Many faithful and diligent genealogists over the past decades have traced the Bestor family name back to King Edward III, William the Conqueror and beyond. However, this royal ancestry should be no justification for snobbery by anyone in the Bestor family, or elsewhere. Royal descent from English monarchs is now recognized as being somewhat common among residents of the United States.
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At one time, publications on this matter stressed royal connections for only a few families.
One example included James Pierpont and others. Further, we see NEHGS articles on "tycoon" families and US presidents of royal descent that emphasize the discriminating notion of royal ancestry. That is, those of royal descent excel (to wit, Roberts' article on eminent descendants of Mrs. Alice Freeman Thompson Parke). Many of these people were at the forefront of social progress. For example, Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson, who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her progressive beliefs. According to American genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, an expert on royal descent, most Americans with significant New England Yankee, Mid-Atlantic Quaker, or Southern plantation owner ancestry are descended from medieval kings, especially those of England, Scotland, and France. William Addams Reitwiesner documented many U.S. descendants of Renaissance and modern monarchs.
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The underlying truth is that medieval royal descent is very widespread among Americans, although this fact is not widely or clearly understood by
most American students of genealogy. The purpose of this publication is to demystify the story of how the citizens of the world's greatest democratic
Republic can, in so many cases. carry their ancestry back to English and other monarchs of the 14th, 13th, 12th. 11th Centuries A.D. and earlier.
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The story begins with the Fifth Century AD. when the Western half of the Roman Empire was overrun by German-speaking barbarian tribes who
established their kingdoms on the ruins of Roman civilization. Franks and Burgundians in France; Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians in Britain;
Ostrogoths in Italy; Visigoths and Suevi in Spain; Vandals in North Africa.
Everywhere their invasions created a complete break in the continuity of vital records of the European peoples. No one living today can trace a proven genealogical line back beyond the collapse of Roman power in the
West and the consequent destruction of the Roman systems of record-keeping. Barbarian conquerors were ruled over by dynasties of warrior kings
whose intermarriages formed a family network of monarchs covering what is now Western Europe. Indeed, it is accurate to think of the European
kingdoms of the medieval period (500-1500 AD.) as being governed by a large royal clan connected in each generation by frequent intermarriages.
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Due to the law of primogeniture, many colonists of high social status were younger children of English aristocratic families who came to America looking for land because, given their birth order, they could not inherit. Many of these immigrants initially enjoyed high standing where they settled. They could often claim royal descent through a female line or illegitimate descent. Some Americans, including the Bestors, descend from these 17th-century British colonists who had royal descent through a female ancestor. There were at least 650 colonists with traceable royal ancestry, and 387 left descendants in America (almost always numbering many thousands, and some as many as one million). These colonists with royal descent settled in every state, but a large majority lived in Massachusetts or Virginia. Several families which settled in those states, over the two hundred years or more since the colonial land grants, intertwined their branches with immigrants from other lands as well as the local natives.
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(continue family history)
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| The Bestor Family historians are always looking for new material. Anyone with information about the Bestor family history or genealogy is welcome to email ancestor information to lbestor@bestor.org. Register now to receive the family newsletter, as well as notices of the times and dates of future events!
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