Lestrange.... Bellatrix Lestrange.

Alright so since it is Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family and the final Harry Potter film is coming out 7/15 (YESSS!!!!!) I thought I would do a Harry Potter themed genealogy blog.

Now a background for those of you who may not know about the character Bellatrix Lestrange... first of all you need to read the books asap if  that is the case. Anyway, she is a horrible, evil, fantastically vile person.

So, how do I tie this in with my random ramblings of people I'm related to? Well it goes something like this...

Bridget Fettiplace was married to Anthony Hungerford.

Anthony Hungerford's mother was Margaret Blount. Her father was Edmund Blount.

Edmund Blount (c.1439-1500 for perspective...) 's father was John Blount.

John's mother was Isabella Cornwall. She was the daughter of Bryan Cornwall and Maude Strange. Not sure why its "Strange" and not "Lestrange" for her...

Maude's father was Roger Lestrange 5th Lord Strange of Knokyn. According to Geni.com, he is my "12th great grandfather's wife's 6th great grandfather"

Roger's father was John le Strange 3rd baron of Knockin (c.1282-1312)

Well. Now we've made it to the 1200's umm... wow. Along with Lords and Barons... Since I'm just now discovering this whole baron thing... literally. I knew there were people there but I never really looked into it.. I found some stuff on wikipedia. yaaay! Best thing ever I swear.
This is the site I found... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Strange

So I assume this means I'm related in some way or another to all the people on there? Anyway. You can see Roger and John under the second creation (whatever that means).

Switching gears to Harry Potter again... Bellatrix's husband was Rodolphus Lestrange, born between the 1950's and 1960's according to the Harry Potter wiki (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bellatrix_Lestrange). So. It would be reasonable (if it wasn't fiction of course) to conclude that in some distant way I could be related to Bellatrix's hubby.

That's all for now folks. Who knows what crazy link my mind will come up with next.

There and Back Again: The Tale of Two Bridgets

I have returned! After a long final semester my wonderful internship is over, along with my days of college. And, since there are no jobs for me at the moment, I will return to the blogosphere.

Back in March, (that is so sad...) I wrote about the Hungerfords and mentioned two women named Bridget. The first was Bridget Shelley, who married Anthony. The second was Bridget Fettiplace who married John.

Bridget Shelley was the daughter of John Shelley and Mary.
Now, Geni.com is clearly trying to drive me insane. Last time I checked, Bridget would have been a great grandmother of some sort. now they're telling me she is my 12th great aunt's 3rd great aunt. I don't know. Shes related to me some how so I'll continue on.

John's parents: Sir William Shelley (another sir! woo!) and Alice Belknap. I love the name Alice. Random side-note hah...

Mary's parents (This is where I'm going to have fun): Sir William Fitzwilliam and Maud Mildred Sackville.

Now, if you don't get it from my username greenbibliophile, I love books. So here comes my inner nerd. Fitzwilliam makes me think of Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Yes yes, I know. The character is Fitzwilliam Darcy and Fitzwilliam is not used as a surname. Let me have my fun ok? Also, Jane Austen will come into play later.

Next literary reference: Sackville. If you notice in the title* I used There and Back Again, a Tolkien novel better known as The Hobbit. Now I haven't read that in a while but in the follow up Lord of the Rings Trilogy there is mention of the Sackville-Baggins family. Which, in my little world, I connect myself to those little fictional hobbits by the name of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. And if you don't think I've lost it, just wait. Later I'll pretend to connect myself to Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter. But that is for another time.

Nerdy-ness out of the way, lets move on to Bridget Fettiplace (who's hubby eventually leads to the le Strange family)

She was the daughter of John Fettiplace and Dorothy Danvers.
Dorothy's parents: Sir John Danvers and Ann Stradling.
-Sir John's parents: Richard Danvers and Elizabeth Langston
-Ann's parents: John Stradling and Alice Langford.

John's parents: Richard Fettiplace and Elizabeth Bessiles

Mind you most of these people were born in the 1400s. And it keeps going back.

Next time I'll discuss the line to the le Strange family and the connection to one of my favorite authors. Ta ta for now!

*As far as I know there is no link to Dickens, but I felt like using a reference to A Tale of Two Cities.

Hungerford Family Part 1

First of all its been way too long since I've posted and I definitely could have over spring break but that wasn't one of my priorities. But now I have an annoying assignment and this is the perfect opportunity to procrastinate a little.

Last time I introduced the Hungerfords a little bit. I still don't know who married who but that's ok. Either Fabyan or Thomas Farley married the Jane Hungerford I'm talking about.

To give you some perspective, Jane is my 12th GGrandmother

Jane Hungerford- born around 1578 ish. parents were Sir Anthony Hungerford and Bridget Shelley.

Sir Anthony Hungerford... thats pretty cool.... "sir"
I did a quick google search of the name and a million things popped up but it was for a different Anthony Hungerford.... yay for repeating names again! the one site where I found the right one had "(sir knight)" at the end of his name.

So now I have English Knights in my family... and hello I love the movie "A Knights Tale" and all of that medieval fair stuff. But I digress....

Anthony Hungerford "Sir Knight" 1540-1594
Parents: John Hungerford "Sir Knight" and Bridget Fettiplace.
-- Fettiplace is an interesting surname too. I'll get to that family in a later post I think... but for now a quick wikipedia segment...

Fettiplace is probably from old French "faites place" for 'make room', the shout given by the ushers/bodyguards/protectors of the French Kings and nobility. 
They are said to have arrived in England with William the Conqueror.. 


Hellooo awesomeness! Back to Hungerfords...

John was born around 1513. His parents were Anthony Hungerford b. 1494 (ah, theres a repeat...) and Jane Darrel b. 1490

Ok now we're into the 1400's. So over 500 years ago? Madness!

Next time I'll discuss Bridget Shelley's family and perhaps hit on Bridget Fettiplace's parents.

And if you think thats all I have... you are sadly mistaken. There is so much stuff.... its.... insane. just... insane.

Anyone interested on visiting the site where I found some info that goes along with my tree: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/HUNGERFORD.htm#Anthony HUNGERFORD (Sir Knight)1

Later peeps!

Farley Family Part 2

Last time I posted about the Farley family I left off with George's parents Jane Hungerford and Thomas Farley.

I'll get to the Hungerford's later

This part of my tree gets relatively messy. I think at one point I found Fabyan Farley (a brother of Thomas) married to Jane Hungerford. I was going insane because I kept finding Jane married to two people. It turns out that there were TWO Jane Hungerfords and they were cousins. They married 2 Farley brothers Thomas and Fabyan. They both had sons that immigrated to America. One in Mass. and one in Jamestown. Read that on an ancestry.com message board. 

Now I really hope I have the right one for this. Either way the Farley side will be the same, and the Hungerford side will not be far off.

Thomas Farley was born in 1570. His parents were Reginald Farley and Barbara Hastings. Reginald was born aroung 1530 and Barbara about 1532.

Reginald's parents were Richard Farley and Joan Eausham. Richard's father, John Farley, was born around 1465

So now we're into the 1400s and thats all the Farley family on my tree. Phew. 

Story time! There are a lot of websites that pop up if you type in Farley family. Trust me I just did that to refresh my memory. 

"This story has a very ancient setting in the fair land of Normandy. Later it traverses the channel to the shores of England where for centuries, during the Middle Ages, members of the House of Farley contributed to the progress and well-being of the Norman princes who established themselves at the coming of William the Conqueror. "

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/o/w/Michael-L-Bowen/GENE2-0052.html

And looking through some of these sites I'm thinking my ancestor is Fabyan rather than Thomas. Like I said, this is all very confusing.

I'm also posting a link to Farleigh Castle although I think it has more to do with the Hungerfords than Farleys...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farleigh_Hungerford_Castle

Thats all for now. Later genealogy peeps!

Poland Summary and Coming Attractions

Ok so my main focus in my genealogy search is my great grandfather's relatives. The ones that were in the pictures I posted. This is what I know (mini repeat of a former post)

My great grandfather- Louis/Ludwik Bieda had a brother Walter...
Walter + Anna?
-Wanda + ? - surname would have changed from Bieda. Hence the brick wall...
--Jerry the aerospace guy + Barbara
---Adam... he would be about 43/44 years old now.

They were in Krakow Poland and near Wawel Castle and Tyniec Abbey.

If anyone has any tips on how to find these people please let me know!

Things to come...

The Farley family and Hungerford family. These will take up several posts. At least one for Farley and two or more for the Hungerfords. The first of these posts will hopefully be within the next week or two...

Sometime soon(ish) I'd like to make up and post a list of famous/ interesting people that I'm related to. Geni.com has profiles of such people and you can check out those profiles and see if you are connected to them. right now I'm in the "big tree" meaning I'm connected to almost 52 million other profiles.

Anyway what I'm gettin at... if I post the names and then readers know that they are related to that person then we'll be connected. Just a though. It happened for me on twitter recently.

I have a few others from previous posts, but I'll deal with that sometime later...

Later peeps!

Picture Update

So I found out some of the places where the pictures were taken. I edited the earlier picture posts and noted which ones had locations. I still need help identifying the others though.

Wawel Castle was identified by one of my twitter followers within like... 3 minutes of posting it. Awesome.
Tyniec was written on the back of some of the photos along with other Polish stuff so... I had no idea what was going on with that. My one facebook friend helped me translate the writing. After finding out it was a place and doing a Google image search I found similar pictures and was very excited.
St. Mary's was in a picture within that group so I got lucky there.

Next I'm going to share some more pictures with known locations

Also Tyniec

Near Tyniec Abbey. Notice the painting on the rocks (top center).

Wawel Castle

Pictures from Poland (Part 4)

This should be the last set of pictures. Please please let me know if you recognize these locations.

Polish writing on the back translates to: This is in Tyniec

This one has "Bieda" listed on the right upper part. No idea which Bieda is there though.