On 1/28/2025 4:02 PM, Roderick Ward wrote:

I have a question about the construction. You note that Joan de
Sodington was the daughter of Richard [NOT Ralph] de Sodington. Volume 1
of Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica (1834) contains an abstract
of an Elizabethan transcription of plea rolls purporting to show that William, Martha, Eustache, and Joan were children of Ralph  [Link: https://archive.org/details/collectaneatopog01londuoft/page/146/
mode/1up ]. Was some kind of error made here?

The abstract is in error. The abstract refers to an assize taken at Southampton, on Friday next after Michaelmas, 31 Edward I [4 October
1303], in order to decide whether John Fitz Reginald and John Le Taillur disseised Richard son of Reginald Le Porter, William de Doverdale and
Eustachia his wife, and Walter Le Blunt and Joan his wife, of their free tenement in Tadley [TNA, JUST 1/1329, m. 10 (AALT image 1508).]. The
assize states that John Fitz Reginald conveyed all of his land with appurtenances in the villa of Tadley to Ralph de Sodinton', rendering
one pair of golden spurs annually for all services, quoting an undated
charter to that effect. It also states that Ralph died seised of the
aforesaid tenements, after which his brother and heir William de
Sudington' (two different spellings in the same record) was seised of
the same lands in his demesne as of fee, holding them for twelve years
before his death, when his coheirs were his three sisters Eustachia
(wife of William de Doverdale), Joan (wife of Walter Le Blunt), and
Martha (mother of Richard Le Porter). The brief abstract of this record appearing in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica 1 (1834): p. 146,
is erroneous in making William and his sisters children of Ralph, as the original record clearly states that they were siblings. This error was
already corrected in the account of the Blount family appearing under
Mountjoy in CP 9: 331, correctly stating that William had been brother
and heir of Ralph, citing the original record rather than the erroneous abstract. There was an earlier Ralph de Sodington, coroner for
Worcestershire, who died in or shortly before 1258, and the younger
Ralph (then underage) was his eventual heir at the time of the 1275 Eyre
of Worcestershire. As also noted in my recent posting on VCH, the
Victoria County History of Worcestershire misreads the record as stating
that the younger Ralph was the son of the older Ralph (whose death was
misdated ca. 1274), adding further confusion.

I first found proof that Richard de Sodington (most likely a son or
younger brother of the elder Ralph de Sodington) was father of the
younger Ralph, William, and their sisters in abstracts from the Patent
Rolls, 8 Edward I [1280], in The Forty-Ninth Annual Report of the Deputy
Keeper of the Public Records, Appendix I, 158, later verified from the
original record at AALT, in which R[obert] Fulks and Giles de Berkeley
were appointed to take an assise of mort d'ancestor which Ralph, son of
Richard de Sodyngton, arraigned against Roger de Mortimer Sr.,
concerning two parts of the manor of Sudington with appurtenances. In
my numerous page-by-page searches of early Assize and Common Pleas
records, I have found independent confirmation of this parentage.

Stewart Baldwin

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On 1/24/2025 7:23 PM, miked wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 21:15:40 +0000, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

As I indicated in my recent posting on the Victoria County History of
Worcestershire, the genealogy of the Blount family (ancestors of the
lords of Mountjoy and the Blounts of Sodington, among other branches)
has been badly butchered on numerous occasions, and the pedigrees of the
family already had several mutually inconsistent versions by the time of
the first visitations.  Many additional errors were introduced in the
longest (to my knowledge) account of the family, Alexander Croke, The
Genealogical History of the Croke Family originally named Le Blount (2
vols., Oxford, 1823), which made the Blounts descendants the early
counts of Guînes in the direct male line.

Is this the only source for the early history of this family and its
origins, because it seems to have become received wisdom all over the
net. That is the origin of the Blount family was 2 brothers Robert
Blundus and william Blundus, supposedly sons of Raoul de Guines and
brother of Count Eustace, who came over  with William the Conqueror.
I've read that Raoul and Eustace are only found in the later history of
the counts of Guines by Lambert of Ardres, and may not have existed
according to recent studies, and the first historical Count of Guines
was Baldwin I [1065-91]. I've not seen Lamberts work, but I dont think
he mentions Robert and William Blundus. But according to the net Robert
le Blount was Williams admiral and was rewarded with 13 manors in
Suffolk and the title Baron of Ixworth while William became Lord of Saxlingham. Robert married Gundreda, youngest dau of Henry, Earl
Ferrers, and had a son and heir, Gilbert le Blount. The only ref I've
seen for what is probably complete nonsense is to Burkes Dormant,
Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London,
1884, p. 54, Blount, Barons Mountjoy and Earl of Devon, but it sounds
like he was copying from Croke.

However according to Domesday website there was a Robert de Blund who
was lord of the manor of Ixworth in 1086 [https://opendomesday.org/place/TL9370/ixworth/], and he seems to appear elsewhere in Domesday under the name Blount or Blunt. I take it that
Blundus is an epithet meaning blond or fair rather than a placename. Apparently Gilbert of Ixworth was the father of another William le
Blount who was born about 1153 as he was said to be 32 in 1185. The
source for this is Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis de xii Comitatibus (Pipe Roll Soc. xxxv) used in Dugdales Baronage of England.
I've not seen either of these.

That there is so much interest on the net about this family, I suspect
is because Lady Blount [dc1418] was the much discussed Sancha de Ayala.
Also i wonder if the popstar james Blunt [Blount] is descended from
them, he always sounded rather posh, and his wife is an aristo.

There are so many individuals with this surname that mass confusion has
existed regarding the identification of individuals, and many of the
problems with the Blount genealogy were present long before Croke wrote
his genealogy, including the probably false claim that the Domesday
Blounts were younger sons of a count of Guînes, and the unjustified
attempts to trace and earlier descent in the visitations than was
justified. However, Croke was responsible for quite a bit of the
nonsense which has later appeared on this family, as he claimed descent
in the direct male line from a Croke who (he claims) was originally a
Blount, then trace with a mostly cut-and paste pedigree which he then
uses to trace his direct male line through the early counts of Guînes
and then through various pseudo-historical Danish kings.

Most "received wisdom" available on the net regarding the genealogy of
medieval families is junk (as well as quite a bit of the more recent
stuff). There are far too many enthusiasts who simply copy stuff that
others are doing and far too few doing genuine original research. If
you see an alleged direct male line going back to a companion of the
Conqueror and then further back through generations of early medieval
nobility, you can be 99.9% sure that it is false. That percentage is a
bit lower (but not by much) if there are intervening female generations
in the claimed genealogy.

Stewart Baldwin

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On Sun, 2 Feb 2025 18:53:08 +0000, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

On 1/24/2025 7:23 PM, miked wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 21:15:40 +0000, Stewart Baldwin wrote:

As I indicated in my recent posting on the Victoria County History of
Worcestershire, the genealogy of the Blount family (ancestors of the
lords of Mountjoy and the Blounts of Sodington, among other branches)
has been badly butchered on numerous occasions, and the pedigrees of the >>> family already had several mutually inconsistent versions by the time of >>> the first visitations.  Many additional errors were introduced in the
longest (to my knowledge) account of the family, Alexander Croke, The
Genealogical History of the Croke Family originally named Le Blount (2
vols., Oxford, 1823), which made the Blounts descendants the early
counts of Guînes in the direct male line.

Is this the only source for the early history of this family and its
origins, because it seems to have become received wisdom all over the
net. That is the origin of the Blount family was 2 brothers Robert
Blundus and william Blundus, supposedly sons of Raoul de Guines and
brother of Count Eustace, who came over  with William the Conqueror.
I've read that Raoul and Eustace are only found in the later history of
the counts of Guines by Lambert of Ardres, and may not have existed
according to recent studies, and the first historical Count of Guines
was Baldwin I [1065-91]. I've not seen Lamberts work, but I dont think
he mentions Robert and William Blundus. But according to the net Robert
le Blount was Williams admiral and was rewarded with 13 manors in
Suffolk and the title Baron of Ixworth while William became Lord of
Saxlingham. Robert married Gundreda, youngest dau of Henry, Earl
Ferrers, and had a son and heir, Gilbert le Blount. The only ref I've
seen for what is probably complete nonsense is to Burkes Dormant,
Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London,
1884, p. 54, Blount, Barons Mountjoy and Earl of Devon, but it sounds
like he was copying from Croke.

However according to Domesday website there was a Robert de Blund who
was lord of the manor of Ixworth in 1086
[https://opendomesday.org/place/TL9370/ixworth/], and he seems to appear
elsewhere in Domesday under the name Blount or Blunt. I take it that
Blundus is an epithet meaning blond or fair rather than a placename.
Apparently Gilbert of Ixworth was the father of another William le
Blount who was born about 1153 as he was said to be 32 in 1185. The
source for this is Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis de xii
Comitatibus (Pipe Roll Soc. xxxv) used in Dugdales Baronage of England.
I've not seen either of these.

That there is so much interest on the net about this family, I suspect
is because Lady Blount [dc1418] was the much discussed Sancha de Ayala.
Also i wonder if the popstar james Blunt [Blount] is descended from
them, he always sounded rather posh, and his wife is an aristo.

There are so many individuals with this surname that mass confusion has existed regarding the identification of individuals, and many of the
problems with the Blount genealogy were present long before Croke wrote
his genealogy, including the probably false claim that the Domesday
Blounts were younger sons of a count of Guînes, and the unjustified
attempts to trace and earlier descent in the visitations than was
justified. However, Croke was responsible for quite a bit of the
nonsense which has later appeared on this family, as he claimed descent
in the direct male line from a Croke who (he claims) was originally a
Blount, then trace with a mostly cut-and paste pedigree which he then
uses to trace his direct male line through the early counts of Guînes
and then through various pseudo-historical Danish kings.

I couldnt find any solid evidence to connect these 2 Blundus brothers
with the early counts of Guines, although thats hardly surprising if
these early counts are also a fiction, whether from Sigfrid the Dane or otherwise. As to Robert being in charge of Williams ships in 1066, I
believe Robert Le Blount/Blund is called _Dux Navagium militarium_ in
the Battle Abbey Roll. His wife is usually called Gundred daughter of
Henry Ferrers [d1101], but i dont think even Croke makes this claim. I
havnt seen any proof that she existed although Henry did have more than
1 daughter. If she did exist she seems rather to have been the wife of
Ralph De Foleschamp lord of Tideswell [d1093]. I havnt seen Keats-Rohan
entry for Robert [Domesday people, p370] so I dont know what she makes
of this.

Do you think the Ixworth Blounts in Suffolk in the 11-12th cent are
connected to the Soddingtons of the 13th? Just a cursory look at this
earlier family suggests that the direct male line died out with William
of Ixworth & Ashfield etc, who was killed at Lewes in 1264. Roberts
brother William Blundus who Croke says was a commander of infantry in
the Williams Army, was 1 of the knights quartered in Ely after Williams conquest of the area in 1071, and later an important landholder in Lincolnshire. He seems to have been forgotten.

mike

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On 1/2/2025 10:35 AM, Denis Beauregard wrote:

On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 17:48:18 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

[..]

My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
1300.

how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

I don't. These tests are typically made from 2 living persons and
confirmed by coherent results and documented lineages for the
genealogical time, and by identified mutations in the Y chromosome
(the average is 1 mutation, called SNP, per 82 years for the test
named Big Y 700).

So in my personal case, my ancestor is born in France in 1642.
He has 4 known sons. I have many lineages from 3 sons with coherent
results (the actual result may defined on the lab or on the test).
I may have found one from the 4th son (but a new tester is needed).

Y DNA can go farther back than that. Mine goes all rge way back to
Somerled, d. about 1164. For him we have only two sons with both living descendants and paper trails. For his 3rd great grandson John, lord of
the Isles, we have 4 sons and about 16 men with both BigYs and paper
trails. Everything agrees with the concurrent or almost concurrent
paper. There are now a few immigrant ancestors to the USA (and New
Zealand) that we have good DNA proof for. For me we have lesser proof,
by DNA, through autosomal DNA matches back to Antrim. But there is no
living male line back through the Earl of Antrim ... the current one is
a Kerr, though a "special creation" of a female line.

I still believe that Lord John is the oldest absolutely proven DNA line
in the world.

Doug McDonald

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On Mon, 17 Feb 2025 21:24:01 +0000, Doug McDonald wrote:

On 1/2/2025 10:35 AM, Denis Beauregard wrote:

On Wed, 1 Jan 2025 17:48:18 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in
soc.genealogy.medieval:

On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:33:53 +0000, Denis Beauregard wrote:

[..]

My own closer DNA cousins before my ancestor left France in 1665
are a group of Armenians, likely descending either some Crusader
or from a companion of Marco Polo or another explorer of that era.
The common ancestor is estimated to be living between 800 and
1300.

how did find the dna of these long dead medieval people?

I don't. These tests are typically made from 2 living persons and
confirmed by coherent results and documented lineages for the
genealogical time, and by identified mutations in the Y chromosome
(the average is 1 mutation, called SNP, per 82 years for the test
named Big Y 700).

So in my personal case, my ancestor is born in France in 1642.
He has 4 known sons. I have many lineages from 3 sons with coherent
results (the actual result may defined on the lab or on the test).
I may have found one from the 4th son (but a new tester is needed).

Y DNA can go farther back than that. Mine goes all rge way back to
Somerled, d. about 1164. For him we have only two sons with both living descendants and paper trails. For his 3rd great grandson John, lord of
the Isles, we have 4 sons and about 16 men with both BigYs and paper
trails. Everything agrees with the concurrent or almost concurrent
paper. There are now a few immigrant ancestors to the USA (and New
Zealand) that we have good DNA proof for. For me we have lesser proof,
by DNA, through autosomal DNA matches back to Antrim. But there is no
living male line back through the Earl of Antrim ... the current one is
a Kerr, though a "special creation" of a female line.

I still believe that Lord John is the oldest absolutely proven DNA line
in the world.

Doug McDonald

You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying
becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the
middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
also be descended from mr X and so on.

mike

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On Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:29:33 +0000, miked <mike@library.net> wrote in soc.genealogy.medieval:

You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying >becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the >middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
also be descended from mr X and so on.

FTDNA has 6 kinds of Y DNA tests with a resolution increasing for each
kind.

Some tests will find the closer relatives in their database. "More
markers" means you need to have more common markers (same values or
small difference). In this group, you can test 12, 25, 37, 67 and 111
markers. 111 will give you a high probably for a common male ancestor
living around year 1400 to 1500.

The 6th kind of test is called Big Y and is very different. It finds
mutations in the whole Y chromosome. When you share more common
mutations, you also share more common ancestry. In the Big Y 700, the
current version, the average is 82 years per mutation. This allows to
estimate when the common ancestor was living, without a papertrail.

In my own case, we have a common series of mutations to the first
immigrant in New France (or the gateway) born 1642. The next remote
cousin was living around year 800-1000, perhaps 1200, but there is
no papertrail. For some New France families, there are 2 immigrants
with a known papertrail to the father of the immigrant, and often
1 or 2 more mutations between the 2 immigrants (each having
descendants from more than 2 sons with a Big Y test), which means
that the ancestor common to both immigrants was born about 100 years
before.

As for noble families, because the papertrail can be more distant,
you can use that papertrail to calibrate how fast the mutations are
occuring. The record is for the Verdun/Haviland family with a
common ancestor born around 1100. It is up to the McDonald to decide
who is the more ancient triangulation !

https://fmg.ac/images/foundations/vol15/JN15-02-X.pdf


Denis

--
Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG)
Les Français d'Amérique du Nord - http://www.francogene.com/gfan/gfan/998/ French in North America before 1722 - http://www.francogene.com/gfna/gfna/998/ Sur cédérom/DVD/USB à 1790 - On CD-ROM/DVD/USB to 1790

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On 2/18/2025 6:29 PM, miked wrote:

You obviously are very enthusiastic about this dna research, but can i
just check if i understand the basis for this. It looks like your saying becos you _know_ that someone alive today is descended from mr X in the middle ages, therefore anyone with a match to that persons Y dna must
also be descended from mr X and so on.

mike

Its a bit more complicated! One also has to prove that all these men
descend from HIM and NOT from his father. Thus, you need a marker for
him, and optionally one for his father, or at least one present in him
and not his father. You need men with paper trails to both men. We've
got tons of men to Lord John. We have some to his father and tons to his grandfather (from whom descend the McAlister chiefs). STRs won't
normally do. In this particular case they are over 99% accurate compared
to the definitive test (see below.)

We have enough for reasonable proof.

Interestingly, the marker for Lord John himself is neither an STR nor
a SNP. Its a 9415 base segmental delete that can only be "properly" seen
in sequences aligned to the T2T reference, not Build 38. We have this
only for me. It can easily be seen in Build 38 by observing
three smaller deletes that are misassigned in 38.
Its called CLD56, i.e. the 56th "SNP" I discovered in the earliest
BigYs (ordered up the day it was announced.) At first FTDNA was making
lots of stupidly bogus assignments, which I found in the BAMs and
figured out. Thus the SNP-style designation.

I estimate that about 43000 men bear CLD56, based on the statistics of
our DNA project.

As to Somerled himself, we have only one man purportedly descendind from
his father, and there is no marker for him. We now do have
several descendants from two of his sons, and a one from a purported
third son. Thus the exactitude is a bit fuzzy and that one man is right,
will remain so forever within BigY ... more complete resu7lts aligned to
T2T might fix that of course.

All this has taken 20 years ... we had a head start, back to 2003,
because Brian Sykes tested I seem to remember 6 men with just 10 STRs.
In 2004 about 30 tests were run with 14 markers by an academic in
Belgium on our behalf.

Doug

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On 2/23/2025 7:34 AM, Robert Goff wrote:

I have been trying to better understand the projected date ranges in
studies that I am a participant. My understanding is that mutations are random, but there may be some genetic predisposition to mutations.
Whoever does the interpreting estimates an average mutation rate of
genes reflected by particular markers that is then compared with the
marker variances to determine an estimated date range for time to most
common paternal ancestor. When you go that far back, the ranges seem to
be substantial as in hundreds of years. I find personally the
projections on more recent relationships past maybe 3rd cousins where we
have good paper trials on both sides are often off, which one would
expect if we were averaging and then estimating from a random mutation
rate.

As to bastardies, we surprisingly have only three in all the 20 or so
paper trails that look either reliable or traditional. These occurred in
the years ~1500, 1985, and 2001, the latter two in the same line.
All were were well known in advance of DNA tests. Of course, nothing can
detect cases involving brothers or nephews.

As to times by DNA, we are a special case because until recently the
best calibration of the Y-DNA rates came from our line. Today
everybody agrees we were right.In many cases in our lines we know the
ages of markers literally to the day they were born.


Doug

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