ANCESTOR HUNTING.

Evening Star, Issue 11451, 19 January 1901, Page 3

ANCESTOR HUNTING.

“ Wlien vou come to think of it ” (Mr W. L. Alden remarks in the Christmas number of ‘Pearson’s Magazine’), “almost everybody is descended from everybody else. If any man could ascertain (he names of all the persons for twenty generations whose blood is in his veins he would find that not one but half a dozen longs were among the number. Tracing one’s ancestors is rather an exciting sport, ;for one never knows whether the search will lead up to a throne or a gal'.ows. I once tried to trace my own descent through a Plymouth pilgrim, who achieved fame by marrying another man's ‘best girl,’ up to the Aldini family of Venice, but the scent, led mo directly ‘to Holland end the Duchy of Oldenburg instead of to Venice. Moreover, it occurred to mo that if I searched 100 long I might perhaps find that I had Orleans blood in my veins, a discovery which would naturally lead any self-respect-ing man to go out and hang himself instead of waiting for the hangman, to whose services he would be entitled by right of inheritance. Without a doubt America is full of the descendant's of the early Saxon kings, as well as of the Roman Emperors and the Egyptian Pharaohs. King Solomon must, from what we know of his domestic relations, have left a very large number of children, and the chances that we all have some of his blood in our veins must be at least a hundred to one. Mention to almost any man that he shows signs of having inherited a part, of the wisdom of Solomon and he will at once see the justice of the remark.”