Richard III of England - DNA Contribution...

Briuin mac Echdach O'Neill, King of Connaught, half brother of UI Neill is my 45th great uncle.

John Pat, those marker values show how hard it is for them to figure out which piece is key and how far is too far. From what I can see, it still looks like your 425 Null is the key.

Justin, Great! Thanks for checking it out.

Private

here is a great detailed DNA discussion, in reference to the other "related" (made a funny ;-) ) discussion we were having on Fb. <3

Finally...a DNA match for a Neville from this line; of Nevilles
http://www.geni.com/path/Wanda+is+related+to+Sir-Henry-Neville-MP-o...

Matching this surname and Neville including a DNA match on FTDNA
http://www.geni.com/path/Wanda+is+related+to+James-Neville?from=600...

Richard iii of England's Mother is Cecily Neville

Cecily Neville is Sir Henry Neville's 3rd Great Aunt.
http://www.geni.com/path/Sir-Henry-Neville-MP+is+related+to+Cecily-...

Does anyone know if if Richard III's body had DNA matching any Neville's?

I didn't put this together before but Cecily Neville, Richard III's Mother is my 16th Grandfather's Sister through my Grandmother's line:

http://www.geni.com/path/Wanda+is+related+to+Edward-Neville-3rd-Bar...
AND
Another Neville Sibling of the same generation Eleanor (Neville) Percy 16th Grandmother married my 16th Grandfather Henry Percy 2nd Earl of Northumberland through my Father's side of the family.

I think this makes another small pedigree collapse in the Neville family with two of Cecily Neville's Siblings being exactly 16th Grandparent's collapsing at 17th Great Grandparent's who are Ralph de Neville and Joan Beaufort with Joan's Father being John of Gaunt an 18th Grandfather 2x as well.

I wonder if James Neville of Virginia has living Male Neville descendants living today?

Wanda, the only answer to that is "needs more research".

(There's another James Neville over on the Eastern Shore, but he's probably not a relative.)

James Neville the mariner seems to be a fizzle-out - he may or may not have had children, and was no longer to be found in Virginia by the end of 1684. Beyond that there's a lot of wild guesses and little if any evidence.

And unfortunately I just found evidence that the connection to Sir Henry Neville, MP (1588-1629) is BOGUS.

Sir Henry had four sons, but *two of them died before 1629*. The survivors were Richard (1615-1676), eldest son and heir, also an MP in the 1670s, and Henry (1620–1694), politician and author.

No John.

Thank you Maven, I will research it further. :)
The Virginia James Neville is related two different way by geni and matches by DNA/Surname on FTDNA.
One direction is by following Jame's straight Neville line and the other way follows another of his Neville Ancestors' ending up with the Smith's who in turn Marry Bryans which descends back down then goes back up a couple more directions ending back up at Neville's again. Draw a W and you kind of get the idea. lol

Hi Maven, Is this the "No John" Neville you are referring to? Apparently he was kidnapped?

Maven is the Bogus Henry Neville you are referring to?
Sir Henry Neville, Kt., MP, of Billingbere

Which John Neville doesn't exist? The Kidnapped Jr. or his Grandfather John Neville?
Gen. John Fort Neville

Wanda,

I know people do (and did) get kidnapped, but I think this story is - at least - exaggerated. Remember that the "kidnapping" story first gets told in about 1800 by a great-grandson (or something).

What is much more likely to be the truth is that a young man or boy wandering around (remember, these were very turbulent times in England) was recruited under false pretences to go to Virginia. There were rings of people who did this, promising a nice life; the young people would not realise that an "indentured servants" in Virginia meant effective slavery for (I think) seven years. The legal situation in England for apprentices was after all not that different: you couldn't leave an apprenticeship at will, and your master had the right to beat you, etc. The difference was that your master did not have an economic incentive to whip you into more efforts until you died of exhaustion. In Virginia, where most of the indentured servants ended up on tobacco plantations which required a lot of labour but gave huge returns, they did. In fact they had a bigger economic incentive to work their "servants" to death than they did after black (permanent) slavery replaced this system: if you oly "owned" someone for seven years, you would make sure that you got all you could out of him, even if he died before the seven years were up and he had to be let free. If you bought a black slave aged 15 you might get 50 0r 60 years of work out of him, which gave you an economic incentive to keep him alive, however nasty and brutal you might be.

The "indentured servants" were often kept in confined conditions like prisons until their ships sailed, and of course their recruiters tried to keep them in ignorance of what awaited them. But they had signed papers.

If they had truly been "kidnapped" from someone who could pay a ransom, the recruiters would probably have gone for the ransom. An indentured servant might not even survive the voyage to Virginia (or even the period of semi-captivity while they waited for a ship to take them over). So much better to take even a relatively small amount of money from the parents rather than try for an uncertain amount of money later. And, of course, if the parents were gentry the ransom would not be small.

Real kidnappings in the 1660s included dogs (King Charles Cavalier Spaniels) but this was for ransom. Even in the 1700s security was what we might consider rather lax. King George II (I think - or was it his father) was once held up in the grounds of what is now Buckingham Palace and robbed of his watch. He agreed with the robber to meet him the next day, in the same place, and pay to get his watch back. (And he kept his word).

Genealogy without economics hardly exists until nearly 1900.....

Mark

We're talking about the sons of this man: Sir Henry Neville, Kt., MP

Son Henry the author Henry Neville was missing, probably because he had no children. I just added him, his wife, and his wife's father.

There is no surviving record of any other sons outliving Sir Henry MP (d. 1629).

Interesting article about identifying the Bourbon DNA.

Are you descended from the kings of France and Spain?
http://www.igenea.com/en/bourbons

"The profile of the French kings is very rare. So far, there have been no close matches in the known databases. Consequently, a match with this profile is a very strong indication of descending from the Capetian Dynasty."

It's probably, though not yet certainly, the haplotype of the Bourbon dynasty (Henri IV on down).

The only questionable factor here is the possible paternity of Louis XIV *and* his brother Philippe - Louis XIII did not like his wife, Anne of Austria (he wasn't much on women in general, but men...?), and required a great deal of persuasion to get back together with her long enough for the two boys to appear. A direct test of his Y-DNA, if obtainable, should settle this issue permanently.

Henri IV was something like 9th cousin to the last Valois king (the French only allowed paternal-line kings). The possibility of a Non-Paternal Event in that timeframe cannot be disregarded.

The Valois dynasty itself included two sidesteps: Charles VIII to Louis XII (second cousin once removed IIRC) and then Louis XII to Francois I (third cousin).

Strictly speaking, the last of the Capet dynasty was Charles IV (1294-1328), and rather than crown his sister's son Edward III of England (ewww!), the French passed over Edward for Charles' first cousin Philip (VI), who became the first of the Valois. (The much-touted "Salic Law" appears to have been invented, or resurrected, specifically and explicitly to keep Edward off the throne of France.)

Read again ;)

"The common ancestor of all three test persons is Louis XIII., King of France (1601-1643). Given the correspondence [and the rare result], it is safe to assume that this is the profile of all French Kings since Louis XIII."

Dividing the French kings into Capet, Valois, and Bourbon is essentially just a convenience for historians, along the same lines as dividing the later Plantagenets into Yorks and Lancasters. It doesn't say anything about the male line.

Since Louis XIV, undoubtedly.
Since Louis XIII, probably (though direct confirmation would be nice). He only had two sons, Louis (XIV) and Philippe, so there is no independent third line. (If they aren't his sons, Anne of Austria would have had to go to the same sperm donor twice - and he would have had to be someone whose loyalty and discretion were absolute. It's possible, but not terribly likely.)

Thing is, we *can't* be sure of the Capet/Valois haplotype, *because* Henri IV was such a distant relative. (You have to go back 10 generations to find a King of France in his family tree. "Given an average non-paternity rate of 5 percent, the chance of such an event occurring over 10 generations exceeds 40 percent." http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/07/who-s-your-dadd... )

All things considered, the appropriate analogy isn't Plantagenet/Lancaster/York, but Stewart/Hanover - in both cases there was a scramble to find a suitable, although distant, relative who matched a narrow set of requirements. (Religion was an issue in Henri IV's case, too, until he decided "Paris is worth a Mass" and converted to Catholicism.)

I'm not following your reasoning about why the male line is irrelevant to yDNA.

What I'm saying is, we can't be sure that Henri IV's male line of descent from Louis IX ("Saint Louis") is unbroken. It can be *assumed* as a matter of practicality, but if anyone gets hold of some ancient Y-DNA from the Capet or Valois line and it turns out not to match that R1b pattern, that should not be a surprise.

Just consider the Beaufort/Somerset line - one definite mismatch in recent generations, and a fair probability of at least one other pastward of that one. The written record says one thing, the Y-DNA says another.

Agreed. However, for users who don't carry a map of these families in their heads it's important to be clear -- the Valois, Bourbon, Orleans, and other families have a paper trail that makes them male-line Capets.

In relevant part, they are NOT like the Stewarts and Hanovers, who don't share a paternal line, and didn't pretend to.

No matter how many gossipy games we play, we come down to a putative descent. The point of this project is to search further. The men whose yDNA is known belong to a rare type, never yet found outside the family. That's a strong presumptive case that it is accurate back to their common ancestor. Whether it holds up further back remains to be seen.

It all goes back to the succession squabble in 1328 - the French declared that the succession *had* to be male-line-only (to keep the Plantagenets OUT), and then they had to stick to it, no matter how far out they had to reach.

I see what you are saying Maven, kind of :) The Virginia Neville descends from an undocumented or assumed Neville line. Interesting story..
http://www.geni.com/path/James-Neville+is+related+to+John-Neville?f... They don't really seem have him in a nice neat line one way or the other.

My other Neville surname/dna match is for Mary Neville, although both come from the same family when I run the in common with tool the two neville's do not match so one must be wrong or an error. http://www.geni.com/path/Wanda+is+related+to+Mary-Dingley?from=6000...

There's a lot of that kind of mess going around. Sometimes Y-DNA helps to sort it out, and sometimes not.

Justin...new news on Gunn. :) I came across this by accident while researching the Swaney surname. According to this; the original progenitor's of Clan Gunn are in fact the Swan's/Swanson's.

They are also of Clan MacQueen of whom we were also talking about and of relation to the Swaney's farther up the tree. If this is correct then we are not related by the Gunn Henderson branch but more likely through an ancient connection via Sweyn or ClanMacQueen.

12) Swan, Swann, Swanson
This sept name requires special definition and attention. It derives from "son of Sweyn", the probable progenitor of Clan Gunn, Svein Asleifarsson, the "Ultimate Viking". Actually this surname's inclusion as a sept under the Clan Gunn is unusual. If Mark Rugg Gunn is correct, that Svein (or Sweyn) is the parent line of the clan, then it is highly unusual that the Swans and Swansons have almost no history with the rest of the clan.

Ref: http://skyelander.orgfree.com/gunnsept.html

M.R. Gunn writes (pp. 257-259):
"From the time of Sweyn (the Viking pirate of Freswick), and his immediate descendants we hear little of them until the 17th century. " He explains this as the result of the Swansons going into farming where for over 500 years, "they increased and multiplied that numbers made them poorer by division of patrimonies." Interestingly there is no mention of the Swans or Swansons in the "Acts of Parliament of Scotland".

We are told that the Clan Gunn then, takes its name from Sweyn's grandson, Gunni (Andresson?) - we have no written proof of Gunni's surname if indeed he had one. Mark Rugg Gunn states that the Swans remained more Norse than their Gunn relatives, and that whilst the Norse influence was in decline in Caithness, they became less and less influential. He also says that when Scotland gained lands of the far North, Orkney and some of the Western Isles back from Norway, this changed the primarily Norse Swans to the level of the native population.

As a historian I'm bound by my craft to question this. Weren't the Gunn's also the "native population?" If the Swans declined, they declined no worse than the Gunns, who were still very Norse themselves. It makes little sense that if indeed the Swans are the parent line, but had absolutely no history in common with the Gunn's until the late 17th century; the Swans should be their own separate clan.

Your lineage or descent isn't the only contingent in what makes a clan a clan. It is only a factor. Many Western clans have related progenitors (or the same progenitor) that evolved into separate and distinct, but related clans. Let me give some examples to make this clearer.

The sons of Somerled were Dougall and Ranald. Dougall became Clan MacDougall and Ranald's (Reginald) son Donald became Clan Donald (MacDonald). They shared an identical progenitor, Somerled, but evolved into two distinct clans with separate histories. Another example is the MacLeod's of Harris and the MacLeod's of Lewis whose progenitor was another Viking named Leod. His son Tormod became Siol (race of) Tormod (The MacLeods of Harris) and his other son, Torquil became Siol Torquil (MacLeods of Lewis). The two clans were obviously related but were distinctly different clans sharing a common progenitor. There is some controversy over whether Torquil was Tormod's brother, nephew or grandson, but the point remains the same: here are two examples of two very distinct clans from the same progenitor -- Leod for the Harris and Lewis MacLeods and Somerled for the MacDougalls and MacDonalds.

If the Swans had shared in Clan Gunn's history, there would be little question they would be Gunns. Mark Rugg Gunn goes on to say:

"We first hear of the Swansons in the 17th century at which time the appear to be confined to Thurso. The Wick burgh records of 1660-1712 have not a single Swanson."

There is also a possibility of some Swansons (and Swans one should assume) may be of Graham stock. This is due to the Swans having been loyal retainers of Montrose in 1650 when he made his northern headquarters in Thurso. It is believed he left a number of descendents (he was widowed at the time) in the local offspring of the Swansons.

What he doesn't mention is that Swan and Swanson are also of Clan MacQueen and to that clan it has the same meaning: 'son of Sweyn' or MacSween. The MacQueens claim similar descent to that of Clan Donald and Irish High kings. Like Clan Gunn, MacQueen is Armigerous but without a current chief.

The last of the Graham Swansons, Thomas Swanson, died in Canada in 1882, and maintained the story that the family was Graham by male descent, their ancestress being a Swanson from Thurso.

Getting back to the Gunn Swansons, Mark Rugg Gunn wrote:
"The Swansons played no direct role in Gunn history; their locality of residence and mode of life had long separated them from their kinsman (The Gunns)."

Though it seems clear the Swansons are descendants of Sweyn Asliefarsson, the connection from Sweyn to Gunni is less certain, or cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Gunn admits this although he is convinced of the connection.

Assuming it is true exactly as written: Sweyn begat Andres who begat Gunni, the simple fact that the Swans (the parent line) played no part in Clan Gunn's history (for over 500 years) surely must be taken into account. This means that there was no intermarriage between the Gunns and the Swansons, no common heritage (apart from Sweyn), no common history. What appears to have happened to the Swansons is that they lived overpopulated in poor conditions and of little influence until, at some point in the late 17th century they became a broken clan (or family). It is only then that they become dependents (septs) of the Gunns. To be completely fair to the Swansons then, they should be a clan of their own (Clan Swan) with a common progenitor with the Gunn's in Sweyn, although it is really Gunni that is the 'name-father' of the Gunns, not Sweyn. The Swans and Gunns are therefore really distant cousins.

Like the MacDougalls and MacDonalds; the Harris and Lewis MacLeods; the Swans and Swansons should, logically, be 'Clan Swan' with a separate history from that of Clan Gunn, but as the other examples, having a common progenitor.

As it stands now Swan and Swanson are septs of the Clan Gunn and therefore are included amongst the other members of the Gunns.

Wanda,

For 500 years you hear little of the Swansons? That's about 20 generations. Why think that one Swein out of many was the ancestor?

So far as I can see, most genealogy is about going downhill socially. No doubt you, like me, claim descent from Charlemagne. No-one yet has offered me the post of Holy Roman Emperor, although I am sure that I would do better than the European Commision in this role. Of couse there was also upward sicial mobility, but peasants from the time of Charlemagne and their descendants are not likely to be recorded.

Mark

Mark, there will always be some obscurity we have to work with. Sometimes all we have to work with is a single surname. I feel that is where DNA matching is helpful. For example I did not know that Swaney was a modern version of many different ancient name versions but DNA matches to those versions help me on a journey that tells me history, names changes, geography and stories. That was a copy and paste job btw of the info I found on the Swans. And yes, one single person can make a difference. One single Sweyn can be a progenitor of an entire clan. DNA is like dice. You never know what you are going to get and you never know what will happen from one generation to the next. Any peasant can become a great person. It happens all the time. People just need to believe in their own power and not be afraid to make executive decisions. But mind you....lt can be costly and I'm not talking about money. True, all the royal blood in the world will not gain you a Holy Roman Emperor Post. What people seem to forget is that we are who we are today because of what happened to our more recent ancestors. They were thrown out of their countries, threatened, killed, disenfranchised and so on. Look at the Glencoe Massacre, look at what Cromwell did, the list goes goes on. They had a rule back then that they still follow to this day. The first born male heir inherited everything and everyone else if they were lucky received lesser titles, lands and money. Imagine if you will the growth of the peerage at one time. Sooner or later there would not be enough to go around and hence the younger nobles made a move and a land grab coming to America. It happened all over the world; England, Scotland, Ireland and so on. That brings us to today. A lot of people may find these famous people in their trees and wonder like you "Where's my Holy Roman Emperor Title" or why don't I have a Castle, Crown, Title or money? This is where the reality check come's in. It's fun to read about your Ancestor's and have them in your tree but just because you descend from them gives you no entitlement or monetary reward. The only thing you get Mark...is your blood. The blood they passed down to you. They did great things in their time and you share the same blood so it's really up to you what you do with your life and you will have no easier time of it then anyone else. If you feel their blood in your veins then be all you can be by your own power. Write your own story.
As far as going downhill socially, I'm not sure I follow you. If you mean the loss of titles etc., they have been doing that for quite a while and in case you haven't noticed it's practically disappeared. On the other hand there seems to be a consolidation of all those titles, wealth, land etc. into the hands of few. Cromwell was responsible for that as well. They used religion as an excuse to rob people of their holdings. Kind of like "believe in my religion or I'll take your castle and land because I need it to finance my army kind of an excuse. People get trampled on in these scenarios and that brings us back to the here and now.

It wasn't just the nobles, either - a whole lot of people with nothing to lose jumped at the chance to make something of themselves in the New World. If they couldn't scrape up the money somehow themselves, they sold themselves into indenture for the passage money and then had to work it off. For just once instance, a fellow named William Kendall did that, and managed to acquire enough land and money to become a major mover and shaker in Northampton County, VA. (Big fish in a small pool, maybe, but he had been nobody and made himself Somebody.)

Sometimes their descendants made up fairy tales about how their immigrant ancestors were "disinherited nobility" yada yada yada.

Wanda, I don't believe that the Gunns are descended from the Swansons. I've made a particularly detailed study of the Gunns. It's clear that there has been a lot of confusion. Mark Rugg Gunn is fighting a rearguard action, I think, to preserve as much as he can from the traditional stories despite the mounting evidence that it was all the result of a major confusion among the leading players.

The Gunn chiefs are descended from George Gunn ("Crowner Gunn"), who lived in the (James), who lived in the 14th century. There is direct proof about his ancestry, but no real reason to doubt he belonged to the family of Gunns who built Castle Gunn. So, he has a sort of shadowy descent, with a lot of outright guesses, from a James de Gunn, who supported Robert the Bruce in the 13th century. The Gunns seem to have been the leading family in Caithness, but no known Norse or Orkeney connections.

Sometime around the 15th or 16th century, family historians suggested that the origin of the surname Gunn might be from the Norse name Gunni. One of the problems is they ignored the primary evidence that the name was originally "de Gunn", which means that Gunn was a place name, not a personal name. If Gunn had been from the personal name of an ancestor, the descendants should have been Gunnison (Norse) or MacGunn (Gaelic). Instead, they probably took their name from Gunn Castle rather than Gunn Castle taking its name from them.

Once they had the idea that they might have an ancestor named Gunni, they settled on a particular Gunni, and from there it was just a short hop to claiming descent from Sweyn Asleifsson.

What seems to have happened is that the Swansons, who really might be descendants of Sweyn Asleifsson, came to believe they were part of the Gunns because the Gunns started claiming Sweyn as an ancestor.

But it also might be that the Swansons are descended from a different, unknown Sweyn. One of the problems is that Sweyn Asleifson's provable descendants went to Norway, where they were prominent, got a bit too involved in politics, were killed in battles, and the family seems to have died out. No one today can prove a descent from Sweyn Asleifson.

My family is still close enough to our Swedish roots that Sven does not seem like an outlandish name. The Norse name Svein and the English name Sweyn are just variants. The Gaelic name Suibhne has a different origin.

There must have been thousands of Svens, Sveins, Sweyns, and Suibhnes who gave their names to different families. The MacSwans on Skye and the MacQueens who claim descent from them have a different origin than the Swansons in Caithness, both of them have a different origin than the McSweeneys, and even the McSweeneys seem to have had several different origins from different men named Suibhne. Any of those names can turn into Swan, Swanney, or any of the many variants.

The yDNA shows how scattered the different families really are. There is no single Swan family. It is especially complicated in Scottish families because real surnames came late to many parts of Scotland, and the clan chiefs often pressed their tenants to adopt the clan name as a permanent surname.

When I hear about different families with any of these related names I put them in separate boxes, just as I would with different Jones or Smith families, until someone comes up with real proof that they're the same.