Famous relatives

[wnylib]

12. Yeah, I've got William the Conqueror in my tree.

Last edited Mon Mar 16, 2026, 01:41 PM - Edit history (1)

It was one of William's descendants who started the Plantagenet dynasty. Edward III was a Plantagenet. Edward's descendants fought the Wars of the Roses, aka the "Cousins' Wars." I have ancestors from both the York and Lancaster houses in those Wars. One of my Lancasters was cousin to Margaret., mother of Henry VII.

As new dynasties came to power, my ancestors slipped down the social scale to mere nobility and then to landed gentry and businessmen who joined the Puritan movement and settled in John Winthrop's MA Bay Colony.

The German side of my family came to the US much more recently. My maternal grandmother was 4 years old when her parents brought her and her siblings to the US from Mecklenburg-Schwerin, German Empire, in 1890. My maternal grandfather's family came to the US as political refugees from Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888. They were from West Prussia. My grandfather was born 2 weeks after they arrived in Buffalo, NY. Poor great-grandma, 8 months pregnant when she and her husband fled with their 3 children, ages 5, 3. And 1. What an ordeal for her.