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Subject: DESCENDANTS OF CHARLEMAGNE---HOW MANY?
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 10:29:46 GMT


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From: "D. Spencer Hines" <>
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
Subject: DESCENDANTS OF CHARLEMAGNE---HOW MANY?
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 10:31:04 -1000
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When I made the initial post in this thread on 27 Sep,
I had some naive hope that we might interest mathematicians, statisticians,
demographers, molecular biologists, historians, geneticists *and* genealogists
in the research that might lead to this particular Holy Grail of Charlemagne.

It is really bad form to answer one's own post, so I will not do that.
But I will lay out a few more *facts* such as they are. We have had too much
opining and not enough hard intellectual work on this issue. The second Duke
of Northumberland anecdotal evidence is a red herring, at this juncture.

A quick perusal of the standard sources----almanacs and the
Britannica---reveals that the World Population is approaching 6,000,000,000
people, i.e. six billion or 6 x 10^9 folks. We are not quite there yet,
but I want to keep the figures reasonably simple. I am trying to get a
first approximation of the number of Descendants of Charlemagne today to
an order of magnitude, i.e. a power of ten. Is it one million, ten million,
one hundred million or one billion? The refinement of the initial number
can come later.

My initial point of attack was on the gene pool of people who are
descended from Europeans. I did this not because I am a racist or eugenicist
or do not appreciate folks of all ethnic backgrounds. [My own wife
is Japanese, with a better pedigree than mine and I have two wonderful
kids who share the heritage of both the East and the West, as do
many folks here in Hawaii.]

I chose this so-called *European Gene-Pool* because, in an
already very complex question, I did not want to further muddy the
water with Silk Road births and ethnic mixing in Central Asia. This is not
the time to run after those red herrings. So let's not indulge in idle
chatter about racism where none is intended. Francis Galton will be left
to fend for himself.

A first approximation of the number of people in the World who
are the descendants of *Europeans* might well be 1,500,000,000, i.e.,
1.5 billion or 1.5 x 10^9 people. Yes, I know, we could argue about what
a *European* is. For this first approximation let us assume Russia
to the Urals, a traditional dividing point and those homo sapiens with
at least one parent of European descent. If we expanded the definition
to include those with at least one *grandparent* of European descent,
that obviously would increase the size of the gene pool.

Perhaps the outer number would be on the order of two billion.

In our own FAQ for soc.gen.medieval we find the following interesting
information, put together by competent genealogists, our fellow researchers:

"6. What are the chances that I have royal ancestry?
***********************************************

[Gary Boyd] Roberts notes (loc. cit., p. xiv) that almost
350 colonial immigrants

"left sizable, often huge, progenies...These 350 are a large
enough group so that living Americans with 50-100 colonial
immigrant ancestors in New England (or Long Island), in
Quaker (but not German or Scots-Irish) Pennsylvania, or in
the Tidewater South (but often not the Piedmont, Shenandoah
Valley, or mountainous 'backcountry') can expect to find a
royally descended forebear."

Of these 350 immigrants, 167 left ten or more descendants
treated in the Dictionary of American Biography. In the New
England Historic Genealogical Society newsletter NEXUS,
June-September 1994, Roberts says (p. 104) that 100 million is
very likely quite a conservative estimate of the number of
American descendants of these 167.

[Similar information is needed for other countries. Volunteers?]"

[N.B. Now this would be a noble effort! It would also help to answer
our fundamental question. How many Descendants of Charlemagne are
alive today in 1996?]

If Roberts stands by this estimate that 167 immigrants to America
produced 100 million descendants, we have a point of purchase, where we
can drive in another piton to climb higher.

Using the same standard sources, readily available, we see that
the current U.S. population is approximately 265,000,000 or 265 million.
Approximately 80% of that population is of European descent. [Self identified
in the U.S.] [Yes, I'm including many of the Hispanics as well. They have
their own very impressive royalty, linked to Charlemagne and the rest of Europe.
No racism here] Eighty percent of 265 million is 212 million.

One hundred million American royal descendants [per Roberts]
divided by 212 million total European descendants gives us a figure
of p = .47. This means that, based on Roberts's data, the probability
of royal descent for an American of European descent is .47 or 47
folks out of 100.

Previously, in this thread, we have been given the data that
30% [thirty percent] of the inhabitants of the U.K. are descended from Edward III.
This figure may well be low. We might expect that, of those folks who
stayed in Europe rather than immigrating to the New World, a greater percentage
would be of royal descent than those who immigrated. It would be very helpful
to have the numbers for France and Germany, in particular.

One of the interesting things [dirty little secrets?] that the
*Masters of the Universe of Genealogy* don't tell newcomers is that once
one *proves* a link to a European royal house, it is a relatively easy job,
in the lion's share of cases, to prove a Descent from Charlemagne.
It's not that "All of Us Are Related" or some other silly formula, but
that the royal houses are related in quite specific ways and can be traced
back to Charlemagne through the maternal links, if the paternal links
fail to produce the desired results.

For example, the royal descent of President George Washington
can be traced through his third Great-Grandmother, Margaret Butler, if
you don't believe the descent from Crinan and the Scottish kings on the
Washington side of his pedigree.

So, by the same logic, the 100 million Americans that Gary Boyd
Roberts tells us are of Royal Descent can ostensibly be proved to be
descendants of Charlemagne.

If we take the 30% figure for the U.K as a conservative first
approximation for the whole, and multiply that percentage by 1.5 billion
folks in the *European Gene Pool* we come up with a figure of 450,000,000
or 450 million people of European descent who are descended from Charlemagne,
as a conservative first approximation. This is, of course, a
probability of p = .3.

When we get better data from other countries and then begin to
explore intriguing but lesser issues, such as the second Duke of Northumberland,
the Silk Road and Hungary and Russia [why not India as well?] we will
probably increase this number. An eventual figure of 600 million
might not be unreasonable.

In *Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne's Descendants*
compiled by Marcellus Donald R. von Redlich, LL.B., LL.D., Ph.D.,originally
published by the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne in 1941 and republished
by GPC in 1972 and 1979 [ISBN 0-8063-0494-4]; Professor Arthur Adams, Ph.D.
says the following in the Foreword [p. xviii]:

"Somebody has said that a proved line of descent from Charlemagne
is the supreme achievement in genealogy. If this be so, it is not because of
any inherent superiority such blood may give the descendant, though perhaps
something might be said as to that, [N.B. Note the not so artful hedge here.]
but because of the difficulty of finding records to give an unbroken line
of descent for some twelve hundred years.

Doubtless thousands, even millions,[N.B. How about hundreds of millions?]
of people are descended from the great Emperor, though we should not
be misled by computations in geomatrical [sic] progression to the belief
that everybody on earth *must* be. But not many thousands, probably
[N.B. Another, not so artful, hedge. He's not sure if they can prove it
or not, because he hasn't really crunched the numbers.] can prove the descent.

So the search after a proved descent from Charlemagne has the
interest of an historical quest and demands the use of all we know of the
history of Western Europe through the centuries, all we can learn of sources
and methods of historical research. [N.B. Adams is absolutely right here.]

The working out of a descent from the great progenitor of European
royalty, for practically all the royalty at least of Europe descend from him,
gives one a cross section of the whole sweep of medieval and modern history
to be gained hardly in any other way. [N.B. Right On Again! This is the
best reason for trying to prove the line of descent from Charlemagne.]"

For those of us who have traced the tangled path back to
Carolus Magnus, the realization that one is, for example, descended both
from William the Conqueror [The Winner] and Harold II [The Loser] never allows
for quite the same aloof view of the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
It is certainly no longer a dry abstraction in a history book.

In my opinion, the danger for those of us who are royal searchers
and sniffers is that we lose sight of the mathematical and genetic realities.
At the turn of the century, self-anointed blue bloods were roundly
criticized by the Progressives for sitting around in their clubs and
parlors, comparing their pedigrees and wallowing in the ecstasy of how noble
they all were. They should have been out practicing the Social Gospel
and helping the downtrodden.

This was a major turnoff for Theodore Roosevelt, who turned
away from it---as well as for his cousin Franklin Delano, who never quite let
it go, but hid his fascination with royalty reasonably well. While FDR was
living, we never really knew the depth of his interests in this field.

It is certainly true that being able to *prove* the linkage to
Karl der Grosse provides prima facie evidence that a family has been
literate for a considerable period of time and has probably kept good
records. But beyond that, would anyone feel "special" if they were
invited to an "exclusive" party for 450,000,000 of the glitterati
and cognoscenti?

We need additional data from other countries and new perspectives.
I hope others will see this as an important enough issue to contribute.

Sincerely and Aloha me pumehana, Spence Hines

D. Spencer Hines-----".....All stories, if continued far enough end in death
and he is no true story teller who would keep that from you."-----Ernest
Hemingway; (1899-1961) "To die soon or die late matters nothing; to die
badly or die well is the important point."-----Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(c. 4 B.C. -- A.D. 65)

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