Who Do You Think You Are? Ancestry, Family Trees and my Viking roots

Who Do I Think I Am?

I've been half-heartedly tracing my family tree for a while now, and recently made a rather startling breakthrough.

The name 'AFFORD' is not really that common - in fact it seems that ALL Affords can be traced back to the same family from the small village of Oundle in Northamptonshire. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather it turns out was a chap named John Aford. Spelling wasn't so great back in those days - his son is recorded as John A'foord (b 1686), but his son and all subsequent descendants all spelt the surname as 'Afford'. But sadly that is as far as I (or anyone else) has managed to trace the name. I'm told it's probably down to the fact that records go a bit sketchy around the time of the Civil War.

But the family tree doesn't stop there.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather John Afford (1767-1854) married Mary Glitherow (1760-1842). I can trace her ancestry directly from father to father back to Roger de Montgomery (1052-1123) - Lord of Lancaster and Honour of Clitherow (hence Mary's surname). Roger's father was Roger 'The Great' de Montgomerie, First Earl of Shrewsbury - born in Normandy and by all accounts one of William the Conquerer's trusted advisors.

If we pop back four more generations we get to Roger de Monte Gomeric - born in 904 at Monte Gomeric, Normandy. Now, his father was Gomeric Yngvarsson - a proper Viking from Denmark, son of Igvar (Ingvar/Yngvar) Ragnarsson, son of Ragnar 'Lodbrok' ('Hairy Breeches') Siggurdsson.

I Googled this Ragnar fellow and he turns out to be a 'semi-legendary king of Sweden and Denmark who reigned sometime in the eighth or ninth centuries. According to the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, Ragnar belonged to the Swedish Yngling Dynasty. Both Saxo and Icelandic sources describe him as the son of Sigurd Ring, a king of Sweden who conquered Denmark, but they are divided on whether Ragnar mainly resided in Sweden or in Denmark'.

Blimey. The King of Sweden....

Anyway. That's all for now. I will reveal the rest of my research next time...