I had a life changing experience a few weeks ago. I discovered I am not only descendant from a long line of peasants, convicted felons, dirt farmers and other assorted riff-raff - I'm a blue blood too. How do I know this? I found it on the Internet...so it must be true. In a post I wrote last week, I discussed how I've neglected most of the maternal lines in my family. In an effort to solve that problem, I thought I'd start working on my 8th great grandmother Mehitable Spencer (b. around 1640, d. 1691) who was the wife of Daniel Cone - the subject of another earlier post of mine. I also chose her because I love the name "Mehitable"...not quite sure how to pronounce it, but it's a cool name that unfortunately never caught on. I plugged her name into Google and there were a surprising number of hits with similar information some citing sources/documentation. One in particular didn't cite much of anything, but as I read through it I found information I liked so... I decided this would be the truth for me because it was so cool. Stay with me and I will prove my blue blood status.
The hit on Google I clicked was a link to a RootsWeb World Connect GEDCOM uploaded by someone. It had some basic information on Mehitable, but I noticed there was a link to her father who was born in 1614. I clicked on it and there was another link to his father...I kept clicking and the paternal line of Mehitable continued going back in time. After I clicked 7 times I came to Thomas Spencer (b. around 1428) and was startled to see the truth laid out in the comments section of this record. It says "Ancestor of ours in common with George Washington"...American blood isn't much bluer than that...but it gets better!
I clicked one more time and came to the record of Henry Spencer (b. around 1401) and hit a gold mine. My new found blue blood rushed to my head at the names I saw...in addition to George Washington, this record said "Ancestor of ours in common with George W. Bush, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, [AND...]Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales."
I was so excited I wanted to tell my wife to let her know how well she married, but I kept forgetting about it. I finally remembered during a commercial on a TV show we were watching, and she just groaned when I said George W. Bush. My kids knew the names of Bush and Washington, but asked "who are those other people?" They don't understand how important this is now, but someday they will...
Now I know there will be those of you reading this who will try to muddy the waters (and burst my bubble) by asking about sources, documentation, and all of that other silly stuff. You will warn me about how inaccurate these kind of family trees are floating around on the internet...but I will have none of it! This link had information I liked and I'm sticking to it!
