Robert White, of Messing - Quit messing with his parents, everybody!

ok who is pardon the pun messing with this one?

Just another newbie, I think. Emma Siggins White has SO MUCH to answer for, writing those junk genealogies... (sigh)

I wasn't even thinking of Robert White until this, but found this online: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.genealogy.medieval/...
> I'm intrigued by the Robert White you mention, baptized in Bulmer 10
> June 1560, son of Henry and Mary White. The information I have from
> the on-line databases for Robert White of Messing gives a baptism date
> of 17 May 1560 in Shalford. These databases, of course, give no
> documentation, but the dates are quite close. Does anyone have
> information documenting Robert, son of Henry and Mary, as an adult?
> Also, does anyone know who Henry and Mary White were? The same on-line
> databases list a Henry White, son of Richard White and Helen or Ellen
> Kirton. The birthdate given for Henry is 1561, so that would be a
> problem if it is accurate. No wife or children for Henry are shown.
> According to those same databases, Henry is the uncle of Robert of
> Messing.

Until documentation is found, (and maybe, it never will be), it helps to look into every available nook and cranny. This is the first time I've seen the name "Henry White."

Robert White is about as common a name as you're going to find. But, as I've mentioned before, I was told by my grandmother that we're descended from John Whyte, Lord Mayor of London. (Her great-grandmother, Laura White Saunders died when she was 13). Laura was quite a "black sheep." Maybe our Robert was too and no family would claim him.

Robert White of Messing was a yeoman (farmer with his own land), basically Church of England with some Puritan leanings.

Richard White + Helen/Ellen Kirton belong to the "gentry and up" White famiy with branches in Farnham, Surrey; Hutton, Essex; Swanbourne/South Warnborough, Hampshire; London; Aldershot; etc. That lot were almost 100% fanatical Catholics (possibly a couple of lip-service conformists, but most of them wouldn't even pretend).

Looks like I also have to prune out White of Tuxford - again. They were NOT that directly related to the Farnham/Hutton crew - maybe somewhere *way way* back, at best.

I think we've had another blitz from somebody drawing on either Emma Siggins White, or a source that takes her work as gospel. Unfortunately it is trash genealogy of the worst kind.

As for the Soc.genealogy.medieval quote, take with a ton of salt.

Findagrave and several other consonant sources have this to say about Stephen Kirton:

Birth: 1510
Thorpe Manderville
Northamptonshire, England
Death: Aug. 15, 1566
London
Greater London, England

The "Hillfarrance, Somerset" "info" is BOGUS and has its roots sunk deep in Emma Siggins White. She tried to pretend that Richard White of Somerset was the same person as Sir Richard White and that the Somerset Whites "were" the highborn Midlands Whites.

They. were. not.

She just couldn't stand the thought that her husband's ancestors were "mere" sheep farmers, and grabbed and mashed together every prominent White family she heard of, until she had made a total mess.

Fallout from this messmaking continues to fall in every direction that has anything to do with *any* White family of any significance - including in-laws, collateral relatives, and so forth.

Now I can't stop thinking about Robert White and the mystery of his parents. I always had doubts about Robert White and Alice Rich, at least those are put to rest.

So, I went web surfing and caught this wave, which at least gives new insight into his passing, if not his birth:
http://bartchristmas.blogspot.com/2010/08/robert-white-bridget-allg...

What lingers is lore passed down through the family regarding Sir John Whyte, Lord Mayor of London. (A grocer who was elected, not selected, to the post). You don't have to be born into nobility to get the title of "Sir." (Sir Mick Jagger, anyone? Or my favorite, Sir Bradley Wiggins). Although in the 16th century, you got "sir-ved" by sucking up to the Monarch.

All I can do is speculate that Robert White did something to get himself disowned by his family. Who knows? Maybe he started out Catholic and married Protestant. We don't know. Personally, I love the reprobates the most :) and I'd love to find another scandal in the family tree. Maybe it just involves...........sheep.

Do you want me to put in unknown parents for Robert and then master them to stop this problem?

They've been added, MP'ed and field-locked. Somebody tried to get around it with a Bad-Merge.

There aren't any more duplicate profiles currently on Geni - I think. This does not mean that somebody under the influence of Emma Siggins White couldn't come along and add one....

Double-checked, and there are about three more duplicates lurking. (Birth date is suspiciously precise and may be erroneous.)

Merged in the duplicates, and working some cleanup.

There is no record of any wife for Nathaniel White, and he was almost certainly younger than Daniel. Several erroneous "wives" appear to have been duplicates of Mary White Levitt (spelling uncertain), who married Nathaniel's younger brother John (aka "Elder" John White of Hartford).

I noticed the blog said Daniel may have been the son of a wife before Bridget Allgar. When did Emma first write her erroneous genealogy, because the "parents" you keep deleting are all over the internet. I read elsewhere it's not that uncommon for people to try and tie ancestors to the nobility. And the fact of the matter is, most of them were "middle class." But, if Robert White is also an ancestor of Vincent Price, I can't complain.

"Genesis of the White Family" was published in 1920, is out of copyright, and has been digitized by several sources. (I wrote a scathing review of it for Amazon.com.)

Another member of the White family, Ms. Almira Larkin White, produced a smaller and more modest work, "The Ancestry of John Barber White and of his descendants". Her aims were more modest, and she was (usually) satisfied with factual findings, so - despite being published in 1913 - her work is more reliable. (She does go overboard, perhaps, with one or two of the secondary lineages - Prescott, for instance. But in general, where she has no reliable information, she says so and does not indulge in fanciful speculation.) http://archive.org/stream/ancestryofjohnba00whit#page/n3/mode/2up

The Whites I keep referring to as "highborn" were gentry, and mainly upper gentry at that. Sir Robert White, KB was supposed to have been made a Knight of the Bath at the intended coronation of Edward 5th on 22 June (not something that was given out like lollipops). The coronation never took place, but Sir Robert's knighthood is still on record. One may suppose that Richard III took care of it at some convenient point and it was quietly backdated.

The whole extended family did very well for themselves under the Tudors...until Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church. After that, they got increasingly stiff-necked and stubborn, and their fortunes depended heavily on whether Catholics were tolerated (even grudgingly) or persecuted. (Also, they started to daughter out, with too many sons opting out of the gene pool into the Catholic priesthood, Benedictine service, etc.)

They probably hit their nadir in the 1640s, when Sir Richard White of Hutton, his second wife Lady Catherine Weston, and all his-and-her children pulled up stakes and moved to Rome rather than continue to live in a Puritan country.

The family never really recovered, and several (all?) main branches went extinct in the male line.

Not to complicate matters any further, but I *suspect* that Robert is related to (possibly descended from) William Wright, of Kelvedon. Of course, proof of a connection might never see the light of day...

Possible, but you'd have the devil of a time proving it. First you'd need evidence that William II ever had a son....

William (II) White was in the right town (Kelvedon) at the right time and is connected with some of us Robert White progeny. William's daughter, Margaret, was wife of Thomas Marlar. Their granddaughter was Jane Lingwood of Kelvedon and the mother of Agnes Loomis. An interesting coincidence. I, too, had bumped into this some time ago and had similar thoughts as expressed by John Rigall. Sorry, but there may still be some other rocks out there to look under. I'll keep looking , but no entries without consultations.

Y-DNA evidence, if you can get it, might be of some assistance. If straight-line male descendants of Robert White (I think at least one has been tested) match straight-line male descendants of William (II) White (if you can find any) to about 3 differences or less, you can be reasonably sure they were related somehow.

What is the YDNA Halogroup for this White Family

Becky: Familytreedna.com has zillions of Whites, but only one claimed descendant of Robert White of Messing. If they've got the right guy - which is *not* a certainty due to all the bad family trees in existence - then he's one of the scads of flavors of R-M269 (which isn't much of a help).