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Researchers at the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Southampton (UK) recently made available the roster of men who served during the Hundred Years' War.

Church records are one of our most important sources of information about the births, marriages and deaths of our ancestors. And before the 19th century, they are our only source of information on births, marriages and deaths—because churches were keeping records of important life events long before governments were. In 1538, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Vicar General, issued an order that each parish in England keep a record of every baptism, marriage and burial it performed. The UK government, on the other hand, did not start keeping vital records until 1837. (To search indexes of most of the UK government’s...

William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection with thoughts on my Bill Ayers No Dream post. (Yes, you can use the phrase:) Bill Ayers was not polite company though, so it wasn't a strain. And how about this RootsWeb dossier on one Bill Ayers. Sent in by an informed reader.

THE OTHER GATES FOUNDATION In 2005, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., known to all as "Skip," set up the nonprofit Inkwell Foundation, named after a famous beach/gathering place for African-Americans on Martha's Vineyard. Skip talked about the foundation in a recent interview with Martha's Vineyard magazine and touted it when he launched his for-profit business, AfricanDNA.com, last year. "The precedent-setting site is the only company in the field of genetic genealogy that will provide African Americans with family tree research in addition to DNA testing," its initial press release declared, adding that "a percentage of all profits will be...

The White House expects LDS Church President Thomas Monson to present President Barack Obama with a detailed report on his genealogical history when the two leaders sit down for a quick meeting today,

An Auckland man has seen off a legal challenge from the giant mormon church over the trademark for his family location internet service, with the Court of Appeal today ruling against the religious organisation. The Court of Appeal decision brings a close to seven years of legal wrangling between Robert Sintes and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints over the use of the words ‘family search’. The church operates a website at familysearch.org which offers free family history, family tree and genealogy records and research, but came down hard on Mr Sintes soon after he launched his own...

The media continues to treat a genealogical researcher as a celebrity. Helen Radkey likes to unearth misguided proxy baptisms performed by LDS Church members... She has made it her vocation to research and then release her sensationalized findings to the media. The media in turn often print whatever Radkey has to say, drop in a quote from church public affairs and call it good journalism... SNIP While Radkey's facts may be accurate, it's her spin that often goes unchallenged. As a member of the church, I find it disheartening that fellow members would submit names of unrelated people, including Holocaust...

I found the negatives for these pictures in a box of darkroom items at a garage sale 15 years ago. I have been haunted by them ever since. I have scoured these pictures looking for clues as to the identity of this family. Now I will ask my Flickr friends to help Seems nobody really knows.

In a search for their ancestors, more than 140 people with variations of the last name Kincaid have taken DNA tests and shared their results on the Internet. They have found war heroes, sailors and survivors of the Irish potato famine. They have also stumbled upon bastards, liars and two-timers. Much of it is ancient history, long-dead ancestors whose dalliances are part of the intrigue of amateur genealogy. But sometimes the findings strike closer to home.

I never met my great-grandfather, the father of the mother of my mother, who died in 1938, long before I was born. All the people and events described herein can be placed and dated in the Carpathian Mountains of central Europe circa 1880-1890, and in northeastern Pennsylvania circa 1890-1940. One time I interviewed his second-oldest son (i.e., an uncle of my mother; by then a long-retired Ph.D. of "education"), and asked, quite pointedly, if there had been any particular problems or interesting situations for him, given that my great-grandfather, his father, was a dwarf, and by the time his own...

Beethoven: Revealing His True Identity   In the 15th and 16th century, written history underwent a massive campaign of misinformation and deception. With the European slave trade in full swing, Afrikans were transported to various parts of the world and were stripped of every aspect of their humanity, and in most of western civilization, were no longer considered human. This triggered a wholesale interpretation of history that methodically excluded Afrikans from any respectful mention, other than a legacy of slavery. This can result in being taught, or socialized, from one perspective. In this instance, historical information tends to flow strictly...

The children of Paul Emery Washington think of their father as an unpretentious, generous guy who climbed the corporate ladder to become regional manager at CertainTeed manufacturing, a building-supply company. Now 82, he takes care of his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, while spending time on the San Antonio, Texas, property that he shares with his children. "I think he would've been a great king," says son Bill Washington—a statement, we admit, that might seem a little odd. Except that Paul Emery Washington is a direct descendant of George Washington, our nation's first president and perhaps the only man...

Sarah Palin is the 12th cousin of John McCain, 8th cousin of George W. Bush and 10th cousin of Barack Obama.

BATRIK — bordering Afghanistan's Nuristan province, inaccessible Chitral district has long been thought to be a refuge for Osama bin Laden. With the high peaks of the Hindu Kush range and narrow valleys, ... easy to dodge through secret mountain routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. home of the Kalasha, a unique pagan civilization that's lived in the area for 2,000 years or more, boxed in by an increasingly militant Islam. According to locals, bin Laden lived with a Kalasha family in Chitral for some time during his first Afghan jihad, . With his now much more severe ideology, the al...

Although “Viking” literally means “pirate,” recent research has indicated that the Vikings were also traders to the fishmongers of Europe. Stereotypically, these Norsemen are usually pictured wearing a horned helmet but in a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, Jørgen Dissing and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, investigated what went under the helmet; the scientists were able to extract authentic DNA from ancient Viking skeletons, avoiding many of the problems of contamination faced by past researchers. Analysis of DNA from the remains of ancient humans provides valuable insights into such important questions as the origin...

Leo McKinstry says the current craze for genealogy reflects an unhealthy combination of snobbery and inverse snobbery, and is a poor replacement for national history When I visited the National Archives at Kew last week the place was full of them, scurrying about with their plastic wallets in hand, a look of eager concentration on their faces. It was impossible to escape their busy presence as they whispered noisily to relatives or whooped over the discovery of some new piece of information. These were the followers of one of Britain’s fastest-growing craze, the mania for researching family history. Studying bloodlines...

As some of the above connections make clear, Senator Obama has a large number of distant notable cousins. The easiest to trace are the FitzRandolph, Duvall, and Eltonhead descendants. Through Edward FitzRandolph, the Senator may claim distant kinship to Confederate General James Longstreet, AT&T founder Theodore Newton Vail, First Lady Ellen Louise Axson Wilson (first wife of Woodrow Wilson), and artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Mareen Duvall descendants include President Harry Truman (via Duvall, Tyler, Holmes, and Truman families), Vice-President Richard Bruce Cheney (via Duvalls and Tylers), and perhaps the late Bessie Wallis Warfield, Duchess of Windsor. Eltonhead descendants include Richard Henry...

Now that you mention it, I can see the similarities. The brittle, bottle-blonde hairstyles, steely personalities and the ability to inspire both deep antipathy and ardent affection in their respective populaces. So perhaps the news that Hillary Clinton and Camilla Parker-Bowles also share a common ancestor should come as no great shock. The Democratic candidate and the wife of the heir to the British throne are ninth cousins once removed, according to a newly-released study by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The pair are both descended from Jean Guyon and Elisabeth Couillard who lived in Quebec back when it...

Obama a distant cousin of Bush Close political rivals - now there's a connection in their family histories It has emerged that Barack Obama is a tenth cousin, once removed, of the man whose job he wants - George W Bush.They are linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662. Mr Obama is also a distant cousin of the actor Brad Pitt while Hillary Clinton is related to Mr Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie. The ties of the US Democratic rivals were established by a respected US genealogical organisation after three years' investigation. Mrs Clinton and Mr...

Jesse Trees  A Jesse Tree is a depiction of the genealogy of Jesus designed in such a way as to show that He springs from the "root of Jesse"  per the prophecy of Isaias 11:1: And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse [David's father], and a flower shall rise up out of his root. This prophecy was recalled by St. Paul, and on the first Sunday of Advent, we remember his words with the Epistle reading of Romans 15:4-13, which reads, in part: Wherefore receive one another, as Christ also hath received you...

“The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: From the Deportation to the Christ” (Matthew 1:1, 12-17)During this Advent season, we are preparing to meet and greet our coming king. The King is coming--to us, for us--coming at Christmas, coming at the end of time, coming now into our midst through Word and Sacrament. So we prepare to meet him--in repentance, in faith, in holy joy. That’s what Advent is all about. But this king we are preparing to meet--this king who comes to us--this is a lowly king. Lowly, not high. Lowly, humble, coming in a way you might not expect. Our...

“The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: From David to the Deportation” (Matthew 1:1, 6b-11)Last week we began looking at how Matthew begins his gospel--for that matter, the whole New Testament. He begins with a genealogy, a genealogy that takes in much of Old Testament history. It is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. But Jesus was, first of all, the Savior of Israel, the promised Messiah, the one who fulfilled the promises given to Israel’s forefathers. It was as the fulfillment of those promises that Jesus came into the world--as the culmination, the climax, of Israel’s history....

“The Genealogy of Jesus Christ: From Abraham to David” (Matthew 1:1-6a)Thirty years ago, all of America was watching a television mini-series called, “Roots.” “Roots” was the story of author Alex Haley’s family, his ancestors, the generations that led up to his own life. Basically, it was a genealogy fleshed out. And it made for fascinating viewing. We humans are naturally interested in “roots,” in family histories and genealogies. A person’s family history will tell us a lot about that person--where he came from, who he is. Today we begin a series on the “roots,” the family history, of our Lord...

Roots of Care: Investigation of family tree, finds that ancestor lived in 'alms house'By Sherry Youngquist JOURNAL REPORTER Saturday, October 20, 2007 Kim Quintal stands inside a building in Yadkin County that was once known as "the crazy house." It was part of the poorhouse system in North Carolina. (Journal Photo by David Rolfe) YADKINVILLE - Off a dirt road, not far from the county seat, there is a small frame building in a field. Walk closer and you see the bars over the windows. Inside, handmade, crudely cut lattice separates stalls where people were once shut away. People in...

Surnames that reveal Pirate ancestry By Nick Britten Last Updated: 1:34am BST 17/08/2007 With all that pillaging and looting, it could be one of the bloodiest reunions in history when descendants of six of Britain's famous pirates are invited to a get-together. People with the surnames Morgan, Rackham, Bonny, Read, Kidd or Teach, are being invited to discover possible connections with the likes of Blackbeard and Calico Jack, in a series of events by English Heritage. Dressing as a sea dog is optional. Proving your lineage with a real-life buccaneer, however, may prove difficult. Abigail Baker, of the genealogy research...

They swab the cheeks of strangers and pluck hairs from corpses. They travel hundreds of miles to entice their suspects with an old photograph, or sometimes a free drink. Cooperation is preferred, but not necessarily required to achieve their ends.

French Canada's genealogy data mined online Utah-based web site: Project aims to plug gaps back to first 40-50 families Peggy Curran, CanWest News Service Published: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 MONTREAL - Who cares if your great-great-great-great-grandmother came over with Champlain? What really counts is tracking down those long-lost cousins, like Celine Dion and Madonna. Today, the University of Montreal will announce a deal with online genealogy giant Ancestry.com that aims at plugging gaps in the historical records of French Canadians dating back to the first 40 or 50 families who set sail from Normandy in the early 1600s. Actually,...

Native American populations share gene signature 00:01 14 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time. Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in...

LONDON (Reuters) - People looking to track ancestors who emigrated from British ports will from Wednesday be able to search online passenger lists of the ships that carried them to new lands. Released by Britain's National Archives, the passenger manifests give an insight into all long-distance trips made by 30 million travelers from the country's ports between 1890 and 1960, including that of the Titanic which sank in 1912.

Genome archaeology illuminates the genetic engineering debate NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- Genome Research's cover story for Oct. 2 tells a tale of "genome archaeology" by genetic researchers who dug deeply into the long history of maize and rice. Their resulting insights into plant genomic evolution may well fuel the fires of the genetically modified organism (GMO) controversy. "Our findings elucidate an active evolutionary process in which nature inserts genes much like modern biotechnologists do. Now we must reassess the allegations that biotechnologists perform 'unnatural acts,' thereby creating 'Frankenfoods,'" said Professor Joachim Messing, project leader and director of the Waksman Institute...

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu. Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of...

Myths & Mysteries Thu 14 Sep 2006 The pharaoh's daughter who was the mother of all Scots Diane Maclean "From various writings of ancient chroniclers we deduce that the nation of the Scots is of ancient stock, taking its first beginning from the Greeks and those of the Egyptians." - Walter Bower, Scotichronicon WALTER Bower wrote his compendium of Scottish history, Scotichronicon, in the 1440s. This sweeping Latin text aimed to set down the history of the Scottish people from the earliest times – and by so doing to show what race of people we were. He referenced his chronicle...

Today, a rather old book from the late 11th century England (1086 to be precise) will be brought online to be searched. The Domesday Book, is the earliest surviving survey and valuation of the King, his senior supporters, the land they owned and their resources. If you'd wanted to look through it previously, you had to drag yourself over to the National Archive in a rather calm building in Kew West London, or cough up a couple of thousand pounds to get them on CD. By going to the Domesday Web site, you can search and get an idea if...

BOSTON --Thousands of black men fought for American independence during the Revolutionary War, yet their contributions to the nation's freedom are for the most part unrecognized and rarely appear in modern history books. Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Sons of the American Revolution are hoping to change that by undertaking an ambitious project to identify those soldiers, and then find their descendants. "My first goal with this project is to enhance the awareness of the American public of the role of African-Americans in the struggle for freedom in this country," said Gates, director of the W.E.B....

"Rodham" Family Tree- Eugene Judy, a professional genealogical researcher, discovered that Hillary Clinton's great-great uncle, Remus Rodham, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription: "Remus Rodham; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted, and hanged in 1889." Judy e-mailed Hillary Clinton @NY.Gov for comments. Hillary's staff of professional image spin adjusters cropped Remus's picture, scanned...

Roots of Human Family Tree Are ShallowRoots of the Human Family Tree Are Remarkably Shallow - All Alive Today Share 1 Common Ancestor By MATT CRENSON AP National Writer Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die. Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the...

Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings. Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors. What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically. Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually...

DOES JESUS have a secret line of descendants who are living today? It's an oddly appealing idea. We tend to think of ancestry in terms of bloodlines, in which some individuals are descended from famous ancestors and others are not. And the idea echoes deeper religious themes of individuals and groups favored by God. But this is one idea in "The Da Vinci Code," which opens today in theaters worldwide, that just won't wash. Jesus couldn't have just a few descendants living today. If anyone alive today is descended from Jesus, then so are most of the people on the...

Alan Moldawer's adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he had heard could determine an individual's genetic ancestry. The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid. "Naturally when you're...

STOCKHOLM: US President George W Bush has Swedish ancestry, the daily Svenska Dagbladet reported on Monday, quoting Swedish genealogists in the United States. “George W Bush and his family are extremely interested in this research. This represents their oldest known European roots,” David Emmi of the Swedish Colonial Society told the paper. Researchers traced Bush family ancestry through 10 generations to the 17th century, to a Maans Andersson, the society said. Andersson is believed to have left Gothenburg, in southwestern Sweden, in October 1639, arriving in the colony of New Sweden in Delaware a few months later, according to the...

A cousin found this photo of my grandmother, taken around 1900. Lola MacDougal, 1884-1965

If you know your Y-chromosome markers, enter them in the spaces provided in the drop-down menus and it will trace paternal line names and likely countries of origin. Three names popped up in my likely ancestry: Nickle (USA and Scotland), Rogers (USA) and Mahoney (USA). Here is my Place/Time Analysis: Important notes: A match close to 100% for a given time period does not necessarily mean that your paternal-line ancestor lived in that country at that time, only that the closest match in the SMGF database had a paternal-line ancestor living in that place and time. In general, the above...

I was just on the phone talking to my mom, she was telling me about getting the forms filled out for a passport.One of the things asked for was proof of Canadian citizenship The only proof she has is her birth certificate. She doesn't even know if her parents were citizens. Both my grandparents were born in Minnesota and migrated to what is now known as Saskatchewan in the early 1900's. My grandfather came to Canada in 1903. My grandmother earlier. They were married in 1911. Mom is sure her mother was a Canadian citizen by 1911, but we are...

LATE last year, a 15-year-old boy rubbed a swab along the inside of his cheek, popped it into a vial and sent it off to an online genealogy DNA-testing service. But unlike most people who contact the service, he was not interested in sketching the far reaches of his family tree. His mother had conceived using donor sperm and he wanted to track down his genetic father.That the boy succeeded using only the DNA test, genealogical records and some internet searches has huge implications for the hundreds of thousands of people who were conceived using donor sperm. With the explosion...

The Genographic ProjectPublic participation, including yours, is critical to the Genographic Project's success. Here's how you can get involved: Purchasing a Public Participation Kit will fund important research around the world—and open the door to the ancient past of your own genetic background. With a simple and painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA. You'll submit the sample through our secure, private, and completely anonymous system, then log on to the project Web site to track your personal results online. This is not a genealogy test and you won't learn about your great grandparents. You will learn,...

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN--About 1200 researchers gathered near the shores of Lake Michigan here from 5 to 9 April to discuss early Englishmen, the birth of modern humans, and Stone Age weapons. In the past 15 years, a flood of genetic data has helped propel the Out of Africa theory into the leading explanation of modern human origins. DNA from mitochondria (mtDNA), the Y chromosome, and ancient humans each suggest that the ancestors of all living people arose in Africa some time after 200,000 years ago, swept out of their homeland, and replaced archaic humans around the globe without mixing with them....

A five-year project to reconstruct a genealogy of the world's populations and the migration paths of early humans from their ancestral homeland in Africa will be started today by the National Geographic Society and I.B.M., the society said in a statement. The goal of the program is to collect 100,000 blood samples from indigenous populations around the world and analyze them genetically. Researchers at 10 local centers and at the National Geographic Society in Washington will then assign the people who give blood to lineages that trace the routes traveled by their early ancestors. The program is an effort to...

Hey genealogy lovers: The far left foreign loonies with a bad translator have hacked a non-political site, CYNDISLIST.COM...a genealogy site. What is this world coming to when a site for genealogy lovers needs to be defaced?

DUBLIN -- U.S. President George W. Bush is descended from Norman nobleman Richard de la Clare, known as Strongbow, who led the invasion of Ireland in the 12th century, genealogists said yesterday. Mr. Bush is also descended from the Celtic king of the Irish province of Leinster, Dermot McMurrough, who was denounced as a traitor and whose daughter Aoife married Strongbow. The Bush family is already aware that it is descended from Norman gentry who lived in England in the late Middle Ages. But Irish historian Ann Griffin Bernstorff found the Irish genealogical link by working on the Ross, one...

Sen. John Kerry’s paternal grandfather, Fred Kerry, was born Fritz Kohn, a European Jew. Kohn changed his name to Kerry and his religion to Catholic before immigrating to the United States, an auspicious choice for a family setting-up shop in America’s most Irish Catholic state, Massachusetts. In the new world Fred Kerry was successful in business and finance, later lost his fortune, started over again, failed once more and prospered all over again. Far-sightedness, perseverance and ambition, we begin to see, are prominent family traits. Living in the Boston suburb of Brookline under the Kerry name, a name happened-upon by...