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  1. #1
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    Default Family line Sir Hand de Benenden

    Howdy from across the pond!

    I'm a proud Texan that has become an avid anglophile after more than a year's genealogy research of my surname and family's history.

    I have traced my family line directly to Sir Hand de Benenden, Kent 1420, through his son; Sir Henry Hand de Benenden, Kent 1440, to his son; Lord Sir Thomas Hand de Benenden 1462, husband of Lady Agnes Juliet Kent Hand.

    I have reached a dead-end with Sir Hand 1420. I have some reason to suspect he is, in-fact Sir Henry Stafford. Many genealogy sites claim Sir Henry Hand (1440) was married to Countess Lady Margaret Beaufort (some don't).

    Any help from my Brit cousins would be greatly appreciated!

    Once this covid mess subsides, my wife and I are considering a pilgrimage to Kent, Staffordshire, and possibly other areas.

    Daniel S. Hand (1946 - )


    God save the Queen!

  2. #2
    Super Moderator - Completely bonkers and will never change.
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    Hello Daniel,

    Welcome to British-Genealogy.

    I think I can safely say that none of the Sir Henry de Hands have any connection to Margaret Beaufort.

    The sad truth is that once you get back to even the 1600s records can be very sketchy, and going further back they get even sketchier and quite unreliable. Members of the royal family are about the only people who have a reiable family tree.

    The nobility did have something called 'The visitations of the Heralds' to help with their pedigrees. Though it would seem that even these could be fabricated on occasions.
    https://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/guide/vis.shtml

    I've just checked one entry on the web after searching for 'Sir Henry Hand de Benenden' and it says Sir Thomas Hand. born 1462 was the father of Thomasine and Johannis, who were born 1493 and 1500 respectively. Considering that on the same page Sir Thomas was said to have died in 1493 I find it slightly difficult to believe that he was the father of
    Johannis.

    The brutal truth is that a lot of the family trees on the internet are as reliable as a chocolate teapot. (Even ones relating to the 1800s are unreliable.)
    Most Brits count themselves lucky to get back to 1700 with proven ancestry. I've managed that with one of my lines, and if someone else's work checks out, with two.

    Pam
    Vulcan XH558 - “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

  3. #3
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    Thanks for the reply Pam.

    A little disconcerted, but not discouraged.I see what you mean by confusing and inconsistent Brit genealogy records. The fact that online sources have Sir Thomas Hand's death date as 1493, 1520 and 1559 is an example.

    I'm surprised by your statement about the difficulty of tracing one's ancestors accurately in Merry Old. I can very easily trace my direct line to the very first Hand to immigrate to America in the early 1600's. He was a member of the Quaker sect run out of England by Archbishop Loud.

    Our records seem intact for the most part despite your boys burning most of our courthouses in 1812.

    I suspect you are correct about Sir Hand c.1440 not having married Lady Margaret.
    This is just part of the mystery I am researching.

    Just a couple of possibilties that I consider are 1. Lady Margaret was determined to have a Tudor king and packed Thomas off to visit country relatives.
    2. Thomas was a bastard child of Sir Hand's and unknown.

    Have a nice day!

  4. #4

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    Pam is perfectly correct when she talks about the difficulty of documenting family lines in the 17th century and beyond. Most of the population was illiterate and relied on church records rather than keeping their own. There are a lot of reasons why papers have not survived: damp, acid ink (which produces a lace-like effect with holes where the paper was), fire, civil wars, two World Wars, need I go on?

    Those who have ancestors who lived in well-built stone houses with a proper room to store documents (and a clerk to care for them)obviously have an advantage.

    If you have a complete line back to the 1600s, you are very fortunate!

    Margaret Beaufort's 4 husband are very well documented, I'm afraid. A Papal dispensation was necessary for the Beaufort/Stafford marriage as they were related.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lesley Robertson View Post
    Pam is perfectly correct when she talks about the difficulty of documenting family lines in the 17th century and beyond. Most of the population was illiterate and relied on church records rather than keeping their own. There are a lot of reasons why papers have not survived: damp, acid ink (which produces a lace-like effect with holes where the paper was), fire, civil wars, two World Wars, need I go on?

    Those who have ancestors who lived in well-built stone houses with a proper room to store documents (and a clerk to care for them)obviously have an advantage.

    People often blame the internet for bad data, but the problem started long before the web. For example, the following describes a genuine book for sale in a catalogue about 20 years ago (apologies to former members of the late soc.genealogy.britain who may have seen it before):

    "KNOWLES, GEORGE PARKER. A GENEALOGICAL AND HERALDIC ACCOUNT OF THE COULTHARTS OF COULTHART AND COLLYN. TO WHICH ARE ADDED THE PEDIGREE OF SEVEN OTHER CONSIDERABLE FAMILIES ETC. WITH A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ROSSES OF DALTON IN THE COUNTY OF DUMFRIES. Printed for private circulation, London 1855. frontis coat of arms, plus other arms in text, large folding pedigree, the whole work printed on vellum, one of 75 copies printed. (An elaborate and expensive hoax: The seven other considerable families never existed. The man who had it published was of uncertain origin. The man who is believed to have been his grandfather was a half-witted small farmer known locally in Kells as 'Laird Cowtart'. The place and castle of Coulthart never existed and the arms were borrowed from the Essex family of Colt and others [See The Ancestor vol iv pps 61-80, Jan 1903])."
    Imagine the excitement of someone called Coultart who found the book, but not the evaluation!

    If you have a complete line back to the 1600s, you are very fortunate!

    Hopefully, since my ancestors appear to be of high nobility, directly related to the Dyves through Sir Thomas Hand c.1510, the Royal Aldeberges through Lady Agnes Kent Hand, etc., I would guess their homes were of stone, relatively dry and substantial.

    If English history is so hopelessly inaccurate, muddled and confusing, I wonder at the purpose of a Brit genealogy forum. :\

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jabberwockie View Post
    Thanks for the reply Pam.

    A little disconcerted, but not discouraged.I see what you mean by confusing and inconsistent Brit genealogy records. The fact that online sources have Sir Thomas Hand's death date as 1493, 1520 and 1559 is an example.

    I'm surprised by your statement about the difficulty of tracing one's ancestors accurately in Merry Old. I can very easily trace my direct line to the very first Hand to immigrate to America in the early 1600's. He was a member of the Quaker sect run out of England by Archbishop Loud.

    Our records seem intact for the most part despite your boys burning most of our courthouses in 1812.

    I suspect you are correct about Sir Hand c.1440 not having married Lady Margaret.
    This is just part of the mystery I am researching.

    Just a couple of possibilties that I consider are 1. Lady Margaret was determined to have a Tudor king and packed Thomas off to visit country relatives.
    2. Thomas was a bastard child of Sir Hand's and unknown.

    Have a nice day!
    It's well documented that Margaret Beaufort had only one child - Henry Tudor, a.k.a. Henry the Seventh.

    If you're talking about Quaker ancestry, I think it's the Quakers who are known for keeping records, so you are very lucky. However, I would suspect that there are a lot of early American records which have been lost over the years. You don't know that they're missing because you've never needed to access them.
    Also remember that our records begin a lot earlier than yours.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jabberwockie View Post
    Hopefully, since my ancestors appear to be of high nobility, directly related to the Dyves through Sir Thomas Hand c.1510, the Royal Aldeberges through Lady Agnes Kent Hand, etc., I would guess their homes were of stone, relatively dry and substantial.

    If English history is so hopelessly inaccurate, muddled and confusing, I wonder at the purpose of a Brit genealogy forum. :\
    English history is not responsible for the people (presumably his descendants) who post three different death dates for the same person online, thereby making 'history' inaccurate, muddled and confusing.

    And I never used those three adjectives to describe the early records.
    The sad truth is that once you get back to even the 1600s records can be very sketchy, and going further back they get even sketchier and quite unreliable. Members of the royal family are about the only people who have a reliable family tree.
    What I meant (but expressed quite badly) was that not all the records exist, and of those that exist some of the details are minimalist. e.g. the vicar might record that on 1 January 1593 he baptised the son of John Smith - no name for the child, no name of the child's mother. So is the father the John Smith who married two years earlier, or the one who married ten years earlier? Hence the 'unreliable', because you have no way of knowing, and it's that lack of precise details which can make genealogy further back than the 1700s difficult.

    Pam
    Vulcan XH558 - “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

  7. #7
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    It isn't that English history is hopelessly inaccurate, muddled and confusing it is that some over enthusiastic researchers can make it seem so by accepting information found online without any evidence to connect it to them other than the same name.
    A paper trail is the only way to move back from oneself through the generations and for the majority of us that is only possible up to a certain point as explained by Pam and Lesley.
    British-Genealogy and genealogy forums in many countries, including the USA are online to help people research their ancestral lines accurately but as witnessed by many public trees just on ancestry.com alone accuracy, supported by sources, is not considered essential.
    Our members love helping others with their research and are happy to spend hours of their time, free, to do it but to be sure they are following the correct families they need to know what information you already have and where you found it, back through each generation.

    I hope you and your wife's pilgrimage to Kent becomes a reality in the not too distant future.
    Christina
    Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.
    William Burroughs

  8. #8
    Super Moderator christanel's Avatar
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    I have moved jaberwockies post and the related answers to a thread of its own in the General English Family History forum with the title "Family line Sir Hand de Benenden." I did this as the original post was in the Welcome In forum and the subject matter has gone well beyond that greeting.
    If you want a change of title jabberwockie just say so and it can be done.
    Christina
    Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.
    William Burroughs

  9. #9
    Super Moderator christanel's Avatar
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    Being a little slow on the uptake today (freezing temperature = frozen brain) with a little help I have just connected your avatar name to the nonsense poem by Lewis Carrol although yours ends in ie and his in a 'y'

    A teaching aid for this poem by Rebecca Newland, a Fairfax County Public Schools librarian and former Teacher in Residence at the Library of Congress also supports the genealogical requirements of a close reading, defining text using context clues and scrutinising and analysing the content. Who would have thought that a seemingly 'nonsense' poem could be a recommendation for genealogical research.
    Chris
    Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.
    William Burroughs

  10. #10

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    I find it ironic that Mr. Hand from Houston's lineage can so easily be dismissed because "records before the 1600's are sketchy" by the British Genealogy group who must pride themselves in their knowledge of history and genealogy to assist people in their lineage research. I agree records can be inaccurate, that information recorded can include misspelled names and incorrect dates but a $1B genealogy industry has spawned to provide facts as loose as they may be and assistance to millions who want to know about their own personal history. Just as we cannot prove anything absolutely from the 1400's, we also cannot completely deny a connection when we have multiple sources of information. Before the common use of given names and surnames many people were referred to as John of Gaunt, Henry the Elder or Hand de Benenden so with sketchy records how do we know people like Henry Stafford didn't drop previous handles to become Henry Stafford? IN many families with multiple Henry's and Thomas's and Edwards it is easy to see the how records can become confused. In my case, Sir Thomas Hand in 1462 definitely uses a traditional name and his father Sir Henry Hand of Kent(1440) did indeed marry a Margaret and before that we have Henry Hand de Benenden. Britain should be proud of their records and with churches and gravestones still standing, the chance of piecing together a story in Britain is a lot better then Bulgaria or countries that have not existed consistently since 1066. In short, I don't think we can claim 100% that anything is absolute from these times but we cannot dismiss absolutely either. Dave Hand of Toronto from Dallas, Texas

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