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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-10 > 0846196756


From: Stewart Baldwin <>
Subject: Re: Oldest male line?
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 15:39:16 -0700


(Leonard M. Keane) wrote:

>In <54mmof$>
>(bryan tinlin) writes:
>>
>>What is the oldest traceable European straight male line from someone who
>>is alive today? Are there any male line descendants of Charlemagne in the
>>present day or, if not, who was the last one?
>>
>>Bryan
>>
>
>
>As I've recently posted, the oldest traceable unbroken male-line
>descent for a European family is a horserace between O'Neill, McCarthy
>and O'Conor (Don), all having present-day descendants who are heirs to
>the ancient royal dynastys of each. The dates are subject to some
>debate, but somewhere between 350 - 550 A.D. is in the ballpark. I'm
>not sure about Charlemagne.
>
>Len.

Actually, there is no reason to single out two or three Irish families
here. In fact, there are numerous Irish families whose traceable origin
goes back to roughly the same time, and insufficient evidence to "break
the ties," since it is often not known where the fiction ends and the
history begins, and the earliest historical generations cannot be dated
accurately enough.

Stewart Baldwin

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