On Tuesday, September 5, 2017 at 4:25:00 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote: > In view of this, it would be interesting to know what proportion of > American 'gateway' ancestors traced at least to the mid-14th century did > not have a known line to Edward III. I have four that I can trace that early, one has a line from Edward III, two only trace to Edward I, and one has a reasonably broad pedigree but no royalty whatsoever, though with numerous 'near misses, where the royal-derived marriage came a generation after, i.e. involved a sibling of the immigrant's ancestor. I have to think that the timing of the emigration established an artificial barrier, removing immigrants of this class from proximity to the pool of families with traceable royal descent just as it was in the process of permeating the lower gentry, and instead presenting them with a new marriage pool that was largely untraceable, due to a combination of representing a different class distribution than their likely marriage pool in England, and the poor documentation regarding the pre-immigration origin of the majority of immigrants. taf

On 06-Sep-17 9:55 AM, taf wrote: > On Tuesday, September 5, 2017 at 4:25:00 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote: >> In view of this, it would be interesting to know what proportion of >> American 'gateway' ancestors traced at least to the mid-14th century did >> not have a known line to Edward III. > I have four that I can trace that early, one has a line from Edward III, two only trace to Edward I, and one has a reasonably broad pedigree but no royalty whatsoever, though with numerous 'near misses, where the royal-derived marriage came a generation after, i.e. involved a sibling of the immigrant's ancestor. > > I have to think that the timing of the emigration established an artificial barrier, removing immigrants of this class from proximity to the pool of families with traceable royal descent just as it was in the process of permeating the lower gentry, and instead presenting them with a new marriage pool that was largely untraceable, due to a combination of representing a different class distribution than their likely marriage pool in England, and the poor documentation regarding the pre-immigration origin of the majority of immigrants. These are the effects I had in mind, but still I am surprised at the frequency of descents from earlier kings that apparently bypass Edward III. I wonder how many contemporaries of his are traced in these cases - if only a small proportion of ancestors living in his time are known, then the exercise is not very illuminating and we are left with hunches as to likelihood. Peter Stewart