The Spencer Family, Ancestry and Althorp 1: Ending Aug. 2023


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QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
How many UK noble families (marchionesses, earls, dukes, etc.) is Diana descended from?
And I also have the book "Ancestry of the Royal Child" by Iain Moncreiffe. How much of what is written in the book is still proven uncertain?
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Diana descends from many, many UK noble families. For example:

FATHER: John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer

GRANDFATHERS: John Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer & Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy

GREAT-GRANDFATHERS: Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer; James Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn; James Roche, 3rd Baron Fermoy

GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHERS: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer; Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke; James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn; George Bingham, 4th Earl of Lucan; Edmund Roche, 1st Baron Fermoy

The link to Diana's 12-generation ancestors is broken so I'm re-posting the URL here. Just copy & paste it in your web browser. Be sure to remove the space between http:// and genealogics.

http:// genealogics.org/ahnentafel.php?personID=I00000174&tree=LEO&parentset=0&generations=12

Once you're on the site, click on a person's name for more information about them, or to trace their ancestors back more generations.

I also recommend the following book:

Richard K. Evans, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales (New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2007).
 
Gawin said:
Diana descends from many, many UK noble families. For example:

FATHER: John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer

GRANDFATHERS: John Spencer, 7th Earl Spencer & Maurice Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy

GREAT-GRANDFATHERS: Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer; James Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn; James Roche, 3rd Baron Fermoy

GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHERS: Frederick Spencer, 4th Earl Spencer; Edward Baring, 1st Baron Revelstoke; James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn; George Bingham, 4th Earl of Lucan; Edmund Roche, 1st Baron Fermoy

The link to Diana's 12-generation ancestors is broken so I'm re-posting the URL here. Just copy & paste it in your web browser. Be sure to remove the space between http:// and genealogics.

http:// genealogics.org/ahnentafel.php?personID=I00000174&tree=LEO&parentset=0&generations=12

Once you're on the site, click on a person's name for more information about them, or to trace their ancestors back more generations.

I also recommend the following book:

Richard K. Evans, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales (New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2007).
Click to expand...

I've been on Genealogics many times. But, from my desktop, when go on the website and try to trace the relationships between two people, it always says "Searching", even after one hour. So I just close the window.

Although, a while ago (on the site), I did successfully trace the relationship between Diana and Rainier III of Monaco (who I consider Mr. Grace Kelly). There are three different lines I found. I even have the screenshots on my iPad!
 
I've used Genealogics to trace a person's ancestors or descendants but never cousins. Maybe it's not very good at that.

You can pick one of Diana's ancestors - say James I or Charles I or Henri IV of Frances - and generate a list of their descendants. Obviously they would be Diana's (distant) cousins.
 
Gawin said:
I've used Genealogics to trace a person's ancestors or descendants but never cousins. Maybe it's not very good at that.

You can pick one of Diana's ancestors - say James I or Charles I or Henri IV of Frances - and generate a list of their descendants. Obviously they would be Diana's (distant) cousins.
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True.
I also remember reading that Diana is a direct descendant of Maria Theres(i)a's [Archduchess of Austria] husband Francis. Is this true?
And is she a direct descendant of any of the Bonapartes? (i.e. Louis or Jerome.... Napoleon's brothers)
I tried to put Prince Philip & Louis Bonaparte in the system on Genealogics, and my computer crashed.
I remember reading that Prince Philip is a direct descendant of Louis, but I am not sure if this is a valid claim.

Osipi said:
For the life of me, I can't remember if I've posted this or not but its a real hoot when you get the connection.

I see you're in New Jersey. This is fun to do. On Wednesday nights, there is a show on NBC called "Chicago Med". If you tune into that show and see a character called Dr. Daniel Charles, a psychiatrist, he is played by Oliver Platt who just happens to be related to Diana, Princess of Wales in several ways.

Most people forget that Diana had pretty recent American ancestry too. :D

https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-ch...iver+platt&via=6317+james+boothby+burke+roche

https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-ch...princess+diana&via=3693+edward+iii+of+england
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I've never seen the show, but I have heard good things about it! And I have heard Oliver is a cousin of Diana.
I also remember seeing that someone's 4 or 5x great-granddaughter was Catharina of Wurttemberg; I don't remember the person's name, but I believe Diana is a direct descendant of the person (or Catharina). I'm definitely not sure.
 
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QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
True.
I also remember reading that Diana is a direct descendant of Maria Theres(i)a's [Archduchess of Austria] husband Francis. Is this true?
And is she a direct descendant of any of the Bonapartes? (i.e. Louis or Jerome.... Napoleon's brothers)
I tried to put Prince Philip & Louis Bonaparte in the system on Genealogics, and my computer crashed.
I remember reading that Prince Philip is a direct descendant of Louis, but I am not sure if this is a valid claim.
Click to expand...

No, Diana was not a descendant of Maria Theresa's husband Francis or the Bonapartes.

Prince Philip isn't a Bonaparte descendant either. His uncle Prince George of Greece married Marie Bonaparte who was the great-granddaughter of Napoleon and Louis Bonaparte's brother Lucien.
 
Gawin said:
No, Diana was not a descendant of Maria Theresa's husband Francis or the Bonapartes.

Prince Philip isn't a Bonaparte descendant either. His uncle Prince George of Greece married Marie Bonaparte who was the great-granddaughter of Napoleon and Louis Bonaparte's brother Lucien.
Click to expand...
What are some of the (notable) Austrian & French relatives of Diana then?
 
QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
I've never seen the show, but I have heard good things about it! And I have heard Oliver is a cousin of Diana.
I also remember seeing that someone's 4 or 5x great-granddaughter was Catharina of Wurttemberg; I don't remember the person's name, but I believe Diana is a direct descendant of the person (or Catharina). I'm definitely not sure.
Click to expand...

Are you thinking of Catharina of Wurttemberg who married Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome? She is the ancestor of the current head of the Bonaparte family.

Catharina was the daughter of King Frederick I of Wurttemberg and his first wife Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. Her stepmother was Princess Charlotte, the daughter of King George III of Great Britain & Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Catharina's mother Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel was the daughter of Duke Charles of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel and Princess Augusta, who the daughter of Frederick Prince and Wales and George III's oldest sister.

Augusta was the older sister of Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel who married George IV.

So Catharina was:
(1) the great-granddaughter of Frederick Prince of Wales
(2) the great-niece of King George III
(3) the niece of Queen Caroline, wife of George IV
(4) a first cousin of Princess Charlotte, who would have become Queen Regnant had she not died in childbirth in 1817
 
QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
What are some of the (notable) Austrian & French relatives of Diana then?
Click to expand...

Austrian: Diana was a direct descendant of the Archduchess Johanna (1547-1578), daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I. Johanna married Francesco de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Ferdinand I was the ancestor all the Holy Roman Emperors who succeeded him, including the Empress Maria Theresa.

French: Diana was also a descendant of King Henri IV of France (1553-1610). He married Marie de Medici, the daughter of the Archduchess Johanna. Henri IV and Marie were the parents of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I.

Henri IV and Marie were also the ancestors of all the French kings who succeeded him, as well as the Bourbon dynasties of Spain, Sicily, and Parma.
 
Would that make her cousins (possibly several times removed) with the French kings and Austrian Holy Roman Emperors?
 
QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
Would that make her cousins (possibly several times removed) with the French kings and Austrian Holy Roman Emperors?
Click to expand...

Yes, and all the other European royal families who are descendants of Emperor Ferdinand I and King Henri IV including Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein.

If you already haven't, you might want to look at Paul Theroff's website. For example, scroll down the page to see "The Descendants of James I." James I is the ancestor of almost all the European royal families and (through the illegitimate children of Charles II and James II) most of the British nobility.

The Theroff Files

He also has information on other European royal and noble families:

An Online Gotha
 
Thank you for the info! I'll be sure to look it all up.
Also: I found out about Anne of Bohemia, who was married to Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. Is she related to Diana or the U.K. Royal Family?
 
QueenElizabeth2Fan said:
Thank you for the info! I'll be sure to look it all up.
Also: I found out about Anne of Bohemia, who was married to Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor. Is she related to Diana or the U.K. Royal Family?
Click to expand...

Yes, Anne of Bohemia the wife of Emperor Ferdinand I was the mother of Diana's ancestor the Archduchess Johanna.

Anne and Ferdinand were also the parents of Archduchess Maria who married William, Duke of Cleves-Julich-Berg. Maria and William were the ancestors of both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
 
Actually, if anyone has any kind of European ancestry and you go back to the time of the Holy Roman Empire and Charlemagne, the chances are very good that you are also related to the same ancestors as Diana, Princess of Wales.

Its more rare to find out that you are not related to Charlemagne than it is to be related to him somehow. We have to remember that there were several epidemics of the plague that wiped out a large percentage of the population all over. It is the survivors that are the ancestors of just about every living human being of European descent.

A lot of Diana's ancestry just may be your own too. :D
 
Gawin said:
Yes, because of pedigree collapse we are all probably descendants of Charlemagne.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/16/146981369/the-charlemagne-riddle
Click to expand...

That works in theory, but in practice, probably not so much. It doesn't really take into account the massive amounts of inter marriage between the royal and noble families over 1000 years. Sure, Charlemagne's descendants probably number in the millions, but no, not everyone or even most people would be direct descendants of him.
 
That's not what the experts say.

"If you go back to the time of Charlemagne, forty generations or so, you should get to a generation of a trillion ancestors. That’s about two thousand times more people than existed on Earth when Charlemagne was alive."

Charlemagne’s DNA and Our Universal Royalty – Phenomena

The intermarriage between royalty and nobility for 1,000 years could not possibly account for 500 million "missing" ancestors.

See also "You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else" by Dr. Adam Rutherford:

Nefertiti, Confucius, Genghis Khan, and Charlemagne Are Almost Certainly on Your Family Tree
 
One thing to remember too and its a big factor is that there was a period in which the plague wiped out quite a bit of the population throughout Europe and Great Britain. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.

Its logical to believe that during that time, it was the upper crust, the nobility and the royal families that were able to isolate and disassociate themselves from the general hoi polloi, have a healthier diet and sanitation measures to be able to survive and procreate down through the years.
 
And while medieval men may have restricted their marriage partners to women from the same class, that didn't always apply to their sexual partners. To use a more recent example, Charles II left no legitimate children but through his acknowledged illegitimate children he has thousands of descendants living today.
 
I'm familiar with what the experts say. And understand what they're saying. I just do not agree with the conclusions.

One interesting thing would be to use the dna samples of the 12 million or people that have gotten tested over the past decade or so and see how many of them are actually descended from Charlemagne.

I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.
 
I had my DNA tested and I'm 18% British. So, I'm a possible descendant of the same people Diana, Princess of Wales is. :lol:

We also have to take into consideration that there is a line of descent in Diana's bloodline that stems from the USA. Diana is the 2nd cousin 1 time removed to Oliver Platt best known for his role currently in the US drama Chicago Med. Not all Diana's ancestry stems from the English aristocracy.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Work-16
 
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?

Anyhow...thanks for posting all the interesting lines of Diana over the past month. Cool to see a lot of the lines of descent actually shown .
 
James Morgan and Margery Hill - Diana was the 10th cousin of ::

(Don't know if she watched any of these....the score kind of matches her own life, post divorce.)
 
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I have tried to use the Genealogics Royal genealogy calculator to trace different relationships; very often, it is unreliable because the calculations either never show up or they take 5-10 minutes to load.
With that in mind, I have some genealogy questions.
1) Is Diana related to Martha Washington, through her marriage to Daniel Parke-Custis? As well as Robert E. Lee? (This is regarding her Southern US side)
I also want to know if Diana is related to the following people or royal houses:
2) Lucrezia Borgia (there are websites which say she is, but I’ve done extensive research to try to find an ancestry chart that ties these two women together—I found only one chart, although it was very complicated and numbered. Yet, it still did not give me an exact answer—the descendant in question never has a number in the chart; plus, the line is ascending in order—I always believe, because Diana was an aristocrat, that she could have multiple ancestry lines/ties to all of the Catholic royals of now and yesteryear). The chart also showed Lucrezia is related to D through a brother she had. But, is she related to D through Ercole d’Este (her son)?
3) Mary Kittamaquund, the Native American married to Giles Brent? Or any of her children?
4) This is an extensive question that may seem complicated. I read that Italian royal pretenders (specifically, the Dukes of Mantua—through Margaret Paleologa who married a Gonzaga) may have Byzantine descent; as well as the Russian royals (through Catherine The Great, although I could be wrong). Is Margaret related to D? As well as Constantin XI, the last Byzantine emperor to D too? Although, I believe either Margaret or Constantin could be related to the Romanovs, which in turn could mean they are related to D or Prince Philip (off the strength of his Byzantine and Russian ancestry). But I don’t know if any of this is true.
5) Is Diana related to any of the heads and/or pretenders of the Duchy of Anhalt/Ascania? I know that the Queen is not related to the Anhalt side at all.
6) Is Diana related to the famous Rothschild family?
7) This is more of a general question: How has it been proven that D is related to every single European royal house that the Queen is not? As well as D being related to most of the British peers/lords/aristocracy?
8) Because the Queen is related to mostly non-practicing Catholic royals herself, are there many royals Diana is related to that the Queen isn’t? Catholic or any other religion?
9) This is my last question: Is Diana related to Stephanie Beauharnais (who was adopted by Napoleon I) and/or Stéphanie’s “rival”, Josephine Tascher-Pagerie? I know Josephine was from Martinique; this fact is especially important because, as a black man, it would be a very unique fact that Diana could possibly have African or Caribbean bloodlines. And especially because I am Bermudian-American and love British royal genealogy. This also goes hand in hand with the fact that Diana (I personally feel) was slightly “Bajan” (as far as having Barbados ancestry).

I’m very sorry for having so many questions! It’s because of the Genealogics calculator, and the questions are things I specifically couldn’t find out myself—for example, I’ve Googled each question in multiple ways, and could not find any mention/answer to any of them. So, I came here.
 
As far as Diana's American ancestry, have you looked into the family of Frances Ellen Work? She was Diana's great grandmother and an American heiress and socialite. This might fill in a few blanks for you.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Work-16
 
I knew already the story of Frances being disinherited if she married a royal—because her father strongly disliked the royal family. And that Diana is 1/8 American.
 
A LOT of Frances’ ancestors are not listed on Wikitree. I heavily understand people may not have kept records during that time.
I didn’t know where to look for the missing links to the chains I was in, in terms of D’s ancestry.
Although, I took the concept of mtDNA and traced ancestry through distant great-grandmothers of Frances. And discovered most of her distant g-g’s aren’t listed.
 
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