On the last cold day of December in the dying year we count as 406, the
river Rhine froze solid, providing the natural bridge that hundreds of
thousands of hungry men, women and children had been waiting for.  They were
the barbarians and they were illiterate and left no records and certainly
had no need for the records and literature of the Roman Empire which they
were destroying.  The beginning of the dark ages.

 

It would be a very long time before names were again recorded and then only
if you were someone.  A commoner?  Probably no record that you ever existed.

 

Now how someone claims to research through this time I cannot begin to
guess.

 

I can maybe accept a connection to Charlemange or William the Conquerer or
to one of the Magna Charta Sureties but probably not much more.

 

Of course you can always be like my grandmother who said our ancestors were
English Royalty when in fact they were coal miners from Cornwall.

 

John


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