You all know I'm a genealogy geek and a British History geek and I know this does not interest many of you and that's okay. I don't get it, but it's okay. All the same, here's a little slice of family history for my kids.
This is Viantha Blair Taylor.
She was very proud of her flower garden. She was my father's mother's mother, which makes her your great great grandmother, and I met her on the visit when this picture was taken. I was three. There's a picture of me from that visit, also, but it's not available right this minute. Maybe later.
Anyway, apparently the Blairs are from Scotland and it seems they have a pretty incredible lineage. While working on them I kept noticing that the same death date appeared over and over, 9 September 1513. The Battle of Flodden. Rather a quick battle, all over in a few hours. I decided to comb through my records and see just how many of our Scots died in that short time.
(http://www.englandsnortheast.co.uk/Flodden.html)
The Battle of Flodden Field was a decisive victory for the English. For the Scots it had been a disaster, with many of the most important members of Scottish society killed or slain in the conflict. The Scottish dead included twelve earls, fifteen lords, many clan chiefs, an archbishop and above all King James himself. It is said that every great family in Scotland mourned the loss of someone at the Battle of Flodden. The dead were remembered in the famous Scottish pipe tune The Flowers of the Forest;
We'll here nae mair lilting at our ewe milking,
Women and bairns are heartless and wae,
Sighing and moaning on a ilka green loaning,
The flowers of the forest are a wede away.
*****************************************************
These are our grandfathers who died that afternoon, following their King into battle.
John (Semphill) Samples (49)
Robert Colville (20)
Henry Sinclair (44)
Alexander Hamilton (38)
David Kennedy 1st Earl of Cassils (41)
Adam Hepburn 2nd Earl of Bothwell (21)
Matthew Stewart 2nd Earl of Lennox (41) (we're descended from him three times, through daughters Catherine and Margaret and son John)
William Johnston (53)
Gilbert Hay (53)
Sir John Hay, 2nd Lord Hay of Yester (43)
Sir John Somerville of Cambusnethan (50)
William Rollo (59) and his son:
Robert Rollo (34)
William Graham (64) 1st Earl of Montrose; led part of the Scottish vanguard; father-in-law of Robert Rollo
George Seton, 3rd Lord Seton (32)
William Borthwick, 4th Lord of Borthwick (54)
William Ruthven (35)
oh, and King James IV of Scotland (40)
(direct line twice, by daughters of two different mistresses: Margaret Drummond and Marion Boyd))
And if you go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flodden_Field
and look under Commanders over on the right, on the English side, you'll see two *Thomas Howards* (they're father and son) and a Thomas Dacre. They're all your grandfathers, too, but upline of my father's father. The older Thomas Howard was the grandfather of two of Henry VIII's wives, the two who were beheaded, actually: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The other Thomas, obviously, was their uncle, and you saw "him" if you watched The Tudors. Edmund Howard was Catherine's father, so he's sort of an uncle or a cousin several dozen times removed.
I thought that was worth passing along ...
Oh, and we scored our milk! :o) (see previous post)
2 comments:
I think all of this is awesome..but Orion is a jerk and says that far back, just about everyone comes from the same families lol. I tell him not to rain on my parade. And then I punch him in the face.
That last part is a lie. I got carried away!
Well, yes and no. I do think that if everybody were able to chase *all* their lines back 300 or 400 years they would find *someone* they've heard of. Probably several someones. We got lucky with a couple of lines.
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