Descent from Charlemagne Project

The colonial ancestor I mentioned before, Olive Welby, who is the daughter of parents who were both members of the English gentry in the 17th century before emigrating to the colonies, creates links to many more famous and documented ancestors.  Thanks to the system then in place in England for titles and estates to be inherited by the oldest male heir of the holder, it was important to have good records of the birth of nobility and for genealogists like me who happen to find an ancestor like Olive Welby, records going back hundreds of years still exist and have been preserved because of this system and the incredible work of professional genealogists/researchers/authors like Douglas Richardson and Gary Boyd Roberts.  More on the wonderful work of Douglas Richardson and others in a later post.

The problem with sharing this with family members is knowing what, if anything, if known about our shared ancestry is interesting to each family member.  For example, my brother Andy is in the military and I suspected that he might be interested in knowing more about ancestors who were also warriors of one type or another.  NB:  For the record my brother is a very nice and peaceful sort of guy who has and continued to serve his country with honor and distinction.

Thus, I wanted to find a historical subject of the thousands known and documented to be ancestors of Andy to use as the subject for a Christmas gift project.  After speaking with him, he seemed pleased to learn that Olive Welby was a descendant through dozens of lines to the Emperor Charlemagne.  He explained that he remembered studying Charlemagne in high school and he stuck out as one of history's characters he found most interesting.

So, I put together the following display for my brother (who I hope doesn't see this before I give it to him).  As you can sort of see, the left side contains a sketch and picture of Charlemagne (as imagined by Abrecht Durer).  The bio is basic info from wiki and other sources.  The right side is a line of descent from Charlemagne to my brother Andy, the emperor's 42nd great grandson.

In fact, Charlemagne is the direct ancestor of nearly everyone of European descent.  If one figures 40 generations back to Charlemagne (one generation every 30 years) that means that we all should have over one trillion 37th great grandparents of that 40th generation.  Of course, that is more people than have ever lived probably and certainly more than the entire population of the earth at that time.  The thing is that many of those (most of them perhaps) are your 37th great grandparents several times over just as Charlemagne is to me through several known lines.  Statistically then, almost everyone with European ancestry is a descendant of Charlemagne and the only interesting or noteworthy thing I can claim is that I know how I'm related to him in a few of the probably thousands of different lines.  (Charlemagne got us off on a good start by having 20 children!).  Anyway, I chose the line I did among many possibilities for Andy's chart because among that line of descent are a  number of additional interesting individuals including ten other kings such as William the Conqueror.

Let me know what you think.