Queen Elizabeth's Bridesmaid: A Family History Challenge



The Royal Wedding Party 1947 Princess Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (photo from "the lost gallery" on Flickr)

 On Saturday, my Uncle Gordon called me up with a challenge. I love how he is always on the look out for a family connection. If he hears about someone on the TV or reads about someone in the news with the name Rhodes or Muirhead, I inevitably get a phone call sharing the details and asking me to look into it. He's not the only family member that does that - and I accept the challenges gladly because you just never know. I mean, I wouldn't know about our family connection to the Salem witch trials if I hadn't done the exact same thing!

So the story was this. He was watching a documentary on Queen Elizabeth and it shared some details about her wedding to Prince Philip.  It turns out that one of her eight bridesmaids was a Rhodes. Any connection?? There is the challenge.

I didn't have much hope for being able to discover the personal family history of one of the wedding party from a 1947 wedding. But this one turned out to be rather easy! In fact, the bridesmaid was Margaret Elphinstone who married Denys Gravenor Rhodes in 1950. So it is his family line that I needed to research back.

There is a great website called "The Peerage" which has the family histories of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe. His bride was the daughter of a Lord and he was the son of a Major who married the daughter of a Baron. I don't know what it takes to be included in this but they obviously have the pedigree.

I was able to then click back along the patriarchal line of Rhodes. Once you get back a couple of generations (the same generation as my great great grandfather Herbert), this Rhodes line extends into New Zealand rather than Great Britain. I wondered how far that would be and by going a couple more generations back, the line is back in England and now in Lincolnshire. Our line is from Yorkshire/Derbyshire. So I looked a bit closer and it turns out Lincolnshire William Rhodes was buried in Yorkshire. His father was from this Yorkshire area. It isn't the same area as our Rhodes - and the line ended in 1696 in Kippax, Yorkshire, West Riding, England but since I haven't taken our line back that far, it is worth keeping in my notes. My own research of our Rhodes family is back to 1796 so who knows if further research would connect us up or not. I need to get a bit more creative now - I've been lucky with census records but it has been a long time since I've done any significant research with parish records. Just one more area where there is work to be done!

You can enjoy some of the highlights of Elizabeth II's wedding here on the BBC.

Margaret Rhodes became a lady in waiting to the Queen Mother after her husband Denys' death in 1981. She has written a book about her life, being raised in Scottish aristocracy and living a life that hearkens thoughts of Downton Abbey. It's called The Final Curtsy and is now on my reading list!

Genealogy Fan Chart

New Calling - Family History Consultant!

First task: Make a Genealogy Fan Chart using New Family Search. I'll have to get this printed at school tomorrow. Just looking at it shows how much work I have to do - linking records together. And also where the research gaps are. I am looking forward to being more focused on what work I am doing with this.

My Family Tree

Šternberg Family Tree, a photo by m-louis on Flickr.

A new year and another fresh start on my genealogy. It's been neglected for a while since I have been traveling and battling mice (a story for another day) but today I packed up my laptop, my flashdrives, my binders and files and drove out to Dad's place. We copied over my complete files - out of my Legacy program into his PAF program and set these up on both his desktop and laptop. After walking through a few screens of data, we got him set up on FamilySearch and went over how to search, find and add names with sources into his tree here. Then after a few tries, we finally got onto Ancestry.com and I showed him some original source records I've connected to his family names that he can browse later. All of that and it is very clear that my records are a MESS! Duplicates, incomplete and incorrect information, different information in the three different trees and no idea which one is the most accurate -- a big mess. So once again I need to reassess, start the cleanup and get moving forward again. I know my paper records are in better shape so I need to pull the files and clear up the confusion as best I can.

It was good to see that Dad is keen to be involved but I'm afraid I may have just overwhelmed him. I'll let him play around for a bit and make another trip over to plan out what our next steps should be. Wish me luck!

Champion 100

This weekend is the 100th anniversary of Champion, Alberta.  Both of my parents are from Champion, Ron Rhodes and Sheila Puzey, and after spending most of my childhood summers and Christmases in Champion, I claim it as my own.  Pictures and more to come.

Preparing for the Rhodes Reunion

Looking forward to pulling out my history books and preparing for the weekend with family at Clear Lake near Stavely.  I ran across this blog on Vulcan County History and found a story about the Sanderson School.  You can check it out below. 

http://vulcancountyhistory.com/2010/10/sanderson-school-no-2210/