Assessing Potential Ancestors

According to Bishop Stapeldon of Exeter who was sent to inspect her, “The lady … has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean shaped; her forhead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than her forhead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and flattened, yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper; yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body and lower limbs are reasonably well shapen; all her limbs are well set and unmaimed; and none is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is of brown skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us.”

The Bishop also added she was neither too tall nor too short for her age, and that she was of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank.

Philippa of Hainault was eight years old at the time of her assessment. She lived to become Queen of England and the ancestor of certainly hundreds of millions of people living today, including last year’s Oscar winner and this year’s Oscar nominee, Jeff Bridges, the focal point of the next blog.

The central framework of Philippa’s lines of descent to present day can be found in this eBook.

Anyone with a Family Forest® National Treasure Edition can easily pull up various size ancestor charts for Philippa, including a 10-generation chart with 838 boxes filled in, and a 60-generation chart with 764,590 boxes filled in.

This is one illustration of why we believe at least two billion living people have more of their early ancestry already assembled in the Family Forest® than they can see anywhere else.

P. S. The Bishop’s assessment can be found on page 81 of Debrett’s Kings and Queens of Britain by David Williamson.

See a short video about her descendants

Braveheart to Baseball

Besides Mel Gibson’s uncanny pitching abilities as William Wallace in Braveheart, how does the movie connect to baseball? Actually in a number of ways, as you can see in the new Family Forest® National Treasure. 

Isabella, daughter-in-law of Longshanks in Braveheart, was the mother of Edward III, who is the subject of one of the largest family history eBooks Millisecond Publishing has ever released. Recorded history is chock-full of stories about his descendants, and the Family Forest® can lead you generation-by-generation to tens of thousands of them. In The Family Forest® Descendants of King Edward III of England eBook you will be taken directly to a number of well-known people who were somehow involved with baseball.

The first person Adobe Reader locates for you in this book is the Hollywood actress who was known as “the First Lady of Baseball” while she was married to famous baseball player and manager Leo “the Lip” Durocher, Laraine Day. 

Next is President William Howard Taft, who became on April 14, 1910 the first U.S. President to pitch a ball to open the baseball season. Then comes Raymond Otis “Ray” or “Ike” Boone, baseball player and scout, and his son Robert Raymond “Bob” Boone, baseball player, coach, manager, and executive. 

Other descendants of Edward III are Nelson W. Doubleday, Jr., co-owner with Fred Wilpon of the New York Mets, Neil “Bing” Russell, an actor on Bonanza and owner of the Portland Mavericks Baseball Club, his son, famous Hollywood actor Kurt Russell who was a professional baseball player, and Bing’s grandson Matthew Neil “Matt” Franco, first baseman for the Atlanta Braves. 

Then there are their cousins George Thomas “Tom” Seaver, famous pitcher for the New York Mets, rocket-scientist Wehner Von Braun who threw the first pitch to open the Atlanta Crackers’ 1958 baseball season, actor Paul Giamatti’s father Angelo Bartlett Giamatti who became Commissioner of Baseball in 1989, and wrapping up the lineup is President George Walker Bush who owned the Texas Rangers. 

Many other Edward III descendants are probably looking forward to Opening Day, as I am. Batter up!