Medieval Meanderings

Number 1 (26 August 1997)

Hello, fellow Southworth cousins. Kerry has asked me if I would like to periodically provide you with some information on the medieval roots of the Southworth family. I am honored by the invitation and will be pleased to do so.

First, a short introduction. I am not a denizen of the academic world. I work for a living as a Postal Service supervisor. I have always had a love of history, that being my major in college.

About 30 years ago, one of my high school teachers gave our class the assignment of researching our family history as far back as we could. At that time, the earliest ancestors anyone in my immediate family knew about were my great-great-grandparents. One of them had been born in Yarmouth, Maine, so I wrote to the town clerk there, asking for anything she could send me regarding his ancestry.

The town clerk passed my letter on to a local genealogist, who responded with the line of descent to my great-great-grandfather from Edward Southworth of Leyden, complete with lots of interesting family history to go along with it. She also tantalizingly informed me that Edward

Southworth's ancestry could be taken back to the nobility of England and to the Emperor Charlemagne, without giving me the precise line of descent. I know not whether she be alive or dead today, but God bless Katherine P. Tinker of Yarmouth, Maine, for lighting a spark of curiosity in the mind of this youngster!

Years passed. One day I remembered Katherine Tinker's letter and I started regular pilgrimages to the local library where I worked out some of the noble and royal descents. With a great sense of accomplishment, I filed the results away. Another passage of years.

Then personal tragedy - a divorce. More years pass. Then one day, my son, about the same age I was when I wrote my letter to the Yarmouth town clerk, got an assignment from one of his teachers - you guessed it! - to construct a family tree. I nonchalantly advised him to have his mother drag out the old tree I had constructed years ago and use it as a starting point for his project. You can surely imagine my disappointment upon being told by my ex that she had thrown everything away!

Well, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it forced me to start again from Katherine Tinker's letter, which, providentially, I had saved. I found that over the years many new and better genealogical sources had been developed and am convinced that by starting anew, I now have a much more accurate and complete database than I otherwise would have.

Genealogy has provided a common interest for my son and I. We both maintain websites relating to our addictive hobby. I monitor the GEN MEDIEVAL mailing list on a daily basis.

This is a good place for my commercial interruption. I maintain my genealogical database at: http://www.gendex.com/users/jast/index.html.

I hope that those of you who become interested in your Southworth medieval roots take the time to browse it.

Well, I've taken a lot more space for my introduction that I had intended, so let's get to the subject.

Kerry has done a super job of gathering the available information concerning the controversy over Edward of Leyden's parentage. It is my personal opinion that if the ancestral line turns out, as the result of future research, to be different from that shown by Kerry's and my databases, it will still result in a descent from the earliest Southworths of Samlesbury Hall and a descent from King Edward I of England - only by a slightly different route. Southworth is just not that common of a name and I feel confident that all of them alive at the time of the Pilgrims had a common heritage emanating from Samlesbury Hall.

If we look at our lineage as a tree, Edward of Leyden is the base, his descendants (us) are the roots, and the generations back from Edward of Leyden to King Edward I form the trunk. From King Edward I sprout the branches. A few lines of gentry work their way, like vines, down from the noble branches to our trunk.

Having traced our lineage to King Edward I, we share a common ancestry with literally millions of other individuals. Scholars over the years have spent careers compiling the intertwined lattice of relationships between the ancestors of King Edward I (more precisely, the ancestors of King Edward III). As the royalty and nobility of medieval Europe intermarried so freely, a descent to the nobility of one nation pretty much guarantees descents from all.

To put things into perspective, let me quote from the eminent genealogist, G. Andrews Moriarity, publisher of "Plantaganet Ancestry": "King Edward III is the latest king from whom a large number of Americans can claim descent. His American posterity numbers in the millions. . . His grandfather, King Edward I. . . Has tens of millions of additional American descendants."

Some serious scholars who are regular contributors to GEN-MEDIEVAL contend that Charlemagne has so many descendants (although, of course, not all the exact lines can be confirmed) that he should be considered a universal common ancestor for all of us who share a European heritage !

Many of the books and websites devoted to medieval genealogy, while reasonably accurate and complete, are little more than lists of names, titles, and dates. Pretty dry! The goal of my website is to merge history and biography with genealogy as much as possible - to put some flesh on the bare bones, if you will. I've only just begun and it will be a lifelong project!

The purpose of my "Medieval Meanderings", which Kerry so graciously allows me to publish on this website, will be the same.

Now that we've laid the foundation, next time we'll take a look at the part some of our ancestors played on the world's stage.

Last revision: 18 September 1997

Questions, comments, suggestions? Please contact me, kerryms@aol.com