United States
Royal descent is now recognized as not infrequent among residents of the United States, as in other countries. At one time, publications on this matter stressed royal connections for only a few families. One example included James Pierpont and others. Too, we see NEHGS articles on "tycoon" families and US presidents of royal descent that emphasize the discriminating notion. That is, those of royal descent excel (to wit, Roberts' article on eminent descendants of Mrs. Alice Freeman Thompson Parke). Many, too, were at the forefront of social progress, for example, Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her progressive beliefs.
However, with improved documenting methodologies, it can be estimated that as many as 150 million Americans have traceable royal European descent. According to American genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, an expert on royal descent, most Americans with significant New England Yankee, Mid-Atlantic Quaker, or Southern planter 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. Some Americans may have royal descents through German immigrants who had an illegitimate descent from German royalty.
Due to 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 descend from these 17th-century British colonists who had royal descent. 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 to the point that almost everyone was somehow related to everyone else. One writer observed, "like a tangle of fish hooks".
Over time, opposing factors have affected the percentage of Americans who have provable royal descent. The passage of the generations has further intermingled the ancestry of the English colonists' descendants, thus increasing the percentage who descend from one of the immigrants with royal ancestry. At the same time, however, waves of post-colonial immigrants from other countries decreased the percentage who have royal descent.
Read more about this topic: Royal Descent
Famous quotes related to united states:
“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
—Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)
“God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“... it is probable that in a fit of generosity the men of the United States would have enfranchised its women en masse; and the government now staggering under the ballots of ignorant, irresponsible men, must have gone down under the additional burden of the votes which would have been thrown upon it, by millions of ignorant, irresponsible women.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)