Genealogy is a fun past time. It’s more than that though, for it reveals good and bad in family lineage. It reveals personal history, it reveals times that you can personalize a study of history through.

One line I’m looking at is our Field heritage.

Able to be traced back to pre-William the Conqueror, but the genealogy I’ve drummed up goes to Hubertus De La Feld who arrived in England, probably with William. Same time-frame for sure. And lots of clues that it’s what is. It’s not like there was documentation of immigration back then

The Field family is one part of that line. Other parts of the line took on different forms of the name.

In America there are many Field lines, and many of them tie in to that one Hubertus De La Feld line.

Most of us here are connected via the last common ancestor being Roger Del Feld in 1240. We come through his son Richard, and others come through his other son Thomas.

There is a famous John Field in England knighted for Astronomy advances in the 16th century. He’s through Thomas. So a cousin.

Who else comes through that line? I have a famous cousin. 12th cousin 7 times removed: Thomas Jefferson, yes, THE Mr. Jefferson.

His grandmother was Mary Field. Her folks came to Va. in the early 1600′s.

My folks came to Rhode Island around 1638.

My line in America is via Robert Field, and he and his two sons were signers of the Remonstrance of Flushing in 1657/1658. Robert held patent there, and also previously was involved with Newport, RI.

His son Anthony is where my family comes from.

All that above is impetus to further historical studying of the New World, Early American colonies, Early American Government, English historical everything back to William’s invasion in 1066, and further back to Alsace region where the De La Feld family originates from … castles and lands and what-not which I haven’t even delved into yet.

I find this all fun and exciting, to understand that Mr. Jefferson is my distant cousin is quite nice, since I consider myself to hold the label of Jeffersonian economically. Fine thing, considering I didn’t know the Jefferson connection a couple of months ago when I took the Austrain Economic quiz on www.mises.org, knowing I was a Jeffersonian, but wondering where the Austrian Economics would place me in their scheme of things. I was 80% or less … close to that though. Which means, I’m not an Austrian Economic being, and knew I wasn’t already. I like stuff on Mises.org and Rockwell’s stuff, but I’m not a Libertarian. I’m a cousin to it, but definitely not one. I’m a Paleo-Conservative, which the main identifying label, to me is Agrarian in principled living, which is Jeffersonian Ecomics through a Biblical lense. IMO So then to find that we, me and Mr. Jefferson, hail from the same ancient stock partly, cool!

That’s just part of the good stuff in the family. One itty bitty little bit. Family expands the further back you go. What we can know of our ancestors is so little, so what we do find out is so hugely important, to me at least.

Trivial connection for this family that is interesting: One of Mr. Jefferson’s sisters married into the Bolling family. A later Bolling went on to marry Woodrow Wilson, while he was president in office. Back several generations in the Bolling family is: Pocahontas. So there is a trivial marriage relationship to distant cousin of 12.7.