Queen Elizabeth’s recent visit to the Republic of Ireland was an outstanding success and it was great to see her and Prince Phillip receive such a warm welcome – plenty of good Irish hospitality was in evidence this past week. But while reading an article about her ancestor, Queen Victoria, I was surprised to learn that there could be good reason to believe that the Queen may not actually be ‘The Queen’…

Victoria: note the nose...

It is all about where the haemophilia came from that affected Victoria’s son Prince Leopold and his descendants. The gene for the condition never existed in the Royal line before it emerged in Victoria’s offspring – the chances of it being a rogue gene that simply appeared out of nowhere are so remote as to be not worth looking into. The gene was also not found to be in the family of Leopold’s father, Prince Albert. That leaves us to consider the royal line of Victoria’s father the Duke of Kent, but as we already know haemophilia was not identified in the Royal family prior to Victoria. This is where doubt is cast on Victoria’s paternity and that it is thought that her real father was Sir John Conroy. Conroy was assigned the role of Comptroller of the royal household after the death of Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent. It was widely rumoured he became her mother’s lover and even more interestingly that he fathered Victoria during an affair with the Duchess of Kent while her husband was still alive.

Conroy: identical noses...?

This is incredible stuff to consider. Another interesting aspect is the Porphyria that afflicted her German ancestors, namely King George III, was not inherited by Victoria or her descendants…the disease suddenly vanished from the royal line at the same time of Victoria’s birth – a fact that Princess Margaret once raised in conversation with a doctor friend after watching the film The Madness of King George. So, what if rumour is fact and our lovely Queen is not really our Queen…who would be the monarch today? I think you have only two choices; the first being the most practical and that would be the eldest son of King William IV from whom Victoria inherited the Crown. His only two legitimate children were girls who died in infancy before their father died. His other ten children were illegitimate but, and this is if illegitimacy was not a barrier to succession, his eldest son George FitzClarence, Ist Earl of Munster would have succeeded him as King. His descendants today would be sitting on the throne. The second option would be the present Prince Ernst of Hanover – he could well be the rightful monarch today.

Of course, it would be very easy to prove either way – a simply DNA test would settle things decidedly, as they did when identifying the remains of the assassinated Romanov family a few years ago, who of course are descendants of Queen Victoria. But then again – is it something we really want to know….?

Thanks to modern day medicine and improved health most of us survive to be great-grandparents. Of course there are some cases where you have people who are proud to have hit the great-great grandparent mark and then, although even rarer, you have the possibility of a number of adults today who may get to be great-great-great grandparents due to their offspring becoming parents themselves in their very early teens. Basically though most of us can expect to be great-grandparents and be able to enjoy that special position in the family for a good few years. That is a special time for the people closer to the top of the family tree to talk to the younger generation about family life and share stories and traditions that have endured through the family over the decades. But what about those descendants of yours who are not yet even a twinkle in your son/grandson or daughter’s/granddaughter’s eye…? those members of your family who will not be born for decades and who you will never, ever meet or know but may have your ears, your chin or your height or who will have inherited those old jewelry beads of your own gran’s…?

I was thinking about this recently as I have spent the better part of the past twenty years putting together our family history so that my children will know where and who they came from and so that they too can pass the information on to their own children and grandchildren. When the grandchildren start arriving it will be something I will be talking to them about, and maybe – touch wood – the great-grandchildren, and they will have their own memories of me when I am well out of this world. But their own great-grandchildren and THEIR great-grandchildren will only have photos of me and their dad to go by – if they are at all interested – and this is what got me considering the idea of sending a letter of some kind to descendants of mine who will not be born until well into the next century.

We were thinking about filming a ‘chat’ to our future descendants where we would talk about us, our family and the things we like to do. In it we would show the family car that we are driving now – seeing as cars will surely be different in the next century – we’d also show around the home, our local area and where we take our children – their ancestors – to play. Also we will talk about what is happening in world events, what we are watching on television, what things cost today and today’s technology…the X-Box, the laptops, mobile phones…heaven knows what kids will be playing with in 2115! of course we would record this all on a disc and naturally technology will have moved on in leaps and bounds by then, but updating and transferring this precious family documentary so that it adapts to future technology over the years will be a task that not only will be something for us and our children to undertake but for our future family members who will be around long after we are all gone. This will become our own family time-capsule and hopefully a family tradition for future generations to carry on.

Please Note: Killymoon Castle is a PRIVATE residence; there is no public admittance to the house or surrounding grounds. The following article refers to European Heritage Weekend in Northern Ireland when the house was open to the public for a strictly limited time.

I received a great little camera for my last birthday and have been using it to death on our trips around Northern Ireland – if one thing is true there are plenty of beautiful places here that make great photo opportunities. Here’s some more from our day at Killymoon Castle in Co Tyrone last Sunday…

To take the above pic we were able to walk across the lovely fields just adjacent to the castle, they are now open to the public to walk around but you have to mind because they have cows grazing in those fields as well. I am still learning how to get the most out of the camera but I usually manage to take a respectable shot.

Killymoon Castle is today a private residence, the house and grounds are not for public admittance.

I started researching my family tree some twenty years ago and over the years I have amassed a collection of facts, photo’s and information which has made the venture not only one of the most worthwhile things I have ever done, but an ongoing project that is still in progress and probably always will.

I have ticked off several significant objectives that I planned along the way - the most important, for me personally, was visiting one of the ancestral homes of my ancestors in County Donegal and meeting my 3rd cousin who still maintains the estate in the family name since 1690. Visiting Brownhall was a dream I thought I would never achieve so I was ecstatic to arrive there after only reading and hearing about it from my family for so long.

 This past weekend I ticked another box when I got to visit Killymoon Castle in County Tyrone. This is the ancestral home of my Stewart forebears – who incidentally provide the connection with Brownhall through the marriage of Isabella Stewart to John Hamilton back in the 18th century. Killymoon is now a private residence so it was a bonus to hear it would be open to the public for Heritage Weekend here in Northern Ireland. It is the first time the castle has been opened to public viewing and the owners must be commended for their kindness and generosity in doing so. 

Wandering around the beautiful grounds and Nash-designed interior was certainly one more dream come true for me. To walk in the footsteps of your ancestors, to climb the very staircase they climbed, to stand and gaze at the same trees that they did all those years ago…I cannot tell you how incredible it feels. And how marvellous to be able to share it with my children.

There some locations around the world that are able to move you to tears and among them are those places which acknowledge and commemorate those who gave their lives during the two world wars and other conflicts during the 20th century.

The American Cemetery in Normandy, France; the battlefields of the Gallipolli peninsula in Turkey; the watery gravesite of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbour to name but a few.

I have been around the Western Front battlefields in Northern France, The Somme and the American Cemetery and they are incredible in their silent power – for every cross on a grave there was a life lost and when you stand and see the sheer number of crosses it is almost incomprehensible to take in.

One other place which really hits you in the solar plexus is the basement of the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva where the archives detail every single death in every single war since the Red Cross’s inception. You can walk around the room where the millions of little card indexes are housed behind glass – each card is a human being – each card old and yellowing. On many of those cards are not names of soldiers but merely details as so many were unidentified – but that is soon to change.

The archive holding the details of 20 million soldiers from 30 countries involved in WWI will soon be accessed for the first time since 1918 by historian Peter Barton.  Some of the records, in immaculate condition, refer to the sites of mass graves where the bodies of soldiers were piled alongside each other.

They give detailed directions about where they were dug – many have since been overgrown or built on – and include details which could lead to the identification of soldiers buried in them. ‘The emergence of this archive is hugely important,’ said Mr Barton. ‘It will change the way we look at World War One.

This archive has been hidden away – not deliberately – for 90 years, historians just did not know that this existed. Mr Barton, a First World War historian and author, stumbled across the records after being commissioned by the Australian government to find the identities of soldiers found at Pheasant Wood, Fromelles, France.  The trail led him to the Red Cross Museum in Geneva where he was given access to their basement. The records were passed to the Red Cross by the combatant countries at the end of the war.

The Red Cross acted as a go-between for the protagonists. Information was then copied and passed to the soldiers’ home countries but, according to Mr Barton, the UK’s copy of the data no longer exists, much of it having been destroyed in the Second World War. The same fate is believed to have befallen the records in France and Germany.

This new project will help to identify those whose families have spent the last 90 years wondering what happened to them; young men who went to war and disappeared into family folklore will now possibly be found…names can be printed on headstones at last.

They certainly deserve it.