Mary Boleyn, c. 1500-1543

Yes, THE Mary Boleyn, aka "the other Boleyn girl." She was the sister of King Henry VIII's second wife, Anne "the most happy." I am directly descended from Mary Boleyn Carey twice: through her daughter, Catherine, and her son, Henry. Subsequently, she is my 13th great grandmother twice. To put this relationship into perspective, I found this handy chart that can be accessed here http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pamonval/howbig.html . The chart calculates how many grandparents we have in each generation through the 15th great grandparents. It's pretty mind-blowing.

Generation #	Relationship	No. in generation	Accumulated Total
1	Parents	2	2
2	Grand Parents	4	6
3	Great Grandparents	8	14
4	2 X Great grandparents	16	30
5	3 X Great grandparents	32	62
6	4 X Great grandparents	64	126
7	5 X Great grandparents	128	254
8	6X Great grandparents	256	510
9	7X Great grandparents	512	1,022
10	8 X Great grandparents	1,024	2,046
11	9 X Great grandparents	2,048	4,094
12	10 X Great grandparents	4,096	8,190
13	11 X Great grandparents	8,192	16,382
14	12 X Great grandparents	16,384	32,766
15	13 X Great grandparents	32,768	65,534
16	14 X Great grandparents	65,536	131,070
17	15 X Great grandparents	131,072	262,142

That's right. Mary Boleyn is two of my 32,768 13th great grandparents! This is why genealogy takes some people a lifetime. I would have to track down over 400,000 people to complete a pedigree chart that goes back 17 generations. Depressing and exciting all at once!

On another very cool note, Mary's daughter Catherine (12th great-grandmother) is accepted by many historians as the illegitimate daughter of King Henry VIII and her son Henry (my 12th great-grandfather) has also been speculated to have been Henry's son. That means Henry VIII is pretty well accepted to have been my 13th great grandfather at least once, and maybe twice.

I'll briefly describe the lineage for Mary Boleyn within both lines:

                                                         Mary Boleyn 1500-1543

Catherine Carey (1524-1569)                                                                  Henry Carey (1526-1596)
Lady Anne Knoylls (1557-1608)                                                             John Carey (?-1617)
Gov John West (1590-1669)                                                                   Thomas Carey (1613-1687)
Col John West (1632-1689)                                                                    Thomas C Carey (1633-1681)
Cap Thomas West (1670-1714)                                                              Thomas Carey (1666-1720)
Thomas West (1690-1777)                         married                                  Bridget Carey (?-1777?)
                                                        Thomas West (1740-1802)

                                                        Thomas West (1760-1848)     

                                                        John F West (1796-1885)

                                                        Barney West (1827-1914)

                                                        James West (1858-?)

                                                        Hazel West (1917-1974)

                                                        My Grandma (1949-living)

                                                        My Mom (1967-living)

                                                        Me (1987-living)      

There's more to come along these lines. In the West part of my family (my great-grandmother was born a West), there are several noble and royal lines. Once you find one noble or royal, you usually find an abundance. I've also learned that many of these aristocratic lines ended up being American colonial settlers. I thought my family was full of recent immigrants, but I was wrong. A lot of my family lines end up being colonial. 

                                                      

Tracing my Roots

I have begun to find fascinating facts about several of my family lines. These family histories date back to the colonial days of America and some date back to medieval Europe. With my recent family history discoveries I have had to change my perception of certain family traits and mottoes. For the longest time I believed my tree was tenuously rooted in a dusty, red clay-soil with no hope of recovering a past that involved illiterate, undocumented farmers and housewives. Recently, I have begun to uncover a treasure trove of ancient family lines that I hope to share with anyone willing to listen.

To begin, I have to preface these fantastic discoveries by telling of my most recent ancestors. My grandmother grew up in the 1950s and 60s with no running water or electricity. To put this into perspective, color TV began broadcasting in the early1950s. My grandmother had never seen white bread, or any other pre-packaged food until her marriage in the mid-1960s. Put bluntly, she was poor and inexperienced. Her parents were uneducated and believed in working hard, playing harder and dying young. She has told me that the only thing she ever learned from her parents and grandparents was how to survive, that they were too busy feeding the family to worry about bettering their children's lives. I am using this brief description to put into context my grandmother's rich, noble, and royal family history.

More to come...