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The Tea Tray > Character Names on Your Family Tree

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message 1: by QNPoohBear (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments I've been doing some research on my family tree. Apparently I'm related to an Anne Wentworth and Emma Woodhouse (from Yorkshire). There was large landowning family named Wentworth-Fitzwilliam there until 1979! The Wentworths died out before Persuasion was written but within Jane's lifetime.

How about you? Any Austen characters in your family tree? LOL!


message 2: by Abigail (new)

Abigail Bok (regency_reader) | 513 comments That’s an extraordinary series of coincidences! I can’t think of anyone in my family tree with an Austenian name.


message 3: by Emmy (new)

Emmy B. | 271 comments There is a stately home called Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, which belonged to the Fitzwilliam family:

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.


message 4: by QNPoohBear (last edited May 16, 2021 12:39PM) (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments Emilia wrote: "There is a stately home called Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, which belonged to the Fitzwilliam family:

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.


message 5: by Juan Manuel (new)

Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez (jm15xy) | 54 comments @QNPoohBear:

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.


message 6: by Beth-In-UK (new)

Beth-In-UK | 1195 comments Is it Rockingham who's associated with the wonderfully named (if somewhat short lived I believe) Tesselated Ministry?


message 7: by Juan Manuel (last edited May 17, 2021 10:40AM) (new)

Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez (jm15xy) | 54 comments @Beth-In-UK:

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.


message 8: by QNPoohBear (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments Juan Manuel wrote: "@QNPoohBear:

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.


message 9: by QNPoohBear (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments OK NOT a coincidence. A Darcy married a Wentworth! Not my line unfortunately, but it sure sounds like Jane knew this family line.


message 10: by Beth-In-UK (new)

Beth-In-UK | 1195 comments This sounds a bit 'obvious' but it can be weird to realise that we all have ancestors from history. I know that sounds like well, yes, so we do, but to think, really think, that at any and every time of the world's existence (well, since Homo sap evolved!) (or, indeed, life itself), there has always been someone around who is related to us.

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!)


message 11: by QNPoohBear (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments Beth-In-UK wrote: "This sounds a bit 'obvious' but it can be weird to realise that we all have ancestors from history. I know that sounds like well, yes, so we do, but to think, really think, that at any and every ti..."

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.


message 12: by Beth-In-UK (new)

Beth-In-UK | 1195 comments It's more difficult to trace the distaff descendance though, because the surnames keep changing!!


message 13: by Juan Manuel (new)

Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez (jm15xy) | 54 comments @ Beth-In-UK:

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.


message 14: by QNPoohBear (new)

QNPoohBear | 739 comments Beth-In-UK wrote: "It's more difficult to trace the distaff descendance though, because the surnames keep changing!!"

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.


message 15: by Beth-In-UK (new)

Beth-In-UK | 1195 comments No one in my family seems to have been bothered to look up the founding mothers
**

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?


message 16: by Beth-In-UK (new)

Beth-In-UK | 1195 comments 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.
**

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.


message 17: by SaraB (new)

SaraB | 4 comments Haha, not such surnames, but I have Victoria, Emma... in my fam


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