Jane Austen discussion
The Tea Tray
>
Character Names on Your Family Tree
date
newest »



https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk/
I expect that the names you found related to you are related to that place? Considering the three names, I wouldn't be surprised if Jane was inspired by these people and that place.

https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk/
I expect that the names you found related to you are..."
My ancestors pre-date that stately home. Apparently the ancestors originated in the village of Wentworth in Yorkshire. Emma Woodhouse married a Wentworth. At some point, my ancestor became a Puritan, denounced the Massachusetts Puritans, got kicked out of Boston and went to New Hampshire where his granddaughter married a non-Puritanical sort. I got a kick out of seeing those familiar names pop up as I went up and up the tree. That's the only line with Austenian names - so far- on a large family tree of Puritans and their English ancestors.

That's so interesting! You must be talking about Anne Wentworth, daughter of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whom Sir Walter Elliot refers in Ch. II of Persuasion:
[Mr. Shepherd] "Wentworth was the very name! Mr. Wentworth was the very man. He had the curacy of Monkford, you know, Sir Walter, some time back, for two or three years. Came there about the year ---5, I take it. You remember him, I am sure."
[Sir Walter Elliot] "Wentworth? Oh! ay,--Mr. Wentworth, the curate of Monkford. You misled me by the term gentleman. I thought you were speaking of some man of property: Mr. Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected; nothing to do with the Strafford family. One wonders how the names of many of our nobility become so common."
In Lady Anne Wentworth's, Strafford's daughter's, and her descendants', families you can find many names that appear in Jane Austen's novels: Wentworth, Woodhouse, Fitzwilliam, Watson, Willoughby and even Mainwaring.
One of her descandants, Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, was a prominent Whig peer who besides having been Prime Minister two times, was also indirectly connected with the Austen family. Rockingham, during his first Ministry, chose as private secretary the Anglo-Irish Edmund Burke. Burke's political career was closely tied to Rockingham's faction within the Whig party, and Rockingham's patronage was essential at some points in Burke's permanence in the House of Commons. Rockingham also patronized other Whig politicians, such as Charles Fox. Despite his others claim to fame (or infamy, I guess, depending on your political persuasion), Burke is connected to the Austen family by his years-long impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, Governor-general of the East India Company, friend of Dr. Tysoe Hancock, and godfather of the latter's daughter, Elizabeth Hancock, Rev. George Austen's niece. Hastings was acquitted in the House of Lords, but the long trial bankrupted him. I can imagine that the Austens probably didn't like him very much. Burke was also part of Samuel Johnson's literary circle.
Rockingham died without heirs too, and Wentworth Woodhouse passed to his nephew, William Fiztwilliam, 4th Earl of Fitzwilliam and also a Whig, who changed his name to William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam. The Fitzwilliams also hail from Yorkshire and their title was created twice actually, once in the Peerage of Ireland and a second time in the Peerage of Great Britain.


Close. I think that refers to William Pitt the Elder's ministry that began in 1766 (immediately after the first Rockingham government). It was around the time Rev. James Austen was born and after the repeal of the Stamp Act of 1765.

That's so interesting! You must be talking about Anne Wentworth, daughter of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whom Sir Walter Elliot refers in Ch. II of Persuasion:
[Mr. Shepherd..."
OH! Thank you for picking up on that. How funny. I can't PROVE I'm related to these people but I'm following a family tree on FamilySearch.org. It's been very interesting and filled with peers (some women in their own right), knights, king's privy council, Edward II, The War of the Roses, the Tower of London, and divorce (in the 1300s!)
Thanks for the history lesson. I studied History of London during my semester abroad and it's fun to have a connection to some of the people and events I learned about, like Grayfriar's Church in London. I stood in the garden of the bombed out Wren church! I remember that vividly.


I can't do the maths, but cumulatively we must have a LOT of ancestors!!!!!! (I mean we have 16 only three generations ago, and it is generally reckoned three generations to a century thereabout, so the number increases very, very quickly over even a thousand years....)
(I remember reading somewhere that there are about 80 generations between ourselves and the Ancient Greeks - again, can't really do the maths, but it seems to bring them closer somehow)(Mind you, I think all my ancestors were living in a mix of Celtic and Central Asian villages, rather than pondering philosophy or inventing geometry and democracy!)

I knew that... I just didn't expect to find fictional characters on my family tree. It was a funny coincidence. I actually didn't think we could trace the family back that far but apparently no one bothers to look up the female side of family trees. That's revealed way more interesting information than the direct male lines.

I think it's theoretically true, but detailed records of births and deaths -- that survive until today -- are "recent" on a historical time scale. Not only that, but such things as surnames are also recent.
However, there have been cases like that of the mummified body of a man, from ~5000 years ago, found in the Austrian Alps: scientists collected samples from living people in the area and found that some of them and the mummified man shared a rare genetic mutation.

Except that in early (Puritan) New England, marriages were civil and those records have been preserved for anyone who cares to look. Some may have burned but many have survived. No one in my family seems to have been bothered to look up the founding mothers or they would have been surprised and excited by what they found. Of course the farther back in time you go, the harder it is to trace people and women don't get named as often in records.

**
Then definitely time for some belated 'Herstory'!! Interesting that marriages were civil - given how religious Puritans were. Or was it because of 'state law' that it was so?
In England, churches did keep registers of births, deaths and marriages, but they could be lost, or incomplete, etc, and if one of the partners was from another parish, presumably harder to trace?
I believe all the parish records were then incorporated into the Office of Public Records (?) in the 1830s?

**
That's extraordinary - and very moving really. I think there was a similar finding when they compared the DNA recovered from a (Neolithic?) skeleton in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, and found links to existing local populations.
Sadly, in a way, as we all become so, so, so much more mobile, those 'local links' will disappear. I guess they'll be trackable, but highly dispersed.
How about you? Any Austen characters in your family tree? LOL!