Somewhere in this collection are some
SKINNER and MONKTON pages, and if you can hook into them at some point, you
have yourself a “Gateway” ancestor.
There is also one said to be in the PAYNTER line - see "Back To Rollo The Viking".
There is also one said to be in the PAYNTER line - see "Back To Rollo The Viking".
< >
Most of our ancestors were labourers,
shopkeepers, miners, etc and their provable lineage tends to fizzle out in the
mid 1700s, if you’re lucky, being dependent on the church records of baptism
and marriage.
However, a “Gateway” ancestor is one of
your predecessors who just happens to come down from the landed gentry of Europe,
usually the daughters of the daughters of these “Named” families, or the lesser
sons of the lesser sons, who don’t inherit, sometimes don’t “marry well”, and
only carry down their family name into otherwise total obscurity.
But, once you hook up to one of these, you
find you can trace a lineage back to just about every significant family of
Europe, some surprisingly old, as they tended to keep significant records to
prove their legitimacy in name and estate tenure. And they tended to only marry
amongst their “own kind”, so once you have one, you will probably have the lot.
Bearing in mind that someone only 8
generations back is a little less than a one-five-hundredth part of you, and as
William The Conqueror of 1066 fame is about 40 generations back, this
connection is damn thin and fairly much just represents a bit of dinner party
bragging rights.
But, that journey back into history can be
quite fascinating, as the following shows...
GEORGE SKINNER - born 1838 in Tunbridge
Wells in Kent (father a hard-working mason who was a son of a hard-working
mason...), emigrated to Australia in 1856, married Jean Wilson Brown from
Scotland in Braidwood NSW. But George’s mother was a Sarah MONKTON, and Sarah
is a “Gateway” ancestor.
Sarah comes down from a clear paternal
line of many Monktons of Kent and Yorkshire, who (along with some of their
wives) get progressively more notable as they go back, until we arrive at a
Christopher Monckton who was born in Yorkshire c.1517, and his mother was an
ASKE, one of the daughters of a Sir Robert Aske, and Aske was one of the big
family names of England at the time.
From that point the connections go back in
all directions, to Cliffords, Constables, Wentworths, Percys, Bulmers,
Nevilles, Mortimers, etc etc, and inevitably to the royal Plantagenets, simply
because they all married each other for hundreds of years! And, not only but
also, to the ruling families of France, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, the Viking
Hordes, and even to Saxon England and Alfred The Great of the Burning Cakes.
Once you have one, you have the lot! Can’t be avoided.