Ethnicity of Known Immigrant Ancestors
Of my 104 known immigrant ancestors, there are 78 English, 14 Irish, 6 Scottish, 2 Swiss, 2 German, 1 Greek, and 1 Dutch. Paternal DNA analysis also points to mostly a mostly northeastern European origin, with marginal ancient history among Mediterranean people and Kievan Rus. Maternal DNA analysis points to a more central European ancient origin with emphasis on northern Russia and Finland.
Serendipity
One benefit of all of this research is the discovery of ancestors of noble and royal heritage. Upon first discovering such ancestry, people sometimes think it somehow confers elite status to themselves. This sort of heritage is actually common to most people. It simply remains undiscovered for those who have little interest in ancestral heritage. That is the only reason such heritage seems novel. For me, going back 20 generations to where I start seeing these connections, I have as many as 1,048,576 ancestors! Considering the math, it is really no surprise that some of those were people of renown.
I mention this to emphasize the fact that there is nothing special about having royal or noble ancestors, although the discovery of such opened many doors to the rich European history of some of my ancestors. This is due in no small part to the fact that royals and nobles usually married within their social strata, so the connections are usually clear. They were also able to record and preserve many of their stories. When we find them in our ancestry we often find much more than simple birth, marriage, and death records. The personal connection, distant as it is, make it more interesting to me, even a bit of fun to discover connections to these historical figures beyond the sometimes dry pages of history books. These connections have stoked my personal interest in their contemporary history, both in Europe and the Americas.
Much of that history involved enslaved people of African heritage. My family history has documented history of exploiting enslaved people of African origin or descent, and an apparent majority of people who currently claim my surname are Americans of African heritage. My history is also, by association, an African history though I cannot claim Africa as an ancestral home. This opens a whole volume of African history as the now dominant heritage of the modern McClendon name. I have been unable to find demographic statistics on the surname, but empirical evidence gathered from social media indicates that over 2/3 of contemporary McClendon/McLendon population has significant African heritage. Much of this information is fragmented and new to me. The African heritage of the McClendons is complex and will be explored in its own section of this writing.
My most surprising discovery happened when I was randomly searching through pedigree charts on RootsWeb. I was simply looking for lines that went way back to see if there were any particularly old ones. I found a few. Many of these old pedigree charts suffer a dearth of specifics regarding the individuals listed and I was accustomed to this. Then I came across an old line reaching back into Scotland that ended with a fellow whose birthday was listed as July 11, 1274. Such specificity being unusual for a record of that age, I guessed that this must have been a person of some importance. I did what anyone with little to no knowledge of Scottish history would do… I Googled the name, “Robert de Bruce”, a Norman-sounding name. Of course, this revealed Robert de Bruce as the champion of the Scottish Wars of Independence who became Robert I, King of Scots! This also confirmed an oral family history of such descent that resulted in men along my Campbell family pedigree who were named Robert Bruce Campbell.
As previously mentioned, this piqued my interest in both my ancestry and the history of the times and places in which they lived! I discovered a wonderful trilogy titled, “The Rebel King“, by Charles and Carolyn Bruce. The books are historically accurate and use fictional prose to fill in the gaps and fill out the interpersonal relationships in a way that is consistent with the history.
I researched the many connections linking de Bruce to various noble and royal families. This quickly became far too cumbersome to navigate via regular descendancy charts, so I made a 1-page quick-reference to help myself and my family members determine the connections.
Next: American Arrival
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Related Links:
Royalty/Nobility Quick-Reference
Dennis McClendon: Procession to my “XIV” Designation
DMCXIV 
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