In a moment that I never thought was possible, today I discovered the Christening Record for Christopher Hussey which documents the final missing link in the pedigree of Bathsheba Hussey. I have been missing this document ever since I imported Jean A Sargent’s work in 2004 and with the tools available I was unable to prove this single link in a humongous chain of royalty from which she descends.
Her Grandfather Christopher was never accepted as a son of John Hussey because no record could be located to establish the connection. It set up a tug of war between the two families that has never been resolved. There has also been considerable debate within the Babb Family Association as well regarding this one shaky connection and whether we should continue to recognize it given the situation. Some advocated that I remove it altogether. I resisted knowing that just because I hadn’t seen the document it didn’t mean that someone else hadn’t who had done the research themselves.
Bathsheba counts amongst her Grandparents, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and Eleanor of Aquitaine. The word King appears 119 times in in the 54 generations of her ancestors, so I cannot overstate the importance of this revelation. In all she has 454 Grandparents in the tree dating back to…
149 AD
Beyond that I have now formally proven a connection to Megan Markle and Prince Harry (I don’t care if I can’t call him that, I shall persist!).
How Did I Find It?
Well, I received a message from a follower who noticed an inconsistency for Bathsheba that she was listed as being born in Hampton, Devon, England, while all of her siblings (older and younger) were listed with Hampton, Rockingham, New Hampshire. This error has sat in my tree for more than a decade with no one noticing. At the time I first input the data I didn’t know my places nearly as well as I do now and there were many cases in which Jean only listed a city. That was initially sufficient, though this is one of those times that the location was in question.
While I was correcting this I decided to take a fresh run at finding Christopher’s ancestry using my new approach. By NOT using the exact match setting for the surname Hussey and inputting what I did know about his alleged father’s location of Dorking, Surrey, England I got a single hit. But what a hit it was!
Christopher was listed in the index as Christopher Hufty. I’ve tried to recreate the search to show you exactly how I did this, but somehow FamilySearch.org has swallowed up my access once again and I can no longer find it. But like Jesus I save! I save records in this case whereas he saves lives, but whatever.
So, let me present to you for the very first time in its entirety the Royal Ancestry of Bathsheba Hussey who married Thomas Babb (1-2) son of Phillip Babb of the Isles of Shoals.
4 responses to “STOP THE PRESSES!!!!”
Wow! Thanks for your diligent research! Amazing!
Hello Dan,
Thank you so much for looking into this! As a Babb and not really knowing my father’s ancestry until a few years ago through Ancestry I appreciate all this information. When you shared the tree on Ancestry I thought it was odd that Bathsheba was listed separately from siblings supposedly born in another country.
Thank you again,
Lesley Hagen (Babb)
With so many people in the tree I often am too close to the data to spot certain mistakes like that. I spend time on people whose information is not known, so I haven’t stopped to look at her entry in many years. I had given up looking for Christopher’s info many years back and it was just a whim that got me to look at it again this week.
I live in NJ, but drive through Old New Castle, Delaware often. I had stopped in with the historical society trying to determine where Bathsheba Babb was buried the only thing they could tell me was the Quaker burial ground had been dug up and no longer exists. The curator there was excited and indicated she had written an article about the Babb/ Hussey family in Old New Castle. She sent me an copy of the article which apparently was based on erroneous information stating that they were from Ireland and of Irish descent. I contacted her and sent her some accurate information on them but she never responded.