Viking Origins: Lineage

The Vikings invade, from the Bayeux Tapestry.

Open disclaimer: This information is based on accepted lineage for royal lines. I do not claim that these lines are 100% accurate but, as most amateur genealogists, I am working under the assumption that they are, until I prove that they are not. I am not a true historian, I am just trying to research my family lines.

It should also be noted that no one agrees on the accuracy of lineages this old. There are differing birth and death dates between written accounts. There are so many variations of name spellings that exactly who the documents were really referring to is a source of speculation. So take every with a grain of salt. This is the best of what is currently believed to be true. It’s a possible/likely truth, not an indisputable one.

Rollo Ragnvaldsson was born in 846 in Maer, Norway. He died having been made Duke of Normandy in 932, in Rouen, Normandy. Both my parents descend from him, from two separate children, following a long trail down to re-converge in me.

Rollo to Riddle

34x) Rollo Rognvaldsson, with Poppa de Valois (taken after a raid)

33x) dau. Adaele ‘Gerloc’ de Normandie, married Duke Guillaume III of Aquitaine

32x) dau. Adelaide de Poitou, married King Hugh Capet

31x) son King Robert of Orleans II, married Constance de Toulouse

30x) son Henri I of France, married Anna Agnesa Yaroslavna, Duchess of Kiev

29x) son King Phillippe I of France, married Countess Bertha of Holland

28x) son King Louis VI of France, married Countess Alix Marie of Savoie

27x) son King Louis VII of France, married Constance of Castile

26x) dau. Alys, Countess of the Vexin, married Count William IV of Pontieu

25x) dau. Countess Marie de Ponthieu, married Count Simon II de Dammartin

24x) dau. Jeanne de Dammartin, married King Fernando II of Castile & Leon

23x) dau. Princess Leonor of Castile & Leon, married King Edward I, Longshanks

22x) dau. Princess Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, married Humphrey de Bohun VIII

21x) son William de Bohun, married Elizabeth de Badlesmere

20x) dau. Elizabeth de Bohun, married Richard FitzAlan III

19x) dau. Elizabeth FitzAlan, married Sir Robert Gousell

18x) dau. Elizabeth Gousell, married Robert Wingfield

17x) son Sir John Wingfield, married Elizabeth FitzLewis

16x) son Sir John Wingfield II, married Margaret Dorward

15x) son Thomas Wingfield, married Elizabeth Woodhouse

14x) dau. Elizabeth Wingfield, married Geoffrey Downing

13x) son George Downing, married Dorcas Blois

12x) son Sir George Downing, married Miss Bellamy

11x) dau. Abigail Downing, married John Goode [travelled from ENG to MA]

10x) dau Abigail Goode, married Robert Moulton

9x) son Robert Moulton II, married Mary Cooke [in Salem during Witch Trials]

8x) son Robert Moulton III, married Hannah Groves [in Salem during Witch Trials]

7x) son Freeborn Moulton, married Rebekah Walker

6x) dau. Rebekah Moulton, married Thomas Ridel, of Ireland

5x) son Joseph Riddle, married Mary or Polly

4x) son Freeborn-Moulton Riddle, married Abigail Chaffe

3x) son Marquis DeLafayette Riddle, married Sarah Clickner

2x) son Lafayette Riddle, married Frances Ann Gillette

1x) son Harold Lafayette Riddle, married Elsie Elizabeth Durant

Their son Richard James Riddle was my grandfather. On my mother’s side, I am descended from Rollo through 15 daughters and 20 sons.

Rollo to Eaton

40x) Rollo Rognvaldsson, with Poppa de Valois (taken in a raid)

39x) son William I, Duke of Normandy, with Adele Sprota de Bretagne (a concubine)

38x) son Richard I, Duke of Normandy, married Gunnera de Crepon of Denmark

37x) son Richard II, Duke of Normandy, married Judith de Bretagne

36x) son Robert VI, Duke of Normandy, married Herleva ‘Artelle’ de Falaise

35x) dau. Adelaide de Normandie, married Count Lambert of Boulougne

34x) son Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria, married Judith of Lens

33x) dau. Mathilda de Northumbria, married Simon de Senlis/Saint Liz

32x) dau Maud de Senlis, married Lord Saher de Quincey

31x) son Sir Robert de Quincey, married Orabella de Leuchars

30x) son Earl Saher de Quincey, married Margaret de Beaumont

29x) dau. Loretta de Quincey, married William de Valognes

28x) dau. Sibilia de Valognes, married Robert de Stuteville IV

27x) dau. Helwise de Stuteville, married William de Lancaster

26x) son Henry de Lea, married unknown

25x) son John de Lea, married Hawise de Lancaster [his aunt/her nephew]

24x) son Henry de Lea, married unknown

23x) son William de Lea, married Clemence de Banastre

22x) dau. Sibilia de Lea, married Sir Richard de Houghton

21x) dau. Sybil de Houghton, married Robert de Clitheroe

20x) son Hugh de Clitheroe, married Isabel de Gras

19x) dau. Mary Clitheroe, married John Tempest

18x) dau. Elizabeth Tempest, married Sir Richard Norton

17x) dau. Margaret Norton, married Sir John de Stapleton

16x) dau. Christina Stapleton, married Robert Cressett

15x) son Thomas Cressett, married Jane Joan Corbet

14x) son Richard Cressett, married Joan Wrottesley

13x) dau. Jane Cressett, married Sir Henry Eaton

12x) son William Eaton, married Martha Jenkins

11x) son William Eaton II, Minister, married Jane Hussey

10x) son Nicholas Eaton, married Katherine Masters

9x) son John Eaton, married Abigail Gilson [travelled ENG to MA, 1635]

8x) son John Eaton, married Alice

7x) son Thomas Eaton, married Lydia Gay

6x) son Thomas Eaton, married Elizabeth Parker

5x) son Benjamin Eaton, married Hepsibah Skiff

4x) son Joshua Eaton, married Lucy Gould

3x) son Solomon Gould Eaton, married Hannah Ann Treadwell

2x) son Bennett Eaton, married Theresa Cordelia Tenney

1x) son Royal Levant Eaton, married Hattie Eva Smith

Their son Mark Dutcher Eaton was my grandfather. On my father’s side I am descended from Rollo through 13 daughters and 28 sons.

Are we cousins? Are any of these names familiar to you? Do you have differing information? Do we share ancestors in common? Shoot me an e-mail and let me know. I love meeting my very distant relations!

Viking Origins: Rollo Ragnsvaldsson

Open disclaimer: This information is based on accepted lineage for royal lines. I do not claim that these lines are 100% accurate but, as most amateur genealogists, I am working under the assumption that they are, until I prove that they are not. I am not a true historian, I am just trying to research my family lines. Especially in documenting old lineages, all history seems to be in dispute.

I previously wrote how I discovered that my mother and father shared a common ancestor in Henry II, King of England. Last year, I found that they have another ancestor in common, further back, in Rollo Ragnsvaldsson, the first Duke of Normandy (or Count- I’ll only say once that historians are actively arguing about whether there even were duchys and dukedoms yet). His name is also seen as Rognsvaldsson, with the ‘a’ and ‘o’ being interchangeable. I use both. Rollo Ragnvaldsson is my 34x Great-Grandfather on my mother’s side and my 40x Great-Grandfather on my father’s side.

Rollo Ragnvaldsson was the son of

Ragnvald I Eysteinsson, the son of

Eystein Glumra Ivarsson, the son of

Ivar Halfdansson, the son of

Halfdan Sveidsson, the son of

Sveide Sviadrasson, the son of

Svidri Heytsson, the son of

Heytir Gorrasson, my 41/47x Great-Grandfather.

Rollo ‘Rolf’ Ragnvaldsson was also known as Hrolfr the Ganger/Walker. He was born in Maer, Nord-Trondelag in northern Norway, about 846 C.E. Rollo was the son of Ragnvald Eysteinsson, the Earl/Jarl of More, and Ragnhild Hilder Hrolfsdottir, daughter of Hrolf Nefia. The family’s insignia was a wolf’s head. The Orkneyinga saga mentions: “Earl Rognvald joined Harold fair-hair when he seized the land, but he (Harold) gave him lordship over both the Maeren and Romsdale; he had to wife Ragnhilda the daughter of Hrolf nosy; their son was Hrolf who won Normandy, he was so tall that horses could not carry him; for that he was called Ganging-Hrolf; from him are come the Rouen Jarls and the English Kings…”

There is a tale that King Harald vowed to leave his hair untrimmed until all of Norway was under his rule. Ten years later, he gave Earl Ragnvald the honor of cutting his hair and trimming up his beard. It is said that Harald’s sons took offense to the honor and burned Ragnvald, and many of his men, within his own home. The title Earl of More was passed on to Rollo’s brother Thori. The details cannot be verified, but it is known that Ragnvald died in his home, in a house fire.

Around 876, Rollo fell on the wrong side of King Harald ‘Fairhair’ Harfagre. Another folktale says he took advantage of the favor shown them by their King and took some cattle from Harald’s conquered lands. Whatever the true slight, he was banished from Norway to the Hebrides, where he found other men who did not wish to swear fealty to a King and they joined together in raiding Flanders before turning to France.

Rollo was a lesser leader in a Viking fleet of 700 ships that besieged Paris under Sigfred, who was given tribute to retreat from the city and leave it in peace. Rollo did not leave with Sigfred. Like others, he stayed behind and took raiding jobs for hire. He participated in the Viking raid on Bayeux. At the defeat and death of Berenger de Bayeaux, Rollo took his daughter Poppa de Valois of Normandy, approximately nineteen years old at the time, as his consort, though there is no record of an official marriage. Poppa’s grandfather was Pepin, Count of Peronne, the great-grandson of Charlemagne.

Legend says that unlike other Vikings, at this point, exiled from his home, Rollo Ragnsvaldsson was more interested in land he could settle on than plunder. I could not find history that agreed on a true timeline of events. That the following raids occurred is not in doubt.

Around the spring of 896, he participated in a raid on Rouen. The people watched as low ships with serpent heads and reptile tails filled the Seine. An Archbishop went to the Northman camp, alone, and received safe passage and fair treatment. Rollo/Rolf agreed to spare the people and their belongings if they turned their city over to him. He made Rouen his base camp and became known for his friendliness with the people: “Wherever he met with resistance, he showed, indeed, the relentless cruelty of the heathen pirate; but where he found submission, he was a kind master, and these qualities contributed to gain for him an easy and rapid conquest of Neustria, as the district of which Rouen was the capital was then called.”

Once he held Rouen, Rollo joined Vikings on another raid of Paris. They camped outside the fortified city for thirteen months, hoping to starve the people out. They eventually gave up without instigating battle and left Paris for the lands of Burgundy. Around 900 C.E. his son William I Longsword (my ancestor) was born. His other children with Poppa de Valois during this time period were Gerloc de Normandie who was baptized as Adela (my ancestor), Robert of Corbeil, Crespina de Normandie, Gerletta de Normandie, and Kathlin de Normandie.

In 911, Rollo was created the 1^st Duc de Normandie in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, by King Charles the Simple of France. On the condition that he would be baptized in the Christian faith and defend the Seine River against other invading forces, Rollo Ragnvaldsson was granted Rouen and lands around it. This land would be known in our histories as Normandy.

Legend says that when Rollo was bid to pay fealty to the King, and kiss his foot, he refused. He had one of his men do it in his stead, but all Northmen were proud. It is said that the man, rather than stooping down to kiss the foot, instead grabbed it and raised it to his lips, upending the King to his comrades’ delight. One tale did say the King was on horseback, and was almost upset, but claim it was not as disastrous an affair as it might have been. Either way, some stories say the Franks ignored the insult, and others say Rollo smoothed things over by apologizing for his country’s odd customs or bad manners.

The Northmen who created the origins of Normandy adopted the manners and behaviors of the nobles of England and France, even if they did not abandon all of their own ways. Rollo was baptized and given the Frankish name of Robert. Any man who was baptized in Rollo’s party was gifted with lands of his own. Rollo/Robert married Gisela, daughter of Charles the Simple. She was four years old at the time. It is historically agreed that they did not care at all for each other and she died childless.

In 922, Charles the Simple was deposed from the throne by Robert I. Rollo considered his oath to the King fulfilled with Charles’ death. He began a westward expansion into Le Mans, Bayeux, Bessinin, and Picardy. There are many differing stories about Rollo’s exploits as a master, but they all agree that he created an era of peace on his own lands. Whether it was a pile of gold or simply a priceless gold bracelet, tales tell that Rollo had precious goods left out in the public eye, and they were never stolen. One reason no one dared steal it was because none of his people had a need to. His serfs considered him a friend of the people. Another reason was that the punishment for doing so would be swift and final.

Rollo turned his Dukedom over to his son William/Guillaume I Longsword a year before his death. The historian Adhemar writes that at the end of his life, Rollo went mad. He ordered the beheading of one-hundred Christian prisoners, in order to honor the gods he had worshipped. In repentance for the act, he gifted various churches one-hundred pounds of gold to honor the “true god in whose name he had accepted baptism.” Historians agree that he may have embraced Christianity, but he never fully dismissed his pagan beliefs.

The Duke of Normandy, Rollo Ragnvaldsson, died and was entombed at Rouen, Caux, France. The epitaph on his tomb reads: In the temple’s womb rests Rollo/ Father and the first Duke of Normandy, devastated and founded by him/ Out of strength from this labour he died 933, aged over 80 years. His descendants, including William the Conqueror, were also Dukes of Normandy. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, they became Norman Kings of England as well.

When Trees Converge

Henry II, King of England

Open disclaimer: This information is based on accepted lineage for royal lines in England. I am not claiming that these lines are 100% accurate but, as most amateur genealogists, I am working under the assumption that they are, until I prove that they are not. I am not trying to claim royal heritage, I am just trying to trace my family lines.

I have already disproven what I thought I knew about my family tree a few times. It happens. Think about your lineage like ebbing and flowing tides. What the waves bring in one day help you piece the puzzle together. But what they bring in the next day may completely alter the picture you had developed. You have to be willing to be flexible to do this work, which I am.

I subscribe to the same theory that a lot of people in the world do. If you go back along all of our family trees far enough, we are all related, somehow and in some way. I have been lucky enough to find common ancestors among my friend group, which is thrilling in itself. Friends become cousins and remind you that every man, woman and child walking the street is, somewhere in the tree, a cousin. It’s the way genealogy humbles me. This is not just a quest to find the rivers that end in the pool of me. It’s the quest to uncover the pattern of flow between the humans of the world. We are deeply interwoven.

Imagine my surprise and delight when my family research led me to stumble upon a discovery I assumed could happen but never expected to find. I have 1,289 names on my family tree. There are 869 that belong to my father’s line and 420 to my mother’s line. And one of those names duplicates between the two of them.

My mother and father share a common ancestor in Henry II, King of England (1133-1189). In my paternal line, Henry II is my 26 times Great-Grandfather. That’s a lot of generations between us. He had a bastard son with his mistress Ida de Tosny, William Longespee, who was later legitimized as the 3^rd Earl of Salisbury. My father is descended from this son. In my maternal line, Henry II is my 27 times Great-Grandfather. My mother is descended from the marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine, his legitimate Queen. Their son John, King of England and father of Henry III is my ancestor.

From there, the lines diverge and follow very different paths, crossing oceans to a New World, to find each other again in a small town along the Erie Canal. And even from Henry II backwards, their lineage is different. My father’s line is full of Norman conquerors and Viking explorers of the North. My mother’s people travel south into indigenous France and Italy. But Henry II is the meeting place of two lines, a crossroads where blood meets blood, separating into separate bodies of water to cross and meet again in me, seven hundred and eighty-seven years later.

Being a Memory Keeper

Inevitably, parts of my journey involve taking in everything I have learned and processing through it, letting it change the way I see the world and my place in it. Not in large or grandiose ways, but in small ways that alter my perception. I am becoming a Memory Keeper, a library of details of lives that have passed on, bits and pieces of flesh that will tell a larger story when I have collected more of them.

Genealogical research is like putting together a giant puzzle. There are names and people that fit into the lifeline that becomes me. You have to match dates against places, children born and occupations. To help with my tasks, I split my ancestry into four pages, four mysteries to track down. There is my mom’s mother and father and then my dad’s mother and father. It simply made it easier for me to learn the names and histories while I kept track of where they fell in my family tree.

I went upwards, starting at myself, thinking of myself as patient zero, since all paths end in me. I have been going from parents to parents, through direct ancestors and their marriages, one generation at a time. My research is a tree, growing up and splitting into forks with every name found, reaching still for names undiscovered and unknown. I want to know where I came from. I want to know the migration of my people.

In less than a year I found two paths of immigrants who came to settle the new world, one maternal and one paternal, both traced back to the Norman invaders, traced back to the same village of Vikings. From my mother and my father backwards, around the vastness of family trees joining and splitting, merging and separating, I trace them back to the same village, to the same group of Vikings who claimed what would become Normandy. Could those comrade-in-arms have imagined that a thousand years after them their descendants would finally come together again? Is that not a wonder? Is that not a genius way of nature reminding us of our interconnectedness? It humbles me and fills me with peace.

And still… it prods something in my heart. It is sobering. In my research I try to include the names and birth dates of all of the children, not just the ones I am descended from. They flesh out more information about the lives my ancestors lived, how many children they had, how many survived… I made the decision though, for the sake of my sanity, not to delve into the lives of the siblings more than birth or death dates. If they are not a direct line to me, I don’t look into them more. My brain can only hold so many names and dates. But that means, if I were a future amateur genealogist, I would not pay attention to me.

I have no children. I will have no children. There will be no one to look back and find my name on their family tree as one of their ancestors. I don’t know why that fills me with such sadness. We are all forgotten, all eventually lost to the rivers of time. I may have discovered that “Mary unknown” wed one of my ancestors, but I don’t know who she was. And even though I know that Freeborn Wolfe, the name, came before me, I don’t know anything about her.

My nieces and nephew will remember me. My time with them has always been precious and too fleeting and I make the most of what we have. I am a loved one they see once a year, so much time stretching between captured moments. They know I love them but I am an occasion, like my own aunts and uncles who lived out of town were in my life. I hold the time we spend together in stasis from one to the next. Each time, they have aged a year of their life in seconds to me. They forget their youth, as we all do. But not me. I do not forget their youth. I remember everything.

My nieces will remember me and mourn me. But most of their children won’t know me. In the blink of a generation, I will be lost. Reflecting on all of the people that I don’t remember, the ancestors who once lived, and how little that not-knowing affects my life is, honestly, a weight off. It’s like the pressure of becoming an extraordinary person has dissipated and I understand I only have to be the best version of the person I am. What I want is to live fully present in myself and in my life so that when I die, I shall pass with such a dense burst of exhalation that the echo of my spirit vibrates on in the ether.

I am sometimes filled with the compulsion to go out and randomly carve my name in stone in the woods. I understand why so much of the world is covered in graffiti stating that so-and-so “was here.” The human part of me would at least be remembered in mystery than not at all. The spirit part of me understands that it is not our individual self that matters to the history of our species. It is how we evolve, how we migrate, how we leave the world behind us that is of importance.

If, when we die, we have touched lives and opened eyes, if we have loved and been loved, have we not made an impact on our world? This dance is at the core of the Work I do, the balancing shift between honoring the past and preparing a better future, and living in now. I don’t have any answers, just questions. How are my life choices rippling out into the future? How am I leaving this world a better one than I found it to be, for my nieces and nephew, for my grandnephew? For all those who will come after?

Ancestral Migrations

2011-1820: New York, United States

My mother is the last Riddle in our line, according to how the Western world understands genealogy. The truth is that the blood will continue to travel down in the lives of my nieces and nephew, and their children, and their children. Just because the name will fall out of use on our tongues doesn’t erase the blood.

It always comes back to the blood. Over a century, Riddles moved westward from the Massachusetts coast into the unsettled lands of Western New York. They were soldiers and farmers and family men.

1820-1759: Massachusetts, America

In America, we can trace the Riddles back to Thomas Ridel who married Rebekah Moulton in Monson, MA in 1759. He emigrated from Tyrone County, Ireland. Beyond that, there is no documentation as to who his parents were or when he actually came to America (barring a trip to Ireland to hope to root through old documents). I could have assumed this was the end of the trail, which it is, if the names of my ancestors are the only goal I am concerned with.

It’s just as important to me to know where my people came from, where they travelled, what they struggled through. I ran a search for the “history of Riddles in Tyrone County Ireland.” In the 1700s, many Presbyterian Scots were pushed to move out of the country, resulting in five great migrations of Scots-Irish to the New World. I assume one of the first four migrations were when Thomas came over:

• 1717-1718 (drought)
• 1725-1729 (poverty)
• 1740-1741 (famine)
• 1754-1755 (disastrous drought)
• 1771-1775 (poverty)

1759-1687: Tyrone Co., Ireland

The Riddles who settled in Tyrone Co. did so during a time in Europe when William and Mary, Protestants, were fighting the Catholic King James to keep England from falling back under Catholic rule after he gave birth to a legitimate Catholic heir. Protestant landowners began seeking out others willing to move to Northern Ireland and push out the Catholics there. The Riddles settled in Ulster and Tyrone Co. and for just over a century, taking on the description of Scots-Irish.

1687-1100: Lothian, Scottish Lowlands

The people of the lowlands were not Scottish, nor were they English. They did not wear kilts, speak Gaelic and they didn’t live in clans. They were descended of Viking blood, the children of Normans who interbred with Scottish families.

They were Northmen who became Lowlanders, existing in between political and geographical countries in lands that were difficult to farm and subjected to multiple cattle raids that eventually left them no option but to attempt the same. The Ridels were among the first Normans to hold estates in Scotland.

In 1125, Walter Ridel received the oldest charter gifted from a King to a layman, in the lands originally called Lilliesleaf. They were called by the name Riddell in the 1400s. Because of this original charter, Riddell became a denotation of lands held by families not of Scottish heritage (i.e. Cranston Riddell and Glen-riddell).

Walter Ridel was thought to be a brother or nephew of Gervasius/Gervase/Geoffrey Ridel, both of whom travelled to Scotland with David I, Prince and Duke of Cumberland. They were both favored friends of the court. Gervase was appointed High Sheriff of Roxburghshire in 1116. The Ridels lived in the lowlands for generations.

1100-1066: England

Where did they come from, if they weren’t Scottish or English? Thanks to historians, I found an answer. The Sieur de Riddel, and his brothers, accompanied William the Conqueror in the Battle of Hastings and was a man of importance to William, who appointed him Lord-Chief-Justice of England. They were Norman invaders, come to conquer the island. Gervase was granted lands there, perishing at sea in 1120 on return trip to France. His sons stayed on in England.

1066-940: Normandy, France: Land of the Northmen

In 910, the Viking Jarl, Thorfinn Rollo the Ganger, invaded France. Rollo is considered to be the first great Norman invader (and is an unverified paternal ancestor of mine). The Vikings were explorers who began their raids in search of food. When they discovered the fertile lands of France, some of the Scandanavians decided to stay. My ancestors were among these men.

940-unknown: Rugdale or Ryedale, Scandanavia

The Ridels were Scandanavians who are believed to have originated in Rugdal or Ryedale, known as the Valley of Rye. It was thought that the spelling changed in the pronunciation of Rye-dale on the Scottish tongue. Another theory is that the meaning of the name never lost its original meaning.

A riddle was a tool, or instrument, used to clean and winnow rye and other grains. The surname Ridler or Riddler denoted one who winnowed grain.

Variants of the surname are: RIDEL, RIDDELL, RIDDLE, RIDDEL, RIDALL, RIDDEL, RIDDAL, RIDAL, RIDALE, RIDDELLE, RIDDELS, RIDDLETON, RIDDLEY, RIDELEIGH, RIDLAND, RIDLE, RIDLER, RIDLEY, RIDLON, RILLY, RUDDELL, RUDDLE, RUGDAL, RYDDLAND, RYDLEY, RYEDALE

Ancestral Migrations

How many other families would find themselves traced back to the same Scandanavian people? The lesson in this for me is that we cannot afford to define ourselves by who we are- all those labels and boxes- because we all were the same people at some point in time. Remember that the next time you are walking about your city, and look around at your human kin.