On the face of it, this week’s challenge (“Closest to your birthday”) was a toughie, and I was digging for material. Thankfully, my family tree software can pull date reports so I could easily see the people in my tree who shared my birthday. There were five, but only one direct ancestor; the rest were siblings of very-far-back great-grandparents, including a set of twins (Hannah and Samuel Curtice) who would be celebrating their 303rd birthdays this year. I checked who was married on my birthday and who died on my birthday – nothing else came to mind. I even checked the birthdays of my sister, my mother, and my father — nothing. To all appearances, it looked like we were the most interesting things to happen on those days.
So I decided to take a look at Stephen Gates — my 9th great-grandfather on my mother’s side, born on my birthday in 1665. It didn’t look very promising until I realized that this Gates family didn’t hook into my lines where I expected it to. I had known about a Gates connection through my Kellogg relatives for many years; Alvira Gates (1810-1875) was my fourth-great-grandmother, married to Henry J. Rich (1809-1874); they are buried as “Mother” and “Father” Rich in Carthage. Their daughter Angela (1839-1908) married Henry James Kellogg (1831-1894), and they were parents of Frederic Julien Kellogg (1861-1935), my second-great-grandfather and father of my great-grandmother Freda.
But this Stephen Gates (b.1665) was not a forefather of this Gates line. So where does he hook in? His line goes on a meandering trip, and then ends up right back in the Kelloggs.
This is far better explained with a diagram than with a narrative:
Stephen Gates (1600-1662) and his wife Ann Veare (1602-1683) had several children, among them two boys: Stephen Jr. (b. 1638) and Simon (b. 1645). As it turned out, both brothers are my direct ancestors. Simon’s line went down to Frederic Kellogg; Stephen Jr.’s line went down to Edith Emeline Hunt. Due to the fact that Simon’s line tended to consist of the younger children of older parents, the generations are longer and there are fewer steps.
When Frederic Kellogg and Edith Emeline Hunt married and had their only daughter, Freda, she was both the 6th-great-granddaughter and 8th-great-granddaughter of Stephen Gates Sr, as well as a distant cousin to herself.
If you happen to be from mostly old colonial roots, this is going to happen repeatedly. This is not the only case where I am my own cousin. I am also my own cousin from both sides of the family, meaning that my parents are also distant cousins (the one example I can think of from the top of my head is that my father is also related to the same family of Rhode Island Kenyons, albeit much farther back in that genealogy than in my mother’s, whose mother was a Kenyon). I share at least four sets of eighth- to tenth-great-grandparents with my husband, who is also from mostly old colonial roots. Some of the twists are quite recent; my Edson relatives from my dad’s side of the family often married first and second cousins, even cousins who were both Edsons at the time of marriage (saves from having to change names or monograms on the silver).
From what I have been able to tell, the vast majority of my family lines on both sides arrived in America between 1620 and 1650. Several of these came on the Mayflower, and the Fortune, which arrived the following year. By 1650, the estimated European population of America was a bit over 50,000 people. Given that this the range of my 8th-10th great grandparents, and by the time you get there you have 1,024 8th, 2,048 9th and 4,096 10th great grandparents, that starts to be a significant percentage of the general population. If you’re primarily old colonial, you have to be related to yourself, and repeatedly.
Interesting side historical note on the Gates family:
Stephen Gates (1600-1662) and his wife Ann Veare (1602-1683) both immigrated to America aboard the ship Diligent in 1638, settling in Hingham, Massachusetts. Their family was unusual in that the Gates family was landed and titled, although being the youngest son of a series of younger sons probably prompted Stephen to take his chances elsewhere. His most famous (or infamous) relative was Sir John Gates, brother to Stephen’s second great-grandfather Geoffrey; Sir John Gates became a principal participant in the 1553 plot to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne of England instead of Mary Tudor. Here is a Wikipedia article on his history and exploits.
During my last visit to London, I visited the chapel at St. Peter ad Vincula inside the Tower of London, where Sir John had recanted his Protestant faith, and stood in the spot in the little green traffic park that marked where the scaffold stood on Tower Hill, where John was executed on the same day, 22 August 1553. The brother of a 13th-great-grandfather is not genetically a close relationship, but given that it was more than 461 years ago, it’s as close as most people are likely to get. It was pretty chilling nonetheless.