Family Tree Back to 250 A.D. (!!!)

First, congratulations are in order to the Queen for answering all the Trivia B question correctly. Yes, Parliament was the word I was looking for on Question 9. And the painter is better known as "Red" Skelton... from Vincennes. All my kids have been to Vincennes, which is not Versailles (although I think they've also been there, too...). Today I'm in Hagerstown, Maryland, and after work and before dinner, I stopped by the Washington County Free Library (funny name, but it is very proud that it is the founder of the very FIRST bookmobile in the world). I was planning to do some further research into my Furley line (my dad's maternal grandmother). But I stumbled across a book containing the muster rolls of the English regular army, taken from records from England, and found in it some information on my Rowell ancestors (my mother's mother). What I discovered was truly unbelievable! But it gets even more unbelievable! I found one of those rare missing links. Thanks to a Rowell cousin, I already had data going back to a Benjamine Rowell before the Revolutionary War, and had a few names of Rowells pre-dating him, but nothing that would identify which of those were direct relatives. Well, today, I found the missing link. What's more, I found references, which, when followed, lead me to a series of genealogies, including historical works on European nobility, and I followed the line back ... all the way, to before Christ! All the way back to six generation before! This particular line hails from local governors of Romania and places that today are in Hungary and Austria. Okay, so you're like me, you're saying, no way can records exist that trace that far back. I felt someone was really telling a tall one. The composite picture showed that we are direct descendents of William the Conqueror, the Earls of Surrey, the Counts of Warren, and scores and scores of other nobles. Yeah, right. So after writing down about 20 pages of family tree, I came back to the hotel room and got on the internet, and started checking wikipedia, oxford-online, the JMU library historical research databases, and the more I checked, the more astounded I became! Starting with my missing link's grandmother, Elizabeth Warren, from Jamestown Virginia, the historical records trace back, directly, all the way back to 250 A.D.! It's amazing! The historical references stop at Ovida Der Burgunder, born about 250 A.D., whose son was Helderic der Burgunder, and grandson was geberich of the Western Goths, about 300 A.D. Don't confuse Burgunder with Burgundy. Burgunder was in what today is Romania, northeast of Italy. The next 12 generations (back to about 100 B.C.) aren't listed in the on-line historical records, so I'm not going to claim them or enter them into my genealogical database (I want to keep my database reliable, so I'm only entering in stuff that I consider verified.) But hey, going back to AD 250 is still amazing. If you want to see some of our relatives, use Wikipedia to look up Ricimer (about 350 AD), or Gondioc King of the Burgondes (AD 437), or Theoderic I (AD 470), or Theudebert I (AD 500), or Wacho, King of the Lombards (about 480). Or look up Lambert de Hesbaye, son of Guerin of Poitiers (AD 630). Hesbaye, by the way, is near Tongeren and Liege, both cities that we have visited in Belgium. We are descendents of Robert de Hesbaye, or Chrodobert, Duke of Hesbaye, who is patriarch of the Robertians, gread-grandfather of Odo and Robert, who were Frankish kings. Robert is also an ancestor of Hugh Capet, last of the Frankish kings and first king of France, and a direct descendent of Robert de Hesbaye sat on the French Throne from Capet until the French Revolution! While you're in Wikipedia, search for Fulk IV, or Fulk V, both direct ancestors of ours. Fulk IV's daddy was Aubri Geoffrey, Count of Gatinais, and his wife was Bertrade de Montfort, who ran away from him and married King Philip I of France. One of the juicier parts of our history has to do with Hamelin Plantagenet, son of Geoffrey of Anjou, son of Fulk V. Geoffrey of Anjou was married to Matilda, Princess of England, and daughter of Henry I King of England, and son of William the Conqueror. However, Geoffrey had a reputation for playing around a bit. He had several unknown, ahem, consorts or mistresses. His son, Hamelin Plantagenet, was billed as Matilda's son, but apparently he didn't look a thing like Matilda, who was descended from Henry I and Mathilda Steward of Scotland. (No red hair perhaps?) Regardless of who Hamelin's mom was, Hamelin married Isabel de Warenne, daughter and inheritor of William de Warenne, Third Earl of Surrey. Their son, William de Warenne, was the 6th Earl of Surrey, and we follow his line down to Edward Warren (AD 1321), and thence down to Thomas Warren (AD 1624) born in Ripple Parish, Kent, England, who came to Jamestown, and whose daughter Elizabeth Warren, married James Boyce. Their daughter Mary Boyce, married Sam Tarver, whose granddaughter Lucy Tarver married Samuel Rowell, whose son Benjamine Rowell was born the same year and same location as MY Benjamine Rowell from my cousin's records. Good old Benjamine's daddy Samuel was the missing link. The Warrens are the link back to royalty, and of course royalty kept records of who was whose daddy. That accounts for the ability to trace so far back. The fact that so many of the individuals are already in the existing historical records, with their parents and relatives, is amazing to me. I never would have dreamed we could go so far back. Of course, this is only one line of hundreds or even thousands. And the line changes from male lineage to female and back a few times as it goes. And what's more, there are more ties that I didn't write down... so we will probably end up going back up other lines as well. I'm so surprised at this, I couldn't sleep although it si after 1 a.m., and I've got more work to do tomorrow. So I guess I'll turn in. If you comment on the queen's blog, tell her congratulations.