Reply #87: Some people are

[skygazer]

I'm sure there are people who make shit up. There are also people who don't.

Consider - my ancestors landed in New England in 1630. At that point, there were only a few classes of people who could make that trip. They were sailors (my family weren't sailors), indentured servants, slaves or convicts (my family were none of those) or people with some money. The people who had money tended to be either merchants or members of the nobility. Mine were merchants but in one of the lines, there was a person who'd decended from nobility who are notorious for breeding within their own set. That led back quite far to royalty.

Big fucking deal, really. I find it interesting, it has no bearing on who I am (I certainly don't have any money and I'm not in line for the British throne) except that it tells me where my family came from. There were a zillion other people in my family who came from other walks of life - they don't tend to be so easy to learn about - poor people don't leave so many records. I'm not ashamed of any of 'em - I had no control over who they were.

Point being that in some situations, such as old New England and Virginia, you are likely to find a connection to the nobility. It's a matter of averages - there weren't many white people here at first, they married others in the same circle, hence a lot of people decended from a narrow strata of society.

Were you looking for a serious answer to the question?