Just Lyin' in the Shade of the Ol' Family Tree

I started doing family research about a year ago. Trying to trace the old family tree. I had always joked with people that my family tree didn't branch, because my grandmother and grandfather were third or fourth cousins. My father always told me that our family was nothing more than a bunch a peasants and horse thieves. And that's what I firmly expected find. After all, my dad's parents were share croppers in Pike County, Mississippi. My mom's parents owned a small dairy farm south of Buffalo, New York. Both of my parents grew up were very poor. Neither of them - to quote my mom - "had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of." I was assured that this was always the case, so I didn't go into it with very much hope of finding anything different at all. But I was wrong. So were my parents. The hard times only extend back to about 1800. Prior to that, both families were very prosperous, propertied and powerful clans. On both sides, they arrived with the very founding of the country. Members of my mom's family were on the Mayflower. I know everyone says that, but in my case it really is true, and I have the lineage to prove it. They settled all over the area of Massachusetts where I now work and live. Go figure. My dad's family settled in Virginia in the years immediately following the establishment of Jamestown. Back in England, family members consisted of folks like the Lord Mayor of London. Go back a few more years and they were all royalty. Back five hundred years, and my mom's family and my dad's family rejoin. They were all a part of the same royal line.

Let me introduce you to a few of my ancestors. There's Sir William Stafford, of Chebsey, in Staffordshire (c.1500-5 May 1556), a soldier and Essex landowner. Not much to shout about, I know. Just another minor 16th-century English noble. No big deal. There are lots of them floating about. But he's married to a woman named Mary Boleyn. That's her below.


Mary had a sister, named Anne. She's not much to look at, I know, but...you know...the canvass always adds ten pounds. And who's graduation photo really looks good to them thirty years later?


Anyway, Anne sort of lost her head over this guy.


Of course, Mary got around a bit herself. She had been Henry's mistress for years and was even rumored to have conceived two children by him, though he never acknowledged them. She was also rumored to have been the mistress of Henry's rival, King Francis I of France. Yup, that's my fam. And they aren't the only ones. The line is positively littered with princes and dukes and earls and kings. You can't swing a dead cat around my family tree without smacking a royal in the face.

I know. You're thinking, "Who is this wanker, bragging about being descended from royalty?" Yeah, I think so too sometimes. I don't generally talk about it. After all, it doesn't supersize my house or my car or give me a villa in Italy. It doesn't make me one inch taller or one penny richer or any more handsome. It doesn't make me a bit more intelligent or add any more weight whatsoever to a single word I utter or write. Nor do I expect it to. I'm not about to cross the pond, knock on the Queen Mum's door and say, "Hi! I'm your long lost cousin, forty-seven times removed!" I'd be a guest of the crown in another way if I tried that!

So why do I care at all? I guess because knowing it makes me feel just a little bit better about myself. You see, I grew up being told on a daily basis that I was worthless, that I was stupid, that I was lazy and that I'd never amount to a hill of beans. So, I left home and set out to prove to everybody that I was just the opposite. It hasn't been easy though. All of those negative messages still play in my head - most of the time I can keep them down to a barely audible murmur in the background; sometimes, they get downright raucous though. At times like that, those times when nothing else seems to work to drone out the din of caustic insults learned as a child, I can turn to this. Worthless? Me? Not hardly. Running through my veins is the blood of kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies. With a pedigree like that, I can do anything. And I set myself again to proving it. You see, my lineage means nothing to anybody else, but it means the world to me. These people were my family too, and I'm proud of them.