Welcome to my new 25th cousin once-removed (also
my 26th cousin once-removed through a different line), HRH Louis Arthur Charles, Prince of Cambridge.
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Royal Family Tree from the Daily Mail |
Although this new English cousin and I will never meet, I do
have a large contingent of cousins in England who are more accessible. They’re not really close from a lineage
perspective (a lot closer than the Prince of Cambridge!), but they are
important to me nonetheless, because I’ve gotten to know a good number of them
well. I have four second cousins
once-removed (siblings) and a whole lot more third cousins (and third cousins
once-removed!) in the UK.
They are from a good solid upper middle class background and
the four siblings (who are my mother’s second cousins) have welcomed me into
their homes and lives, for which I am grateful.
They have children, some of whom have children of their own, thus my
thirds and thirds-once, mentioned above.
One difficulty for genealogists in the UK is that many of
their vital statistics records were destroyed or simply not kept in the 17th
Century during the UK Civil War. It is
very difficult for anyone of UK heritage, particularly in England, to trace their
families past the 1700s. Royal and noble
lineages were still carefully maintained, but a large swath of the “regular
people” are not able to get back into the 1600s.
My UK cousins, although part of neither royalty nor nobility
in the past few centuries, are able to trace a part of their lineage back to William
the Conqueror and beyond. Although their
17th century family records largely fell to the same fate as the
bulk of their countrymen, nonetheless they can make that connection. Here’s how: