famous person that you think you might be related to-- Google the name and Geni.com. When something comes up, click on it. It will take you into their Geni profile. Then on the top middle of the page, it will ask if you want o find out if you are connected. You click on this and it automatically takes you through numerous generations and gives you the connection on their family tree (connection to you). Unfortunately with a free membership--it will not save onto your Geni Family Tree. but you can cut and paste and keep the string of relatives in your own files on your computer. It is kind of a fun find.

Gateways can change. First my gateway was through my fathers line but with building of my own tree and the world tree the gateway have changed to my mothers line. But being 'noble' gateways they meet at the end in the same results because of intermarrying between Nobles.

My gateway through maternal line
Sarah Noe

As a norwegian I have noticed that I am related to *very* many people through Heinrich Arentz (1584 - 1644), who supposedly is the son of Heinrich III, Archbishop of Bremen:

Heinrich Arentz

I always come back to this "bottleneck", but I somehow find it a little strange that the son of an archbishop in Germany would want to emigrate to Norway - although it was certainly a time of strife. In the profile of Heinrich Arentz it is written:

"Tired of all the politics of reclaiming a title, and the complicated history thereof, Henry apparently sought out a commoner to marry and have kids with. Her name is unknown but he did find her. This did not mean he wasn't a prince or of royal blood, just that he wasn't claiming it."

I am a little sceptical to this clam as I cannot see any references to primary sources on the Heinrich Arentz profile to support this.

In my family tree it seems I am related to just about everyone on the continent and in the USA through this person. Maybe he should be investigated a little more intensely. I have a feeling this claim might be apocryphical, but cannot be sure.

There are many books about the Arentz in Norway that are scanned and searchable at the National Library of Norway, but not all are available outside Norway:

http://www.nb.no/nbsok/advanced_search

This is a great source for those of you with dano-norwegian ancestry by the way, as you may find people's obituaries etc. in the older newspapers and also books and articles containing full genealogies - often with references.

My Gr Gr Paternal Grand Mother Sarah Bryant, Katherine Marbury ,
and Through her husband Richard back through the House of Baliol,
and also not on here yet through a Branch off of my mothers Maternal Side, im sure ill find more as i did Full Genome DNA Testing im 100% western European my YDNA 111 marker test revieled that my Haplogroups are R1b (R-M269) MT T2F4 the same as Many Royals who's info is on the net

Sindre, you are my 21st Cousin once removed. The line goes through the Arentzes

I am a Namibian/South African. That is in my mothers line (German line)

For the longest time I could not connect to the tree. But I did some additional research and was able to add some ancestors after I found some documents on line which helped. My gateway ancestor was really Lilias Brown Makgill my 8th great grandmother. She is not famous but through her I am connected to some very royal ancestry in Scotland and England and even go back to the Merovingian Kings, the Viking invaders, the Normans, etc.

I was just searching some info on the Underwood line and came across this info that refutes the Higgs connection:

http://nealsgenealogy.awardspace.info/wilder.htm

"But one thing appears now established: Mrs. Martha Wilder's maiden surname was NOT Higgs as has been long reported. From the Wilder book (revised):
Also a notion has circulated that our widow Martha Wilder of Shiplake was Martha Higgs. This was apparently based on a statement in the Higgs genealogy to the effect that the family of Thomas Wilder of Shiplake had, in earlier chapters, intermarried with the Higgs family. Martha was not found in that family. Careful reading of that statement shows that it referred to Thomas's Aunt Eleanor Wilder who married a Higgs and not to Thomas himself. So we are still without a maiden name for Martha, thanks, not doubt, to whoever tore out the pages of the Shiplake register."
Research into the Higgs family conducted in 1984 in England by a professional genealogist from London did not reveal any Martha Higgs and concluded no Martha Higgs was part of that family. (I do not have any further details about that.) There is, of course, a chance that her surname still MIGHT have been Higgs, but until some evidence is presented, the claim should be presumed NOT correct."

Martha Wilder's about section has this to say about the Higgs maiden name:
"The family name "Higgs" for Martha has been advanced in the past, especially in tabulations of early mormons, plus others. More recently, in 1984, Grenice Disher hired a professional genealogist in London, England to investigate the origins of Martha with specific instructions to look for evidence linking her to the Higgs family. After some ten months of extensive research, it was concluded Martha's maiden name of Higgs could not be confirmed. Colleen Nielson, a Wilder descendant and careful researcher, quotes Savage's Genealogical Dictionary, page 373, and the History of Hingham, Massachusetts, LDS Family History Library, book 974.48/H1 V2h Vol. 2, and the LDS Archival Record as her sources to support her acceptance of Martha's maiden name as Higgs."

It seems from this that the only evidence in favor of the Higgs name is Tradition, and the quotation you shared argues that it arose from a misunderstanding.

Debbie Gambrell In light of these comments I find it hard to support the parentage that we have on Geni for Martha: Griffin Higgs and Sarah Higgs. I think a disconnection is in order. What do you think?

Tamás Flinn Caldwell-Gilbert I agree with the disconnect. Thanks for validating that.

Very well, I made the cut, locked her relationships and added the quote you supplied to her about section.

Thanks so much for helping us keep the tree correct.

Since we are on the topic of interesting gateway profiles, I would like to highlight Merrell Vories Hitotsuyanagi. He was an American architect who moved to Japan in the early 20th century. While in Japan he married Makiko Hitotsuyanagi, daughter of viscount Suenori Hitotsuyanagi. His marriage to Makiko Hitotsuyanagi constitutes the only genealogical gateway that I have been able to find for us Americans into the Japanese nobility.

It is through Makiko and Merrell Vories Hitotsuyanagi that Geni traces my connection to the current emperor of Japan: Emperor Naruhito of Japan is your great aunt's second cousin four times removed's husband's second cousin twice removed's wife's second cousin twice removed's wife's second great nephew! https://www.geni.com/path/Tam%C3%A1s-Caldwell-Gilbert+is+related+to...

I get “Merrell Vories Hitotsuyanagi is your 15th cousin once removed.”

https://www.geni.com/path/Erica-Howton+is+related+to+Merrell-Vories...

And a Newbury MA in law line - third great aunt's fourth cousin twice removed. https://www.geni.com/path/Erica-Howton+is+related+to+Merrell-Vories...

If the link is through the Maryland Cheneys (mine is), it's doubtful. Richard Cheney the Anne Arundel immigrant was *certainly not* the son of Richard Cheney and Anne Ellinor.
Richard and Anne were married on or shortly after June 3, 1622, had one son, Bartholomew, and Richard was dead by 1625.

Marriage License granted by the Bishop of London, 3 June 1622 permits a marriage of Richard Cheney, Gent., of Hackney, Middlesex, Bachelor, age 27 (with consent of his father Mr. Richard Cheney), to Anne Ellnor, of St. Catherine Cree Church, London, Spinster, 19, daughter of Bartholomew Ellnor, of same, Gent, who consents.

The will of his father [[Cheney-350|Richard Cheyney of Hackney (d. 1625) names the following of his father's family members:

sons William (eldest son), Thomas, John;
daughter in law [stepdaughter] Elizabeth Offley;
loving wife Alice Cheyney; [previously married to an Offley]
"my late sonne Richard Cheyney deceased and Anne his wife";
sister Alice Worthington and her late husband Richard Worthington;
Richard Cheyney, eldest sonne of my sonne Willliam Cheyney;
William Cheyney sonne of my said sonne William
brother Elner and his wife [i.e. brother-in-law Bartholomew Ellinor]
" Bartholomew the sonne of my late sonne Richard Cheyney"

It is possible that Richard Cheney the Immigrant was actually the son of *William* Cheney (see above), or he might belong to some other as yet unidentified Cheney family. This poses so many problems for so many people that Geni does not want to touch it.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cheney-350

Dato Godam

this is a great project :)