Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Robinson Possible History Connecting Wales and Ireland
Nadene Goldfoot
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My grandfather, Frank Hugh Robinson of Portland, Oregon had mentioned that his people came from Wales. In doing genealogy of the family since I've had a computer, I haven't run across any of my sources coming from anyplace other than England. Where did he pick up such ideas as Wales? He had left home at about the age of 16 as an angry teen. His father, Abiathar Smith Robinson had not allowed him to save his horse on a Sunday that was out in the field with the bull. Evidently his horse was killed by the bull and he left home. That happened when they lived Wenona, Illinois. Abiathar had been born in Vermont; possibly Royalton or Tunbridge, Vermont.
At 1:00 am just a few minutes ago as I lay in bed wide awake, I thought of that and realized I had never checked out Wales and Robinsons. We had already done the Big Y DNA test with Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and Big Y Haplogroup Test, and discovered that we had Irish roots.
So I just typed in a few words and look what I discovered:
"Wales and Ireland are not only geographically close – within 300 miles (482 km) of each other – but they share a special bond as Celtic siblings. Over the centuries, the two countries have inspired each other, helped each other, and provided opportunities for collaboration and growth. Here, we look at some of the bonds between the two countries.
The languages of Wales and Ireland belong to the same family; they are both classed as living Celtic languages, along with Breton and Scottish Gaelic. In Wales and Ireland, it's normal for schoolchildren to be taught their native language as part of the curriculum. Figures from Ireland’s 2016 Census show that 1.7 per cent of the population speak Irish Gaelic every day. In Wales, it’s 16.3 per cent of the population speaking Welsh every day.
Who were the Celts? Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century AD. Elements of Celtic mythology are recorded in early Irish and early Welsh literature. Most written evidence of the early Celts comes from Greco-Roman writers, who often grouped the Celts as barbarian tribes. They followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids.
The Celts were often in conflict with the Romans, such as in the Roman–Gallic wars, the Celtiberian Wars, the conquest of Gaul and conquest of Britain. By the 1st century AD, most Celtic territories had become part of the Roman Empire. By c. 500, due to Romanisation and the migration of Germanic tribes, Celtic culture had mostly become restricted to Ireland, western and northern Britain, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from surrounding cultures.
While both languages originate from the same source, the written and spoken forms are different. A Welsh speaker would find it hard to understand Irish Gaelic. The alphabets are slightly different too - the Irish alphabet uses 18 letters, while the Welsh alphabet has 29.
Despite these differences, both countries are committed to keeping their Celtic languages alive through educational policy, cultural events, literature, and music.
Going back in history in 1282, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd led to the conquest of the Principality of Wales by King Edward I of England; since then, the heir apparent to the English monarch has borne the title "Prince of Wales". The Welsh launched several revolts against English rule, the last significant one being that led by Owain Glyndŵr in the early 15th century. In the 16th century Henry VIII, himself of Welsh extraction as a great-grandson of Owen Tudor, passed the Laws in Wales Acts aiming to fully incorporate Wales into the Kingdom of England.
Stephen Oppenheimer (born 1947) is a British paediatrician, geneticist, and writer. He is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Oppenheimer trained in medicine at Oxford and London universities, qualifying in 1971. From 1972 he worked as a clinical paediatrician, mainly in Malaysia, Nepal and Papua New Guinea. He carried out and published clinical research in the areas of nutrition, infectious disease (including malaria), and genetics, focussing on the interactions between nutrition, genetics and infection, in particular iron nutrition, thalassaemia and malaria. From 1979 he moved into medical research and teaching, with positions at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Oxford University, a research centre in Kilifi, Kenya, and the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.
Stephen Oppenheimer, son of David Oppenheimer, is a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historians’ account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.
The British Isles were unpopulated then, wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years and forced the former inhabitants into southern refuges in Spain and Italy. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north.
In all, about three-quarters of the ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, when rising sea levels finally divided Britain and Ireland from the Continent and from one another, Dr. Oppenheimer calculates in a new book, “The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story” (Carroll & Graf, 2006).
As for subsequent invaders, Ireland received the fewest; the invaders’ DNA makes up about 12 percent of the Irish gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer estimates, but it accounts for 20 percent of the gene pool in Wales, 30 percent in Scotland, and about one-third in eastern and southern England.
Dr. Oppenheimer said genes “have no bearing on cultural history.” There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.
The earliest appearance of Robinson in the records is of a John Robynson who was listed in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefied for 1324.
Another early bearer of the surname was Katerina Robinson in 1540 (Sutterton, Lincolnshire). A carver and gilder named Wolf Robinson who lived in Boston, Lincolnshire, was listed in the 1893 UK Jewish Directory.
In 1881, farming was the most common occupation amongst Robinson family members, followed by coal mining and agricultural labouring as the top 3 reported jobs worked by Robinson.
In 1891, the surname was widespread across England and Wales with 103,211 occurrences and a further 1,000 in Scotland. Lincolnshire was a top county with 3,965 occurrences in particular in the districts of Anderby and Alkborough. Further south, in the county of Kent, there were 1,798 occurrences.
Notable people
David Robinson OBE (1927-2017), A British journalist, author and teacher. He had a degree in Geography and an MSc in which he wrote a thesis on the coastal evolution of northeast Lincolnshire. David went on to become resident tutor of the University of Nottinghamshire for North Lincolnshire. He also served editorial roles with ‘Lincolnshire Life’ and ‘Natural World’ magazine. He was awarded an OBE for services to journalism and the community of Lincolnshire. In 2007 with a collection of papers on historical and geographical themes, titled “All Things Lincolnshire: An Anthology in Honour of David Robinson”.
SOURCES:
1881, 1891 Census
Dictionary of American Family Homes, P Hanks OUP 2003
Homes of Family Names in Great Britain, H.B. Guppy, London 1890
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, P.Hanks, Coats, McClure OUP 2016
1860 Lower, Mark A Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom, London: J.R Smith. Public Domain
Resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEL7nCM5itg
https://www.wales.com/about/culture/links-between-wales-and-ireland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wales
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/science/05cnd-brits.html
https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-stephen-oppenheimer
Labels: Celts, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, Great Britain, Irish, Wales, YouTube
