So I haven't posted anything interesting because I've been so busy. I brought Belvedere home and he's amazing (photos to follow in another post.

But I thought I'd also start posting about all the crazy geneological research I've found over the last several months. I've taken an interest in history of the Dark Ages.

Why?

Because I managed to find out that 10 generations of my ancestors lived here:



Basically, on my mother's side, if you go back far enough you find that one of our lines goes back to a super rich plantation owner in very early Virginia. You go back further through family trees and discover that the line goes back through men who have "Esquire" attached to their names, and within four generations or so you discover Govenors of Bramburg, essentially, the rulers of Northumberland.

This goes back for 10 generations beyond that to sometime in the 11th or 12th century.

So how did this person get such a fancy castle you ask?

Because my 16th great grandfather or something ridiculous like that, saved King Richard the Lionheart from certain death in the 3rd Crusade at a battle in Israel, basically the first battle right after landing there.

If you start to read about military during that time, those who traveled with the king came from nobel birth and if you go back further in the 1st Forster of Bramburg's linage, you discover, his great grandfather was the brother of Matilda of Flanders, the first queen of united England who was actually french. So basically the story gets really crazy from there and the lines of those two can be traced back to Frankish and Germanic Kings that trail off somewhere around when you get to the Caroligians and Charlemenge, the father of united Europe.

Granted, none of this matters now but I think the history of it is pretty cool...