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
Sunday, April 02, 2023
Robinson Genealogy in Wales But DNA Shows Ireland
Nadene Goldfoot
Much to my surprise, my grandfather told me when very young that his people had come from Wales. Genealogy shows England like so many other Robinsons living in New England show that they also came from England. New England was crawling with Robinsons.
The most important DNA test of my male cousin shows that we are connected to the FitzPatrick Irish of Ireland. They were the first to discover our connection by the Y haplogroup test.
Our geography means that Ireland and Wales share a common maritime story. The Irish Sea, the narrow strip of water which connects rather than divides us, has been traversed by our peoples over millennia.
The Irish Sea was formed in the Neogene era. Notable crossings include several invasions from Britain. The Norman invasion of Ireland took place in stages during the late 12th century from Porthclais near St. Davids, Wales, in Hulks, Snekkars, Keels and Cogs to Wexford Harbour, Leinster. The Tudors crossed the Irish Sea to invade in 1529 in caravels and carracks. In 1690 the English fleet set sail for the Williamite War in Ireland from Hoylake, Wirral, the departure becoming permanently known as King's Gap as a result.
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. While both languages originate from the same source, the written and spoken forms are different. The languages that we refer to today as being of Celtic origin are Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic,
Known also as Irish Gaelic or Gaeilge. (In the past and still very occasionally can be called Erse) Number of Native Speakers: 40-80,000 Everybody attending school in Ireland learns Irish and many profess to speaking the language according to the National Census. Irish is the first official language of the country but the working language for most things is English. Although, the government supports the language in many ways and introduced a Language Act in 2003 to increase the level of public services in Irish, the biggest success in the revival of the gaelic language is the growth of gaelscoileanna which immerse kids in the language and the success and popularity of the TV channel TG4.
Welsh is also known as Cymraeg or y Gymraeg Approx 600,000 speakers: Welsh is the Celtic language with in the healthiest state. In Wales there has been a real and quite successful effort to restore the language. The number of speakers is actually increasing. Both the teaching of the language to all children under the age of 16 and the popularity of Welsh media channels have helped reverse the decline. The Welsh Language Act of 1993 also ensures that the public can avail of services in English or Welsh.
Norman Invasion of Ireland:
Anglo-Normans gradually conquered and acquired large swathes of land from the Irish, over which the kings of England then claimed sovereignty, all allegedly sanctioned by the Papal bull Laudabiliter. At the time, Gaelic Ireland was made up of several kingdoms, with a High King claiming lordship over most of the other kings. The Norman invasion was a watershed in Ireland's history, marking the beginning of more than 800 years of direct English and, later, British, involvement in Ireland.
In May 1169, Anglo-Norman mercenaries landed in Ireland at the request of Diarmait mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurragh), the deposed King of Leinster, who sought their help in regaining his kingship. They achieved this within weeks and raided neighbouring kingdoms. This military intervention was sanctioned by King Henry II of England. In return, Diarmait had sworn loyalty to Henry and promised land to the Normans
The Irish used to raid the west coast of Britain and carry off slaves. They may even have tried a few attempts at colonisation. This would have brought them into conflict with the Welsh (of course this is before either Wales or Ireland were united countries).
The Normans conquered England then conquered Wales. Later they would conquer Ireland as well. That particular conquest is usually erroneously attributed to the English but was led by Normans from Wales.In many ways, the famous Battle of Hastings in 1066 was just the beginning for the Normans, with many challenges awaiting them in the British Isles. In order to secure the Welsh border, William the Conqueror (recently crowned as King of England) established loyal Norman nobles in strongly garrisoned Earldoms along the frontier. What followed was decades of warfare and diplomacy as these "Marcher Lords" sought to extend their domains by subjugating the stubbornly independent Welsh.
Of course they were not Welsh as such but Welshmen would have been among the soldiers that invaded Ireland.
Similarly pretty much every time British armies went over to Ireland, there would have been Welshmen among the armies.But there has never been a war between Wales and Ireland. Wales only briefly existed as a unified state before being conquered by the Normans; thereafter it was part of England or Britain. Similarly, there was never a state called ‘Ireland’ before the Normans got there.
Wales had been in complete disarray. In August 1063, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn was killed by his own men; his head and the figure-head of his ship were dispatched to Harold Godwinson and so, eventually, to Edward the Confessor, as the trophies of a signal victory. Within Wales itself, his death left a vacuum of authority and power. His hegemony had been founded on military might and personal dependence; it had no institutional base that could outlast his own downfall. The natural fissiparousness of Welsh ‘political’ life — if such a genteel term may be used for the litany of family and inter-dynastic conflicts, raids, kidnappings, and murders — now reasserted itself. Puppet rulers, political exiles, and adventurers competed desperately with each other and joined forces in a perplexing kaleidoscope of temporary alliances to further their ambitions. Rarely, even by its own standards, was the Welsh ‘political’ scene more fluid, its allegiances more brittle and its supremacies more short-lived than in the later eleventh century. They were ripe to be plucked by England.
President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, married to a Robinson: In 1970, she married Nicholas Robinson, with whom she had a relationship since they were law students and who was then practising as a solicitor. Together they have three children. Nicholas Kenneth Robinson (born 9 February 1946) is an Irish author, historian, solicitor and cartoonist who is the husband of the 7th President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.
My male cousin's father's name was Edward Kenneth Robinson.
My male cousin is Kenneth Arthur Robinson b: 1946.
My son was born on 9 February 1953.
It's an interesting beginning.
Robinson was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1946, to a wealthy middle-class Anglican family. He was born to Howard Robinson and Lucy Robinson , the third in a family of four boys. His father was an accountant who founded the City of Dublin Banker and was a prominent freemason of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The Robinson family had been coopers associated with the brewing business of the Guinness family. Nicholas's grandfather was a coal importer.
I have a big problem with President Mary Robinson.
She does not back Israel. She votes against Israel while I'm holding dual citizenship and am a strong
advocator for Israel, writing in defense every day. At least I'm
not related to her, but possibly her husband.
Robinson served as the twenty-fourth, and first female, chancellor of the University of Dublin. She represented the university in the Seanad for over twenty years and held the Reid Chair in Law. She was succeeded as chancellor by Mary McAleese, who had also succeeded her as president of Ireland. Was her husband, by any chance, from the Fitzpatricks?
The oddest fact is that my grandfather, Jewish with ancestry from Lithuania, moved to Dublin after visiting England. From there he was on a ship to Canada and then wound up in Idaho marrying my grandmother/Bubby, also a Litvak. Quite a few Goldfoots/Goldfus were living in Dublin. As coincidences happen, he chose the same business as my Robinson grandfather in Portland, knew each other, that business was of having a wagon with horses and going to the docks and delivering boxes to people and businesses. The difference was that Robinson was from a farm and handled 4 horses easily with his wagon, while Goldfoot with one horse couldn't do it, and the horse was soon startled, threw him out of the wagon, head was hit and he died in hospital.
My connection of Robinson to the Norman invasion of Ireland seems like the time element such a connection took place. It goes way back. In the meantime, my Robinson ancestors have tried to make their way known to me through genealogy.
… (more).
Labels: England, Fitzpatrick, New England, Vermont, Wales
Saturday, April 01, 2017
Oral History of Robinsons Coming From Wales
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| Frank Hugh Robinson b: Wenona, Marshall, Illinois, said his family came from Wales. |
Dedicated to Mother
Mildred Elizabeth Robinson
My grandfather, Frank Hugh Robinson, spoke of his ancestors as having come from Wales. I thought he must have been mixed up since I haven't found any Pilgrim coming from Wales; information always says England.
DYS 393=12; 390=21; 19/394=14; 391=11; 385a=11; 385b=14; 426=12; 388=12; 439=12; 389-1=13; 392=13; 389-2=29 are the 1st alleles tested.
"Y-DNA haplogroups carried by members of "The Wales Cymru DNA Project" include E1b1a1 (E-L117), E1b1a1a1b1a (E-V13), E1b1a1b2a1a (E-M34), G1a1a1, G2a1, I1 (I-M253), I1d1a1a, I2c2a (I-M223, I-P37, etc.), J1, J2, R1a1a (R-M512, R-M198, R-M173, R-Z280), R1b1a (R-M269, R-M173, R-L21), and R1b1a1a1a1a (R-P312), among others. Mitochondrial DNA haplogroups carried by members include H, H3c2b, H1au1a, H10e, H6a1b2, H7b3, I, J, K1b2a2, K2a, T2, U3, U5, and others.
So it is possible that our distant ancestors did come from Wales. How did my grandfather know this?
He knew that his father was Abiathar Smith Robinson but we have no records of who his father was.
All we know is that there was a John Robinson on the 1850 census of Royalton, Windsor, Vermont who was a farm hand and boarder with Julia Ann Tuller's family. Julia Ann later married Abiathar Smith Robinson in Tunbridge, Orange, Vermont which is next door to Royalton. Otherwise, there is no record anywhere for Abiathar b: December 1829 before 1852 when I found them marrying there.
Finding a "John Robinson" is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
There have been major studies of the Welch. "Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman, and Mark G. Thomas. "Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration." Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:7 (2002): pages 1008-1021. They studied English, Welsh, Norwegian, and Frisian men and genetically compared them to each other. Samples included males from 2 towns in North Wales (Abergele and Llangefni) and 5 towns in England as far east as North Walsham in East Anglia. The sampled men from Central English towns genetically resembled each other closely, in contrast to the North Welsh men who "differed significantly both from each other and from the Central English towns." They found common Germanic roots of the English and Frisian males in the study, confirming that the Anglo-Saxons (but not the Welsh) are largely descended from people not indigenous to the British Isles. Excerpts from the article:
"Our results indicate the presence of a strong genetic barrier between Central England and North Wales and the virtual absence of a barrier between Central England and Friesland. [...] The best explanation for our findings is that the Anglo-Saxon cultural transition in Central England coincided with a mass immigration from the continent. Such an event would simultaneously explain both the high Central English-Frisian affinity and the low Central English-North Welsh affinity. [...] Anglo-Saxon settlements and culture appeared throughout England but, importantly, did not extend into North Wales, where many of the original Celtic Britons living in England are thought to have fled [...]""How my Robinson line differs from most R1b1 people is that DYS allele 393 is a 12. Most have 13. This may be what puts us in the R-L21 grouping.
""Welsh people could be most ancient in UK, DNA suggests." BBC News (June 19, 2012). This is another article about Professor Donnelly's team's research. Excerpts from the article:
"[...] DNA samples were analysed at about 500,000 different points. After comparing statistics, a map was compiled which showed Wales and Cornwall stood out. Prof Donnelly said: 'People from Wales are genetically relatively distinct, they look different genetically from much of the rest of mainland Britain, and actually people in north Wales look relatively distinct from people in south Wales.' While there were traces of migrant groups across the UK, there were fewer in Wales and Cornwall. He said people from south and north Wales genetically have 'fairly large similarities with the ancestry of people from Ireland on the one hand and France on the other, which we think is most likely to be a combination of remnants of very ancient populations who moved across into Britain after the last Ice Age. [...]'" We have more matches with the Irish than English.He said it was possible that people came over from Ireland to north Wales because it was the closest point, and the same for people coming to south Wales from the continent, as it was nearer. However he added: 'We don't really have the historical evidence about what those genetic inputs were.' [...] Because of its westerly position and mountainous nature, Anglo-Saxons who moved into central and eastern England after the Romans left did not come that far west, and neither did the Vikings who arrived in around 900AD. [...] The mountains were also the reason why [Welsh] DNA may have remained relatively unchanged, as people would have found it harder to get from north to south Wales or into England compared with people trying to move across the flatter southern English counties, making them more likely to marry locally and conserve more ancient DNA. [...]"
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| Conwy Castle, Wales Conwy Castle is a medieval fortification in Conwy, on the north coast of Wales. It was built by Edward I, during his conquest of Wales, between 1283 and 1289. Wikipedia |
But we are R-L21. Where is that compared to S145?
FTDNA reports that: "There are over 1,500 branches and over 5,000 SNPs on FTDNA's R1b-L21 haplotree. The larger subclades are marked by CTS4466+, DF13+, DF21+, DF41+, DF49+, DF63+, FGC5494+, L1335+, L513+, S1026+, Z1051+, M222+, Z251+, Z253+, Z255+, Z2542+. "
Haplogroup. R-L21 Haplogroup and the growing number of downstream (more recent in chronology) is the haplogroup of the majority of the Scots-Irish. Historically it represents the 'Western Atlantic Celtic' population, which includes the Insular Celts, both Gaelic and Cumbric.
"By the mid-1st millennium, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Migration Period of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic languages had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, 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 the culture of the surrounding polities.[10] By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use."
In 1970 Mary Therese Winifred Bourke in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland in 1944, married Nicholas Robinson, with whom she had a relationship since they were fellow law students and who was then practicing as a solicitor. She has since become the 7th President of Ireland that was over in 1997.
Harry Rhys Robinson (born 16 April 1993) is a former rugby union player who played on the wing for Cardiff Blues and the Scarlets and won 3 caps at international level for Wales.
Matthew Fitz David Robinson is a former Wales International Rugby Union player. A centre or wing, Robinson began his rugby career at Newport High School Old Boys before joining Swansea.
Carl Robinson (born 13 October 1976) is a retired Welsh footballer who played as a midfielder; he is currently the head coach for Vancouver Whitecaps FC in Major League Soccer.
Jamie Peter Robinson (born April 7, 1980 in Penarth, Wales) is a retired Wales international rugby union footballer who played at outside centre. He attended Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf with younger brother Nick Robinson. He speaks Welsh fluently.[1]
This will please my cousin who is a retired Coach.
The Adams family also has this haplogroup and said: It is important to note that the Adams families represented on this website have an R1b1a2a1a1b4f haplotype which is a branch of the Nordic line as part of the L21 subclade. More specifically our DNA contains the Z255+ and L159.2+/S169.2 mutation The presence of the marker L159 also known as L159.2 because of a parallel mutation that also exists inside haplogroup I2a1 (L159.1) means our Adams are associated with the Kings of Leinster and Diarmait Mac Murchada. It can also be found in the coastal areas of the Irish Sea including the Isle of Man and the Hebrides, as well as Norway, western and southern Scotland, northern and southern England, northeast France, andnorthern Denmark.[57]
Was our grandfather, Frank Hugh Robinson, named for this Welchman?
HUGH ROBINSON ( 1584 - 1655 )
was educated at Winchester ( 1596-1603 ) and New College , becoming Fellow of the latter in 1605 and ‘ Informator ’ ( headmaster ) of the former, as well as holding several English livings from which Parliament extruded him in 1647 till he took the Covenant and was compensated elsewhere. Either he or a kinsman of the same name also succeeded HumphreyRobinson at Caerhun and Llanbedr in 1613 , to which he added the living of Trefriw (withLlan-rhychwyn and Betws-y-coed ) in 1617 , keeping them all, in spite of complaints of neglect in 1618 , till he was ejected under the Propagation Act in 1650 — just after making himself useful to Owen Wynn of Gwydir (q.v.) by reminding the dying archbishop , JohnWilliams (q.v.) , of a promised legacy to his niece Grace , Wynn 's wife." http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-ROBI-NSO-1530.html
Resource: http://www.writerlyhaphazardry.net/?p=2039 Irish Ancestor Hunt
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/welsh.html
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/r-l21/about/background
http://thescotsirish.blogspot.com/2014/10/r-l21-haplogroup-and-scots-irish.html
http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=robinson
http://www.clansandnames.org/forum/read.php?1,103
https://dna-explained.com/2013/03/31/new-y-dna-haplogroup-naming-convention/
http://adamsfamilydna.com/haplogroup-r1b-r1b1a2a1a1b4f-subclade-l21/
http://www.writerlyhaphazardry.net/?p=2039
Labels: dna, R-L21 haplogroup, Robinson genealogy, Wales
