Click on the image to expand it.
As Gary Boyd Roberts announced yesterday, Meghan Markle has a distant kinship to Prince Harry through their shared descent from Sir Philip Wentworth (died 1464) and his wife Mary Clifford. While Gary continues to work on much of Meghan’s American ancestry, especially her forebears in colonial New England, I’ve composed the chart at left from his notes. This outlines the three closest kinships between Meghan and Harry that have so far been identified – two through Harry’s mother and one through his father. As Gary has noted, there are hundreds of other ways they would be distantly related.
I’ve also been working on Meghan Markle’s American ancestors, so stay tuned!
Notes on the above chart:
For the lineages behind Princess Diana, see Richard K. Evans, The Ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales, for Twelve Generations (Boston: NEHGS, 2007); for the lineages behind Prince Charles, see Gerald Paget, The Lineage and ancestry of H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (Edinburgh, 1977). For the royal descent of William Skepper, and as an ancestor to both President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Kermit (Carow) Roosevelt, see Gary Boyd Roberts, Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 Edition (Boston: NEHGS, 2017 reprint). For the American generations from William Skepper to Meghan Markle, see The American Genealogist 20 [1943]: 77–85, 69 [1994]: 129–30; Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Abel Lunt, 1769-1806, of Newbury, Massachusetts (Portland, Me., 1963), 13–17 (Skepper to Drake); Joseph Dow, History of the Town of Hampton, New Hampshire, 2: 690 (Drake); Biographical Review Volume XXI – Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Strafford and Belknap Counties, New Hampshire (Boston, 1897), 141 (Drake to Smith); Mildred D. Mudgett, Thomas Mudgett of Salisbury, Massachusetts and his descendants (Bennington, Vt., 1961), 69 (Smith to Merrill); and later vital record and census data.
