Friday, February 28, 2020

 

Robinson Discovery of Irish Connection Bearing R-A1487 Y Haplogroup and the Normans

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       
Grandfather Frank Hugh Robinson
b: June 21, 1870 in Wenona, Illinois
d: May 27, 1952 in Hillsboro, Washington County, Oregon



He was tall and had blue eyes.  

He could manage 4 horses at a time pulling a wagon.   His 2nd wife was Augusta Gustafsson, a Swedish immigrant from Lumsheden, Sweden, obvious daughter of Swedish Vikings of long ago,  as far back as the 800s. 

                                                       
My mother was Mildred Elizabeth Robinson and her father was Frank Hugh Robinson whose father was Abiathar Smith Robinson born in Vermont.  I had my 1st cousin, Kenneth Robinson, tested with FTDNA for both the family finder and for his Y haplogroup.
                                                     

He was found to be R1b1a2a1a1b4 originally and that has now become expanded into the big Y test from R-L21 to R-A1487.  It was at the R-L21 stage that the Fitzpatrick group noticed his results and found that many many Fitzpatricks of Ireland matched his haplogroup and were also R-A1487s.  They were so interested that they paid for my cousin's further test in the Big Y.

Sure enough, he belonged to their group, but with the name of Robinson!  He was the only one.  My grandfather, Frank, had told us all that he had run away from home as a boy because of an overly zealous father who wouldn't allow him to move his horse out of the field on a Sunday when a bull had managed to enter, threatening the horse.  The horse was killed and my grandfather left, never to return.  At age 16, he had left with a smattering of knowledge about his family.


He remembered that his family came from Wales.  Information  compiled in FTDNA show England and Ireland.  They came over not on the MAYFLOWER of 1620 but the ship after that.  The Robinson line shows that a John Robinson was the one who sent the Pilgrims of Holland on the Mayflower, though John stayed with his flock in Holland.  It was his son, Isaac, who took the next ship over to America.  According to my genealogy, that group of Robinsons had no record of having an Abiathar Smith Robinson in their line.  They didn't seem to be in the right places to be a part of our family.  However, none of them who were a part of the Robinson group online had done any DNA testing!  Finding his origins seemed like an impossibility.  The last place I thought of was Ireland or even Wales.  He must have just been part of Robin Hood's family, whoever they were. 

Robin Hood was a member of the Saxon nobility called Robin of Loxley. He fought at the crusades. On his return to England his lands had been taken by the Normans. ... Robin Hood the legend of Sherwood - He hides from the Normans as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest wearing clothes of Lincoln green.


The Saxons were a Germanic tribe that originally occupied the region which today is the North Sea coast of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Their name is derived from the seax, a distinct knife popularly used by the tribe.  They spoke Old English. 
                I've read where Robinsons were Normans.                        Who were they? 
                                                         

They are an ethnic group that arose from contact between  Norse Viking settlers of a region in France, named Normandy after them, and indigenous Franks and Gallo-Romans.  The settlements in France followed a series of raids on the French coast from mainly Denmark, but also Norway, and Iceland, and they gained political legitimacy when the Viking leader Rollo agreed to swear fealty to King Charles III of West Francia. The distinct cultural and ethnic identity of the Normans emerged initially in the first half of the 10th century, and it continued to evolve over the succeeding centuries.
The Norman dynasty had a major political, cultural and military impact on medieval Europe and the Near East. The Normans were famed for their martial spirit and eventually for their Catholic piety, becoming exponents of the Catholic orthodoxy of the Romance community into which they assimilated.

The Normans had a profound effect on Irish culture and history after their invasion at Bannow Bay in 1169. Initially, the Normans maintained a distinct culture and ethnicity. Yet, with time, they came to be subsumed into Irish culture to the point that it has been said that they became "more Irish than the Irish themselves". The Normans settled mostly in an area in the east of Ireland, later known as the Pale, and also built many fine castles and settlements, including Trim Castle and Dublin Castle. Both cultures intermixed, borrowing from each other's language, culture and outlook. Norman descendants today can be recognised by their surnames. Names such as French, (De) Roche, Devereux, D'Arcy, Treacy and Lacy are particularly common in the southeast of Ireland, especially in the southern part of County Wexford, where the first Norman settlements were established. Other Norman names, such as Furlong, predominate there. Another common Norman-Irish name was Morell (Murrell), derived from the French Norman name Morel.


. Names beginning with Fitz (from the Norman for son) usually indicate Norman ancestry. Except for the native surname Fitzpatrick, a gallicisation of Mac Giolla Phádraig/Ó Maol Phádraig. Hiberno-Norman surnames with the prefix - 'fitz' include Fitzgerald, FitzGibbons (Gibbons) dynasty, Fitzmaurice. Families bearing such surnames as Barry (de Barra) and De Búrca (Burke) are also of Norman extraction.   Well, this one Robinson is connected to the Fitzpatrick line!  It also looks like we are connected to the Vikings this way, too.
                                                     
                 Mark Robinson writes about the Normans
                                                   
Son of Rollo the Viking who ruled Normandy
 is William the Conqueror
He spoke a dialect of French

The Normans’ best-known achievement was their conquest of England. In 1066, William, the Duke of Normandy, disputed the claim of the new English king, Harold Godwinson. Soon after landing in England, William and his knights met Harold’s army near the town of Hastings. The climactic moment in the battle is immortalized in the 70-meter-long Bayeux Tapestry, where an arrow striking Harold in the eye seals the Norman victory.   He became known as William the Conqueror.   By the end of the 12th century, the Normans had further expanded into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. 

The Anglo Norman invasion of Ireland took place in stages during the late 12th century and led to the Anglo-Normans Kingdom of England conquering large swaths of land from the Irish. At the time, Gaelic Ireland was made up of several kingdoms, with a High King claiming lordship over the lesser kings.

                      From Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick:, update
 Your shared ancestry with the A1488 Fitzpatricks is from around 900 AD. The historical narratives of the Fitzpatricks you match have them being in Ireland since ancient times, but DNA indicates there is simply no evidence of that.

If the common ancestor was from Ireland you might expect to see other Irish matches from 900 AD and earlier other than Fitzpatricks. But you don't, which makes the idea an Irish man went to England and Wales not that convincing. What is convincing are the other English and Welsh (and Cambro-Norman) matches you have from from ca. 1300 AD and earlier.

And while the Vikings were in Ireland ca. 900 AD and earlier and did take Irish as slaves, there is no evidence of you or the A1488 Fitzpatricks having matches with Scandinavian surnames, nor is there any occurrence of your haplotypes (e.g., A1487, A1499 etc) being found in Scandinavian men. The Viking theory is a nice idea, but there's little to no DNA evidence for it. That doesn't mean there couldn't be in the future, however.

By far the simplest interpretation of your data, and your surname (son of Robert, Robert being introduced to Britain by Normans) for that matter, is that you are Norman in origin. That is supported by your DNA matches to D'Altons and FitzGeralds (some of the Brannan matches also trace to Wales, not Ireland). One FitzGerald match is even an ancestor from ca. 900-1000 AD, i.e, before Normans landed in Ireland. The FitzGeralds and their associates (who also took the FitzGerald name at times) were Cambro-Normans.

Update:  A paper published in Acadamia also tells of the past 4,500 years bearing a change of this line of R-L21 that covers from the early Bronze age to the present in the English-Irish DNA line by Joe Flood.  They were part of the Beaker-Atlantic culture.  This redistribution of population took place over Ireland and Scotland since 100 BCE.  The British with R-L21 goes back to 2500 BCE.  
(https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgxwHNgZGnWqRRBGhCSjzsjfxvJvX)
                                                    

Interestingly, Mary Therese Winifred Robinson is an Irish Independent politician who served as the seventh President of Ireland from December 1990 to September 1997, becoming the first woman to hold this office.  This is her husband's surname as she was a Bourke from county Mayo.  
 
 


Resource:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans
The phylogenealogy of R-L21, 4 1/2 millennia of expansion and redistribution by Joe Flood

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Comments:
Hi Nadine,

Ian Fitzpatrick here, I am along with Mike an Admin on the Fitzpatrick DNA project

What a great read!

There are two other Robinson men that have tested on FTDNA that are very closely related to your Robinson line along with the one other BigY tester. The two other Robinson’s look to share a common ancestor with you that live about 600 years ago, somewhere in the range of year 1300 to 1500. This is a large spread since it is based on STR markers only, they can measure back in time by counting the changes like rings on a tree. Very subtle changes in the DNA are then passed on from father to son we can count these changes and calculate how far back the common ancestor lived. Further BigY testing of these related men could firm up the connection and provide a more accurate date for your common ancestor.

What this means to you is for sure your Robinson name goes back to this era and most likely there are other Robinson’s that could send this date of a shared ancestor back even further in time.

Your common ancestor with the Fitzpatrick group lived about the year 900 and most likely on the European continent, coming over in 1066 during the invasion of Britain by the Normans. There is also a connection to the surname Bramham which is also found concentrated in the Yorkshire England area along with the name Robinson, both names appearing in Britain around this time. To me, the DNA shows that it was most likely a number of closely related Normans (part of a tribe so to speak) that came into Britain around 1066 and some moved on into Ireland when it was invaded around 1170, some went into Wales. Both the men from England and men from Wales who share this DNA line, were early colonial settlers in America. This is my read on things, which not everyone accepts right now but your family history supports this theory.

Congratulations on your DNA discovery and wish you much success in your further research and you can always contact me through the project.

Ian Fitzpatrick
 
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