Greg & Tess

Spud & Camper

© Copyright 2012 www.bobog.org All rights reserved

Last Updated April 15, 2012

The Beginning

In December, 1999 my first cousin, once removed, published Teesdale Heritage - A Family History of The Harrisons. Ian lives in England and we share Swainston Harrison (1860-1925) and his wife Lily Painter Pritchett (1867-1936) as our common ancestors. Swainston and Lily were my great grandparents and Ian's grandparents.

Ian's remarkable work spanned almost three centuries and more than fills a two inch binder. It contains accounts of the everyday lives of one line of my ancestors as they lived long ago and far away from here. His work started me down this path with no end - researching the rest of my family tree.

The Genealogy Hobby

There are 6,298 people listed in the Harrison tree and 380 in the Nartatez tree as of March, 2012. To translate the raw data into something you can read without a genealogy program, I use a program called GED4WEB. It does a good job of presenting much of the data I have collected over the past 10 years of on and off research.

The on-line tools available to researchers today are remarkable with additional resources appearing every day. I have copies of hundreds of old documents including census records from as far back as the 1841 English census, old books published in the same era, photographs, paintings, maps and drawings that are centuries old.

Like all good hobbies, genealogy research truly can never be finished. Could you ever collect every coin or stamp? Every earlier generation contains twice as many ancestors as the one after it. We all have 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and so on. In 13 generations (born in the 1500s) you are looking for 16,382 direct ancestors, plus tens of thousands of their siblings who are your uncles, aunts and cousins! Of course each of them may have had multiple children themselves adding tens of thousands more cousins. Paper charts just won't cut it.

There are several good genealogy computer programs out there; you can find a link to the best free one on the links page. I use Family Tree Maker 2012, a commercial program from Ancestry.

My Ancestors

So, who were my ancestors? Mostly they were ordinary folks like most of us today. Many of the jobs or trades they performed no longer exist - there are no feodaries, alchemists or silk crape makers today. Others had jobs we still see today - farmers, carpenters, and merchants. There weren't many black sheep. A few had troubles such as unwed motherhood, financial disaster or an excessive fondness for alcohol but happily, I found no axe murders or the like.

My roots are in England and Scotland although the farther back I go, the more countries are involved.

I have created some pages here with stories about a few of the more interesting folks in my tree. One involves the history of St Andrews golf course in Scotland, where the game originated. The second is about my connection to the famous ship Titanic. In the next update I will add pages about Saints - yup, real Saints with miracles, halos, feast days and so on. I know, hard to believe I’m even distantly related to a Saint! Another page will cover military deaths and still another will touch on the family involvement in the conquest of San Juan, Puerto Rico by pirates.

The earliest somewhat reliable information I have on my father's side goes back over 1,000 years! I even found Kings, Queens and other members of European Royalty. My connection to them is very long ago - in the 1300s. A Royal connection is a good thing for a genealogy hobbyist because it means there is a wealth of information available. There were almost no records kept about individual commoners before the year 1500 or so and no inclusive information until the mid 1800s when the first census was done.

Because the rules of royal succession are clear, it was vitally important that all members of the Peerage (Royals, Nobles, and so on) knew where they fit in their family tree. As far as I know, this is the only reasonably well documented group of people from so long ago.

Going back 24 generations through Harrison to Potts, Beevor, Branthwayt, Berney, Appleton, Fulyard, Andrews, Stratton, Luttrell, de Courtenay, de Bohun we finally come to Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet who lived from 1282 until 1316. Lady Elizabeth was one of the 12 daughters of Edward I (Longshanks), King of England. Once a connection to any Royal is established, there is a connection to pretty much all of them through blood or marriage because Royals almost always married other European Royals.

Given that many royals produced large numbers of children who in turn did the same, I estimated 10 - 15% of all people with European ancestry share a similar connection. My cousin Ian, mentioned above, sent me a book by respected historian Ian Mortimer. The book is about Edward III, King of England. In it, Mortimer calculates that between 80% and 99% of all people born to parents of English ancestry are descended from him!  Edward III was born in 1312 and died in 1377 and Mortimer calls him the Father of the English Nation. His father's sister (his aunt) was Elizabeth Plantagenet, my 21 x gt. Grandmother. It obviously isn’t a big deal to have a Royal connection in the family tree.

Tess’ Ancestors

Tess’ roots are in the Philippines and this makes finding records that predate World War II very difficult. In addition to the war, severe weather and earthquakes are common there usually resulting in official and church written records being destroyed. Family Bibles and oral histories have been my best sources. I have been able to find Tess’ great grandfather; Candido Nartatez who lived from about 1841 until 1926, married Juana Davalos around 1855 (pretty young) and had 6 surviving children.

You can see the details by clicking on the Nartatez tree at the top of this page.

The Harrison family tree - or at least the 6,298 people that I know about so far. Please let me know if you want anything removed from the on-line version.

The Nartatez family tree - only 380 names so far. Most records before 1900 have been lost due to war, floods and fires.