Flipside: Family Lore--Descended from Royalty Fact or Fiction

Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join. I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside. AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024. Sometimes I get lazy. 😁 Let's see how well I keep up.

Week #1 (January 1-7) is Family Lore. I had to think about this a bit. Very few of my family members ever spoke about family. My Mother said she had a very small family. Not so. Genealogy research has proven her totally wrong. More to the point, they seemed to have cut themselves off from many of them.

1962
Me and Grams

The one family member who had stories was my paternal grandmother, Sarah VanGilder Hughes aka Grams. I spent many hours with her during my elementary school and junior high school years. How I wish I could remember those tales.

Grams was a bit of a flibbertigibbet--fun loving, talkative, whimsical--and pure of heart. Perhaps some of her stories were so outlandish, even as a child/teen, I discredited them. One however, did stick and I believe I have never blogged about it. Grams talking to a seventh grade Linda, "Lin, you might be interested to know that we have royal blood in the family." Well, that obviously caught my attention. I can't remember if she ever qualified the statement or said whose family the royals attached to and frankly, as a young teen, I never asked, nor did I know how far reaching a person's family stretched on her side and my grandfather's.

George Henry Hughes
1962

Fast forward decades into my age of genealogy. The story of royal lineage did filter into my consciousness while researching various family branches. I figured it was attached to my paternal grandfather, George Henry Hughes aka Pop Pop. After all, he WAS born in England. Perhaps I am the long lost relation to Queen Elizabeth II. Secretly I always dreamed of wearing a sparkly tiara. 😁👑

Hughes Coal Hawkers
photo circa 1910

When I began my genealogy research, UK records were not readily available here in the US. I was fortunate to meet, on line, a fellow researcher from England. We have been friends now for over 20 years. She lived about 30 minutes from my grandfather's birthplace and was happy to do some on the ground research for me. No royal blood in my Hughes line. Coal hawkers and steel workers.

Genealogy is not done in a vacuum. Along came a relation in my Grams' Poole (Pool) family line. A noted historian and college professor, Dr. Robert Poole Wilkins. The family hook here is that Grams mother was a Poole, Jessica Poole VanGilder. Through my cousin, Robert, I gained much insight into genealogically wandering backward from the Poole's to the Lanham Family, to the Ferguson Family, and into Scotland.

Genealogical and Personal History of the
Upper Monongalia County, West Virginia
page 957

The above mentioned William and Catherine Ferguson Lanham are my paternal fifth Great Grandparents. Catherine's father was John Ferguson and John's father was Duncan (Dunkin Fergusson) Ferguson who came to America from Scotland. This line may not be royal. They are certainly landed gentry.

A second option for a link to royal (or at a minimum landed gentry) blood would be through Grams' VanGilder Line, to the Hill line, to the Houston line. Purnell Houston, my paternal fourth great grandfather. Going backward in the Houston line in America, my seventh great grandfather, Robert R. Houston, born in Scotland was supposedly descended from Sir Hugh de Padvinan, a Frenchman who removed to Scotland. A listing for Houston in the book entitled, Scottish Surnames, indicates that the name originated from the parish of Houston in Renfrewshire, Scotland. During the reign of Malcolm IV in 1153, Hugh Padvinan ( Hugh De Padvinau), a Frenchman, obtained the barony of Kilpeter from Baldwin of Biggar, Sheriff of Lanark. A town grew up around Houston House and hence it was called Hughstoun which was later corrupted to Houstoun or Houston.

Back of our T-shirt

Stumbling around in all these Scottish lines, I attached to Edward de Bruce, brother of Robert. It was the second option listed above, using the VanGilder line, that I found my way to the Bruce Clan. My grandmother would have been a young girl in Morgantown and probably heard the royal story from one of her VanGilder aunts.

My two brothers and I made a trip to England and Scotland in 2003. We were able to spend time with our Hughes family in Hartlepool, England along with my UK genealogy friend.

Me in the Robert de Bruce is my Cousin t-shirt
At Frairs Carse
August 7, 2003

We drove up into Scotland with the full intention of visiting all of our "family castles and houses". Whether we really genealogically attached to any of them didn't matter, we had fun. My brother, Ken, made us t-shirts and we wore them in Dumfries. As I mentioned, it was all a bit of fun. 😁

My Photo from 2005
Houston House

I did make a return trip to Scotland in 2005. This time we revisited several of the 2003 castles and added Houston House in Renfrewshire.

In the end, it is highly doubtful that even a smidge of royal blood courses through my veins; however, there is some landed Scottish gentry many generations back. No matter, it made the two visits to Scotland more enjoyable and revisiting this piece of Hughes Family Lore personally entertaining.

Visits to other"family castles or houses" in Scotland

Threave Castle Blog

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