Do you know where your ancestors came from?
I’ve always thought that racism was not just morally repugnant but logically absurd since, if you go back a few generations in most people’s families, you find yourself in a different race or ethnicity or nationality. Ultimately, of course, we can all trace our ancestry back to tribes in Africa.
In the case of the Darlingtons – my family on my father’s side (my mother was Italian) – I am advised by a Darlington (no direct relative) in Australia that the name may well be linked directly to the Angeln inhabitants in the northern region of England.
My Australian Darlington friend had his DNA submitted to the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project mapping the distribution of the human race around the planet. This has indicated the origin of a common ancestor located in the region of northern Germany/southern Denmark approximately 5,000 years ago. All subsequent males that share this DNA haplogroup with modern English surnames are most likely to be related to this one person.
As to when later ancestors crossed the channel to England, this is unknown. It could have been with the Angeln ‘invasion’, or any one of the subsequent Danish, Scandinavian, Viking, Norman or later ‘invasions’.
The information is tenuous as the application of surnames happened only later in the 13th-14th centuries. Of particular interest to me, however, is the fact that Edward the Confessor‘s own confessor was in fact a friar known as Jean de Derlington.
February 6th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Yes, chimpanzees
February 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Mine too, Mavis – we must be related.
February 8th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Smedley Darlington Butler, an American of a Quaker family, had a military career and rose to the rank of Major General, in the US Marine Corps.
In 1935, after he’d retired, and had time to think and do some research, he wrote and published a book, titled, “War is a Racket.”
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
I have the impression, that a lot of Quakers came out of northern counties such as York, Lancaster and Chester. I think John Dalton was a Quaker, and maybe Michael Faraday was one, too.
Although an Oxford name book says “Gerald” came to England with the Normans, there was a saint, Gerald of Mayo, in Britain before 1066. He came from the monastery at Lindisfarne, and went to Ireland.
February 8th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
On this theme of where we all come from ‘England People Very Nice’ is a wonderful play currently at the National Theatre that colourfully demonstrates what a rich soup we are. I highly recommend you see it.