Agnatic (YDNA) ancestors of descendants with whom I share one or multiple direct genealogical relationships as designated on the individual listings on the Master Roster of All Ancestors Studied. Index numbers that follow each “agnatic” indication reflect a patrilineal relationship(s) to an ultimate primogenitor of the lineage. Often, there is only one, but in most instances, two or more is revealed.
There was a heavy reliance on three primary sources* of genealogical pedigrees to render mainly qualitative analytical determinations of these ancient pedigrees. Still, while our ancestors deceased many centuries ago, some of the stories of their lives live to influence our lives to this very day, largely unchallenged as historical facts that are so woven into the fabric of our ancestral heritage as to be sacrosanct from critical review, or, if not, forever forgotten from view.
-Presentation of research findings, including Ancestry.com and lineage citations (1,038 pages of data)
-Free access to dedicated website that contains new and revised blog articles (so you are never out–of-date with ongoing research findings and blog article revisions).
-Access to all individual research exhibits (762 PDFs)
-PDF edition download link
This ebook edition is perpetually alive and fluid due to the WordPress.com linking protocol that immediately updates all blog articles as revisions and additions occur. It’s an important feature since ongoing research often results in significant redactions to one or more related blog articles, the occurrence of which will be posted as a notification on the Facebook page.
COLLINS Sir Archibald John Collins Australian physician, (1890–1955) Alan Collins MSc (Salford) BSc (Bradford) PGCE (Hull), Professor of Economics, Head of Economics and Finance, University of Portsmouth Business School Allan M. Collins Ph. D., (University of Michigan), Professor Emeritus, Education & Social Policy, Northwestern University Arthur A. Collins short-wave radio technology inventor, founder of Rockwell Collins (1909 – 1987) Christin Collins PhD (University of Florida, Gainesville) Assistant Professor of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine Edward Treacher Collins English surgeon and ophthalmologist (1862 – 1932) Francis Collins MD (UNC), incumbent Director of the National Institutes of Health, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) George E. Collins American mathematician and computer scientist (born 1928) Guy N. Collins American botanist, plant explorer and geneticist (1872–1938) Herbert Collins British architect (1885–1975) James Collins PhD (Oxford University) Rhodes Scholar, MacArthur Fellow, Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT Jennifer Collins PhD (University College London) Associate Professor of Climatology, University of South Florida John Collins FRS English mathematician, contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton (1625 – 1683) John Clements Collins PhD (Oxford University) Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University (born 1949) John J. Collins, Jr MD cardiac surgeon, heart transplant pioneer (1934 – 2010) Joseph Henry Collins FGS mining engineer, mineralogist and geologist (1841–1916) Joseph Collins MD Professor of Neurology at New York Post-Graduate Medical School (1866 – 1950) John Collins PhD (London School of Economics) Coordinator of the International Drug Policy Project, London School of Economics Joseph T. Collins American herpetologist, founder of the Center for North American Herpetology (CNAH) (born 1939) Kathleen Collins PhD (Johns Hopkins) Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School Lee Collins Unicode architect Linda Collins PhD (University of Southern California) Distinguished Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University Lorence G. Collins PhD (University of Illinois) petrologist (born 1939) Marcus Evelyn Collins English architect (1861-1944) Mat Collins PhD (University of Reading) Professor of Geosciences, Joint Met Office Chair in Climate Change, University of Exeter Matthew CollinsPhD, FBA Professor of Biomolecular Archaeology at the University of York, founder of BioArCh Michael Collins PhD (University of Missouri-Columbia) UCLA Professor of Molecular Toxicology Michael Collins PhD (Michigan State University) Director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program, University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences Michael Collins PhD (Oxford University), Emeritus Fellow in Pure Mathematics Michael Collins PhD (University of Cambridge) Professor of Computational Linguistics at Columbia University (born 1970) Michael P. Collins PhD (University of New South Wales ) Professor of Civil Engineering at University of Toronto Nerissa M. Collins MD Resident – Internal Medicine, Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine Peter Collins MD Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Canada) in Psychiatry, Royal College of Physicians (Canada) sub specialty in Forensic Psychiatry Richard A. Collins PhD (University of Edinburgh) Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (CChem, FRSC), Chartered Biologist and Fellow of the Institute of Biology (born 1966) Ronan Collins MD (University College Cork) consultant physician and lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, Director of Stroke Services, Tallaght Hospital , Dublin Sir Rory Edwards Collins (born 1955) FMedSci FRS Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Oxford, Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford Samuel Collins British physician (1619 – 1670) Samuel Collins American physicist (1898 – 1984) Sara R. Collins PhD (George Washington University) Senior Economist, Vice President, Health Care Coverage and Access The Commonwealth Fund Sheila Collins PhD (M.I.T.) Professor, Integrative Metabolism Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute Steven Collins PhD Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Graphics at Trinity College, Dublin, co-manager of the GV2 Research Group Steven W. Collins PhD (University of Virginia), PE Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Washington Terrence J. Collins PhD (University of Auckland) Senior Lecturer, The Institute for Green Science (IGS) at Carnegie Mellon University Tristan C. Collins PhD (Columbia University) Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University William Henry Collins PhD (University of Toronto), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, President of the Geological Society of America, Director of the Canadian Geological Survey (1878 – 1938) Sir William Job Collins MD, KCVO English surgeon, UK MP
“My mother groaned, my father wept, into this dangerous world I leapt.”
― William Blake
“Our names were made for us in another century.”
― Richard Brautigan
“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until…”
“We are all a complete mixture; yet at the same time, we are all related. Each gene can trace its own journey to a different common ancestor. This is a quite extraordinary legacy that we all have inherited from the people who lived before us. Our genes did not just appear when we were born. They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations.”
“The scepter [kingship] shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [the Messiah] comes; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be…”
― Genesis 49, Verse 10
“I do not believe that I am dreaming yet I can not prove that I am not”
― Bertrand Russell
I spent most of my life completely unaware of my ancestral heritage. Sure, I knew of the personal history of my more immediate relatives; but beyond that, I never had any inkling as to my ancestral heritage. Then one day many years ago my sister said to me, “I sometimes wonder about our family background.” And so my quest to discover our genealogical roots commenced.
I started building my family tree with basic relationships, going back in time from my grandparents, one ancestor at a time. That initial effort proved to be the hardest part of the pursuit, mainly due to my lack of expertise as a novice genealogical researcher whose basic research tool was Ancestry.com. As I gained familiarity with other genealogical databases and how to efficiently mine them, my progress gained ever-increasing momentum. Today, The Patricians! tree (Ancestry.com) contains nearly 120,000 individuals, stretching over 135 generations, 5,800 of which are my direct ancestors. The GEDCOM file is 64.6MB in size.
Prior to establishing the Norse agnatic lineage, I had adopted a Irish King agnatic lineage, mainly because my late father once tersely advised me in my youth that we were of Irish extraction when I posed the question to him. The preliminary research seemed to confirm the estranged assertion. However, as time progressed and I gained ever increasing research skills as well as mulling over the results and attendant inferences, I came to the conclusion that the Norse lineage was vastly more compelling. No harm was ultimately done as it was evident to me that the Irish High King lineage was predicated on a faulty genealogy laid down by a researcher who had my forebears take a wrong turn during the 13th century that had them emanating from Wicklow, Ireland instead of Norway. as Vikings. Moreover, the realization dispelled my lingering misgivings about the validity of Irish agantic lineage since it always seemed implausible that Irishmen would chose to immigrate from Donegal to Herefordshire and subsequently to London and Suffolk during the 14th century where they would have been greeted with open arms of weaponry by locals upon arrival.
The Collins agnatic lineage was by far and away the most problematic research effort I put forth when I first started the project in 2010 with that as a primary aim. However, after easily sailing through the Ancestry.com lineage records of my forebears who settled in the American Mid-West during the early 19th century, the passageway abruptly ended. As I gained genealogical skill proficiency several years later, I began to pick up on clues and extant references as my data base mining resources rapidly expanded ever which served to generate a continuation family tree buildout. Quite soon afterward, the American forefathers were established as descendants from Englishmen who immigrated from Bramford, Suffolk, England, to Massachusetts Bay Colony during the The Great Puritan Migration to New England (1620 – 1640) . Thereafter, I finally traced their agnatic ascendancy to their forefathers who inhabited Donegal, Ireland, for several generations after they immigrated there from Orkney, Scotland (as the propitious research disclosure, as forementioned, finally revealed several years ago.)
In the interim, I spent countless hours researching “cousins” genealogies in the hope of discovering a genealogical nexus to my ancestors. Actually, the effort wasn’t as Quixotic as it may seem as it produced a sociological/genealogical record of unimagined proportions that establishes a kind of tribal connection between geneticallly related human beings, who may well have marched together in time from the nebulous cradle of their DNA formation as such. The ancient forebears and their esteemed camp followers and their descendants were in my estimation well worth noting in the genealogical research context. Otherwise, I enjoyed discovering plausible genealogicaal relationships of historical significance as an armchair historian.
During this trek back in time, I encountered fascinating figures in both history and obscurity. This blog contains many stories about their genealogical relationship to me (and many of you). By far and away, as a student of history, the historically obscure individuals are of particular interest to me. I cite Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais (1405 – 1440) maréchal de France as an example of a historically maligned personage whose real contribution to history, as both a playwright and hero of France, has yet to be properly recognized. Another example is Edward VII de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550 – 1604) “Shake-speare”, who’s yet to gain widespread recognition as the actual author of the body of literary work wrongly ascribed to William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) The Bard.
In several instances of the above, wherein some significant note of their existence has been recorded, I discovered other instances that are either woefully incomplete or outright inaccurate, especially from a genealogical standpoint. For instance, Eustache Le Sueur (1617 – 1655) Founder of the French Academy of Painting is mischaracterized, albeit unintentionally, as having no familial relationship with the Le Sueurs of Normandy. Moreover, no real familial connection has been recorded between himself and several contemporary Le Sueur artists, such as Hubert and Jean-Francois Le Sueur.
Believe it or not, my research has resulted in rewriting history (but not officially, as of yet) concerning several historical household names. One prime example is Christopher Columbus, a.k.a. Prince Segismundo Henrique Jogaila (1451 – 1506), who may well have been a Polish prince instead of a member of the Genoese bourgeoisie of the day.
My main purpose in developing this blog remains to provide interesting information about our ancestors in the context of their genealogical relationships to one another. Therein lies the fascinating part of history, at least for me. For instance, the 152 Related Poets, Authors, Journalists, Playwrights, and Publishers blog post reveals a subtle, but unmistakable pattern of ancestral relationships between renowned writers and publishers. For example, Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870) is related to Plantagenets whose descendants produced many fine authors over time.
You’ll note in a review of the lineage information preceding Ancestry.com citations for family tree relationships that all roads lead to me (an unintended but salubrious consequence in the main). Take, as an example, one direct relationship established between William The Conqueror (1028 – 1087) 1st Norman King of England, and myself as follows:
William the Conqueror, 6th Duke of Normandy, 1st Norman King of England
The lineage starts with William’s immediate family (Normans) and descends through the PLANTAGENET, HOWARD, and WOOD (my paternal grandmother’s maiden name) to COLLINS.
The TABLE OF ANCESTORS (GREAT-GRANDPARENT ANCESTORS thru 1st TO 20th COUSINS) represents an attempt to link notable ancestors to either their notable forebears and/or descendants. I relied on several sources of genealogical pedigrees, such as Jamie Allen’s “Fabulous Pedigree”, for this purpose. One should understand, however, that past a certain genealogical time frame, such as before the start of the Medieval period, these pedigrees are largely akin to epic stories passed down through generations that have taken root as nebulous facts in the minds of those who’ve cherished or hated them the most.
As it turns out, given my ancient Norse agnatic pedigree, the Collins lineage fairly well represents the length and breadth of Anglo-Saxon ancestral heritage in Britain and throughout Europe. All Norse-Germanic royal houses trace their agnatic roots to this line of ancestry. William the Conqueror, for instance, is my agnatic cousin as is Harald V (1937 – ), King of Norway.
I devoted almost as much time and effort including my maternal forebears, whenever their genealogical relationships with mine were evident from my research findings. In many instances, hers, such as Clovis I Meroving (466 – 511) 1st King of Franks, 1st Christian Ruler of Gaul, were just as closely related to my paternal ancestors of historical note, sometimes even above.
As I discovered during my research of my late mother’s mitochondrial DNA heritage, she was a descendant of her grandmothers who originally hailed from a slightly noble class of Prussians and Bohemians, rather than France. She always thought she was a “daughter” of French Canadian forefathers (sort of voodoo genetics at play). Anyway, I didn’t have the heart to divulge that finding to her when I saw her just before she died, mainly because she was so proud of her “French” heritage, which was wonderful from her parochial Catholic cultural perspective. Some of her notable agnatic cousins included Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1761 – 1851) and Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus (1890 – 1957), Lieutenant General Field Marshall of the 6th German Army,
One poignant example of the former regard is the King Arthur of Camelot tale Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth penned during the 12th century, which was 7 centuries after the regnal events in question were thought to have occurred. Nonetheless, the story received wide acclaim, most notably from the nobility, and has remained near and dear to the hearts of Brits to this very day.
From the inception of my work on The Patricians, A Genealogical Study, I always endeavored to develop a story along with the presentation of my genealogical research findings on historical characters I found especially compelling in one way or another, sometimes for no other reason than I thought it was at least fanciful. Well, there are so many stories to tell which haven’t already been told and passed down through successive generations for millennia, usually with the effect of either altering or stultifying human civilization development in one way or another. I can only trust that my innocuous storytelling won’t have either effect.
I discovered a couple of years into the project that antiquarian Arthur Collins (1682–1760), one of my distant English cousins, was licensed by the British Crown to publish the first genealogical compilation ever produced. His Collins’s Peerage of England editions, first published in 1709, represented a ground-breaking development in the field of genealogy at the time. I wonder what he would think of The Patricians if he was alive today.
The format of the genealogical presentation evolved. As a result, the latest exhibits are more concise and informative than those first developed at the inception of the project a decade ago. Since the task of revamping such large files is so time-consuming and tedious, many of the earliest works may never be updated, at least not any time soon, with the current direct link and ancestral lineage formatting, as previously explained.
There aren’t but a few examples, so I decided to maintain them in the portfolio since the genealogical data is accurate but, again, requires reformatting, as well as devotion to expanding the ancestral data in most instances due to my rather unsophisticated research methodology at the time, which a recent cursory review instantly revealed. For example, most of the affected individuals listed in these instances are much more closely related to me than as originally researched. This was mainly a consequence of incomplete and unsophisticated pedigree attributes in the early stage of development. As the tree grew out, so to speak, over time, more precise direct ancestral relationship links to them naturally developed as a result.
I chose to group ancestral relationships on a “first-in, first-out” basis, starting with the closest direct ones established (i.e., my “great-grandparent ancestors”, followed by “1st to 5th cousins and so forth). Though genetic experts will tell you, all this means is that I have a close genealogical relationship on a pedigree basis to the former group but not so much of a close genetic relationship with either the first or the last cousins, pending proof otherwise through YDNA haplogroup data as confirmation that one or the other shares the exact YDNA as mine, which would make us genetic cousins rather than sociologically related.
A case in point at least in my mind is the apparent distant relationship I have with James “Jimmie” Maitland Stewart (1908 – 1997) Brigadier General, Stage & Screen Actor, the famous movie star during most of the last century, is quite close on a “cousin x times removed” basis. Amazingly, after 17 generations following the death of our shared ancestor, namely, Robert II Stewart (1316 – 1390) 1st House of Stewart King of Scotland, his agnatic forebear, and mine as a directly related ancestor, we’re only “4th cousins removed”, possibly indicating a shared YDNA ancestral relationship as genetically directly-related cousins. I can cite numerous instances of this u kind of finding, but won’t for the sake of brevity.
For good, bad, or indifferent, this project served to appreciably increase my knowledge of the history of notable and often not notable major figures from a personal genealogical standpoint. Anyway, since all of us are stuck within our immutable ancient YDNA haplogroups over the interminable ages (mine hasn’t changed for the past 12,000 years), or for females their mitochondrial DNA, it is fascinating to discover how mating combinations (romantically or otherwise) bring about new and compelling human beings. More often than not, they are brought together in constrained sociological conventions and settings, usually dictated to them for many generations before their birth, such, for example, European royalty.
From there, many, many stories are born, and, alas, I have only told relatively few for your reading enjoyment. Still, I’m somewhat of a poet at heart, so I have been led to perceive by this experience that a divinely ethereal muse is at play in most if not all instances that come to my notice as such. Quite a spiritual epiphany awakening for me, nevertheless, so stories are about as much as I can offer in perception. I won’t wax poetic on this score other than to state that it came as a revelation to me that an “invisible guiding hand” is there to lead us to wherever it is we’re destined to go (future, current, or past tense).
A while back ago I viewed an intriguing sci-fi movie, entitled The Assassins Creed, which dealt with the development of advanced technology capable of inducing epigenetic memories in the human being of their ancestors’ past lives. In this cinematic instance, the flinty protagonist is made to realize an inherited YDNA code record of a past life as an assassin. What a boon to the study of genealogy (and potentially the field of medicine) it will be if and when that technology is ever fully developed. Moreover, if the technology ever advances to that point, maybe soon thereafter posterity, possibly as cyborgs, will be able to view their ancestors’ life cycles on a virtual screen of some sort (hopefully, featuring a filter to censor the more banal, and possibly sinister, aspects of their daily lives).
You may wonder why I took so much time and effort to present the artwork of my subjects before delving into the narrative. Well, chalk it up to having too much leisure time in retirement, but, after that, it does sort of represent a manner in which Chinese emperors prefaced their writing with a set of pictograms, sort of like a sophisticated and artistic stagecraft in juxtaposition before the presentation of the drama, primarily an attempt to set a mood to bolster the literary engagement for the audience. Mainly, I noticed that in most of what famous personages, particularly in recorded history, there are many paintings and the like that tell a story about their lives far better than mere mortal words would evoke (“a picture is worth a thousand words”). Take French King Louis XIV Bourbon, for example, probably no single individual ever garnered so much artistic representation of his life, from birth to death (if the reader hadn’t known about him previously, they would like to conclude that he was a French monarch of highest order almost immediately upon inspection of the artistic presentation – as brief was mine in his instance). So, I’ll keep the artistic presentation in situ, despite academic protestations to the contrary.
The main purpose in posting many, but not all ancestral blog articles compiled is to showcase my genealogical research methodology that has produced several significant historical findings. Otherwise, many are simply of human interest from a historical perspective, while others are not.
The Patricians Genealogical Research Foundation 