How to prove ancestry is correct?

[mummybongo]

I've become very interested in tracing my family tree over the last year and have been using a combination of Ancestry.com and Find my Past to do so.
I made a very interesting discovery recently, which if correct means that I can trace my mums family right the way back to William the Conqueror
But it very much depends on whether one particular relationship I found from the 1700s is correct or not.
The research I've done does indicate it's correct - from looking at various websites that focus on these families in question. But I don't want to tell the rest of my family our exciting news without getting it checked for accuracy first.
Would a professional genealogist help with this?

Is the exciting news that you can list all your ancestors by names/relationships/marriage, or that you are descendants of WTC? because I thought everyone was linked to WTC.

Everyone is linked to WTC but most of us cannot trace it. So the really exciting thing in genealogy is when you can trace a line back to an ancestor who has traceable links to WTC or someone whose line is well-known. This is what happened with Danny Dyer for example - they traded him back a certain way and the rest of the work was already done. The thrilling part wasn’t that he had noble antecedents, but that the line back to them could be traced.

I don’t know the answer OP, but it seems likely.

If you are in England of English descent you can generally go back through official and Church Registers to 1558 (Elizabeth I) and perhaps 1538 (Henry VIII) who both mandated the keeping of Parish Registers. Baptisms, marriages and burials are recorded with varying levels of supporting contextual information. You might not be able to on some lines due to missing documents or uncertainty over who was who in a parish due to duplicate names alive at the same time or people moving out of area. However, you'll probably get back to one of these early registers on one line if you research thoroughly and cross reference against other documentation like Court records.

So what happens when you cross the 'alive at 1538 / 1558' threshold? You lose the continuity in tracing the common and middling people because there are hardly any records for them that can be put together to create a genealogy.

Not so with the significant landowners. Your aristocratic families keep pedigrees (which can sometimes be erroneous and often like to go back way beyond WTC et al to mythical Kings). However, they are generally pretty good and due to intermarriages can be cross referenced between families. Add in records for wills, land transfers etc. and Church office holders, who are often the other non-inheriting sons, and you can go back from 1558/38 to 1066-ish. They keep the pedigrees because they need to prove legitimate title to inherited lands, noble titles, rights and occasionally offices.

Therefore, if you can pass through the 'alive at 1538/58' barrier then you enter records for the elite. Guess what these generally Norman and allied types do? They inter-marry. So pass the barrier and after a couple of centuries in this 500 year or so zone you will find massively shared heritage. Therefore being descended from WTC or others shown to hold land in the Domesday Book of 1084 is not surprising.

It's an elite though. Early on there were marriages with the same French speaking Scandinavian-French hybrid ethnicity in Normandy and around, and of course the royals marry with other royal families in Europe in a wider elite. There's a discontinuity with the English pre 1066 because William's power grab is largely a decapitation and replacement of the English elite by Normans, Bretons and Flemings. If you have 1066-1084 Norman ancestry you won't get much further than a father and perhaps a grandfather at best (unless you are William and you can go back further).

Yes the exciting news would be that I can trace the line back with names of ancestors showing how I got there. I read recently that over 6 million people are direct ancestors of WTC so guess it's not particularly unusual, just that it would be great to prove it.

My theory is that you can't. The fact is that you're your mummy's baby, you're your daddy's maybe. If you think about that back generations, unless it's DNA, it's cobblers. Or only the mothers' line.

Thanks @MMBaranova that's very interesting. I think that's what's happened in my case - once I reached the 1700s I found a particular family of land-owners who appeared to have several mayors, lords and eventually 'Sirs' who had been knighted by Kings of the time. As a pp says all the work then had been done for me as it was just a case of tracing back through the names which had already been researched (and presumably proven - as far as it can be)

I see. Yes, that is much more exciting.
I always think it’s really interesting if there are portraits, I’d be fascinated to see what my ancestors actually looked like.

This is very true. I can trace my family tree to WTC and beyond on my dads side. Traced it back as far as a certain Lord Percy (of the Alnwick castle Percys) by marriage certificates and wedding certificates, etc which I believe to be genuine. Lots of cross checking. After getting as far back as the Percys it was quite quick going as one of my ancestors who married a Percy was a sister of Henry Viii.

but it’s very true that who you think your ancestor is may not be your ancestor as there were lots of men bringing up children who weren’t there’s. In fact I found that my mum’s dad wasn’t her dad. So unlikely that in all the hundreds of years going back to WTC that my dad’s side were better behaved than my maternal grandmother.

Very true, and yes unless proven by DNA it's impossible to say that it's completely accurate. I guess I'm just looking for confirmation that I've done my research correctly based on the information that's out there.

I traced mine back to a relative who married someone in the Wingfield family in the 1700s and then found a whole genealogy website dedicated to that family with hundreds of current members around the world. From there it was easy to go back as it was already done.
It would be great to be able to chart it visually, and then do further research on each of the members.

You wrote "....... better behaved than my maternal grandmother." @HaveYouHeardOfARoadAtlas

She may have had no choice in your mother's conception.

You would look at original sources in the archives. Therefore a trip to the relevant county archive/Record Office to plough through manorial records, estate records, Parish registers etc.

That's great you can trace it @HaveYouHeardOfARoadAtlas but have you got it quite right? None of Henry VIII's sisters married a Percy.

I’d have to go back and check. It might not be Henry viiis sister, it’s ages since I did the family tree so I’m probably remembering it wrong but an ancestor of mine definitely married a Percy and in my mind it was a relation of some royal who married the Percy.

You say you are using ancestry and other websites but have you actually taken a DNA test ?
That way you will find out of you have shared ancestry with others .

@Supercat100 I’ve double checked where I’ve got confused. So I’m related to the Percys and further up the family tree it was a daughter of Henry 3rd who married the 3rd baron Percy. So that makes Henry 3rd a relative of mine.

Mary of Lancaster was Henry III's granddaughter, not daughter (sorry for being a pedantic medievalist). Very cool you can trace it back. Not many people can even though most of us are descended from Henry.

@mummybongo When you say you've traced your tree back to the 1700's, which information have you been using?

Are they the official records such as parish registers, wills, census records and birth/marriage/death certificates, or are you using information compiled by other researchers?

sorry for being a pedantic medievalist

There are worse things to be pedantic about!

As far as possible back to the 1700s I've checked official registers rather than just assuming others' research is correct. I'm busy re-checking it at the moment as there are one or two things I'm not 100% sure of.
Anything earlier than that I have used information that others have researched as with so many descendants I'm assuming it to be correct - although i appreciate there will be anomalies and assumptions.

I read somewhere that William 1 has 200 million descendants! I have titled ancestors quite recently so it’s easier to trace back. Once you find connections to the Norman diaspora you find you are related to pretty much everyone.

What I have found useful in tracing less well known ancestors is local history sites. If your ancestors lived in a particular house or area, there are often websites or material produced by local history societies.

I would be wary of Ancestry family trees they are often completely wrong.

The William figure sounds about right. Apparently everyone of European heritage is descended from Charlemagne, which is brilliant!

Yes I can trace my ancestry to Charlemagne.

There are some lines that go back further but I think those are largely fictitious.

Two things genealogy has emphasised to me; one is that the human race is very closely related to each other and secondly that you are dead a very long time!

Sounds like you are doing all the right things then. I was once contacted by somebody on GenesReunited who at first appeared to have a family tree link, so we both shared our research with each other. I then independently discovered that their supposedly mututal ancestor was not the same 'Mary Carter' as my 'Mary Carter', which meant that we weren't connected after all. By which time, they had uploaded bits of my tree connected to theirs. I did contact them to say what I'd found, but they ignored me. In future, anyone else researching the same lot could end up perpetuating the error.

<name changed to protect the innocent!>

I am not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question but could parents call their children any surname? found this and confused why the children are called Smith. I think the father's parents were not married and mabe he wanted the children named after his biological dad ?