Boy, did I have fun last night! I hit it big! (I do need to remember that all of my information is coming from other peoples research, so I have to take it all with a grain of salt.) That said, woohoo!
Yesterday I started to track some of the branches that shoot off of the Hyde branch. In Ancestry.com, when you add a person to your tree, it automatically searches for any bits of information about them (the site calls them "hints"). These hints could be historical documents like federal census, or it could be an entry on another public family tree held on the site. These other trees are where I've gotten a lot of my information. The good thing is that there are about 8 trees with the same information, so we are all either correct in our assumptions, or we are all reporting the same invalid information.
All of that said, yesterday I hit the mother load. In 1658, John Calkins and Sarah Royce were married. John and Sarah were the parents of Elizabeth Calkins, who married Samuel Hyde in 1690. I decided to track the Royce line. I was able to take it back to Llywarch ap Rhirid, who was born in 927 in Wales. I never knew that there was Welsh on the Hyde side, and it is a VERY interesting line to say the least. I've only looked into 2 of the descendants, but here is what I've learned so far.
1. In old Welsh, ap means son and verch means daughter. These were used when naming someone. The set up of the name was usually (given name)(relationship)(relative)
2. I've found 2 knights in the line - Sir Rhys ap Thomas, who was reported to have killed King Richard III, ending the War of the Roses (he was knighted by Henry 3 days later), and his grandson, Rhys ap Gruffydd, falsely accused of treason and beheaded by Henry VIII.
3. There are 2 castles associated with the Rhys family - Dinefwr Castle and Carew Castle. Both are still standing today.
(Carew Castle, Wales)
(tomb of Sir Ryhs ap Thomas)
(Sir Rhys ap Thomas - born 1449, Cantref, Carmarthenshire, Wales died 1525, Friary, Carmarthenshire, Wales )
1 comment:
My mother and I have just had that same "woohoo" moment. Like you, our research primarily accomplished by others, have led us to the Rhys ap Gruffydd tree. We are new to researching ancestery and are not sure how much to take as absolute fact. Nonetheless, it is exciting and we are looking forward to more "discoveries".
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