The Ancestors of Grant Louis Steinke: Volume 4

This work in four volumes takes the documented ancestry of Grant Louis Steinke to all known ancestors from the Gateway Ancestor back in time. To name just a few in these pages you will find kings, queens, Holy Roman Emperors, Byzantine Emperors, Catholic Saints, Orthodox Saints, Knights Templar, Knights of the Garter, Companions of William the Conqueror, Magna Carta Barons and more.The references that are used, in most cases, are the same as those used by hereditary societies to track the ancestry of their applicants. These are listed in the Works Cited section at the end of the last volume. Each volume is individually indexed.This book is a narrative, non-fiction history in so far as the narrative is an aid to comprehension. There is more to every person than just their name and vital statistics. Every person who lived has a unique story; long or short, simple or complex, illustrious or infamous, noble or base. All have a story to be told that should be told and remembered. Some serve as good examples to emulated; others serve as bad examples to abhor and avoid. My goal is to tell the story of all these people who came before him. In some cases, there is little or no documentation to be found, just a name. Others are well-documented, and I hope that this vignettes will encourage further reading and study.ORGANIZATION: This book begins with the first person in generation 1 as number. Generation 2 consists of the parents of No. 1 as persons 2 and 3. Generation 3 shows the four grandparents as persons 4, 5, 6, 7 and so forth. Every generation begins on a new page. To find any person’s father just double their number. To find that persons mother, double their number and add 1. This follows the numbering pattern on a standard pedigree chart and is known as an Ahnentafel pedigree.Each generation, theoretically, has twice as many people in it as the previous one. Obviously, not all ancestors are known, and their numbers are, therefore, skipped. Once we enter into medieval times close relatives often marred and shared ancestors. This is called pedigree collapse. Even so, in thirty generations there are over there are over 1 billion ancestors. Thirty generations takes most people to the 11th century to the time of William the Conqueror and El Cid. 230 = 1,073,741,824 ancestors. The database software we use to keep track of all this generates a maximum of thirty-one generations. After that, it generates random numbers and even negative ones. To simplify this and to keep the numbers from becoming incomprehensibly large the book is organized into two sections. The first section takes all the known ancestors of person 1. The second section takes the ancestor or ancestors whose ancestry goes into medieval times and I renumber those people and reference them in section 1. This allows the computer to generate accurate for beyond thirty generations.When someone appears more than once they have a person number for each appearance, but all the subsequent appearances refer back to the first-person number so that all that person’s ancestry just appears once and not multiple times.It is then possible to extend the book to Merovech, founder of the Merovingian dynasty; to Hengist, the Jutish mercenary who became King of Kent; to Ercc, ancient King of Dál Riada; and to Cerdic the earliest King of Wessex. All these men go back to the 5th century AD. The documented references stop at this point as we move from the very early medieval period to the late Roman era and from history to legend. Tradition carries the lineage further back, but it is tradition and cannot be reliably, historically documented. You will not find Adam and Eve, Zeus, Odin, and their consorts in these pages.