Viking FGC23343

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

For giggles I ordered FGC28370 from YSEQ. I'm not sure how long it will take but I'm guessing it'll be several weeks to get the results.

Curiously, I checked y-search for the first time in ages.
My best match (although not very good) is a Thacker from Somerset.

7ZQAU Thacker Somerset, England R1b1a2 (tested) Family Tree DNA 94 17


Secondly, have you seen anyone named Gendron or anything similar during this exercise. I ask as I've just gotten my 1st and only 111 marker YDNA match on ftdna from someone who's name is Johndro (with other spellings documented). My only guess as to how we're related is via my Gendron matches as we all lived in Quebec at some point. How we have different surnames with a reasonable probability of a more or less recent ancestor I've not yet tried to figure out.

Thanks for the tip. No, I have not noticed this. Have you identified any early Gernon/Johndro ancestors that I might be able to find on any of the pedigree publishing sites? What are the genetic distances/# tested markers for these matches?

Do you have any particular theories on your connection?

BTW, yes, that Thacker is one of the people in the core 'Swift' group. I'm thinking he's one of the guys descended from "Flower Swift" of Tellisford and London.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . Secondly, have you seen anyone named Gendron or anything similar during this exercise. I ask as I've just gotten my 1st and only 111 marker YDNA match on ftdna from someone who's name is Johndro (with other spellings documented). My only guess as to how we're related is via my Gendron matches as we all lived in Quebec at some point. How we have different surnames with a reasonable probability of a more or less recent ancestor I've not yet tried to figure out.

Without any more specific information, this is all I have to offer, but it is interesting:

http://www.geopatronyme.com/cgi-bin/...er&client=cdip

Not knowing anything about French surnames, I was surprised to see that the distribution for the name 'Gendron' approaches its peak in Mayenne and Ille-et-Vilaine, two Breton departments immediately bordering La Manche, where I have been speculating the FGC28370+ Garnett and Gerard families come from. It's even more common in the Vendee, but other than that, almost confined to this portion of France.

Something interesting here: The ancestors of the de Montaut stewards of the Norman earls of Chester are speculated to have come from a parish directly on the border between Ille-et-Vilaine and La Manche.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustace_de_Montaut

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monthault

I haven't seen the specific documentary support for this hypothesis, and suspect it was done only on the convenience of a similarly named place on the modern map. Chances are that there were many, many places sharing this basic place name throughout early France, some of which have probably since changed names.

But it does make sense given the 1st Norman earl's base at Avranches.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . That author hints that there is documentary and further heraldic evidence suggesting the Gerards--and now we can presume the Garnetts as well--were cadets of the de Montalt family of Hawarden in Flintshire, whose name was often rendered "de Mohaut". . . .

This 1850 book, the most specific resource I've found to date on the pedigree of the de Mohauts/de Montalts, says they took their name from a place in Flintshire, Wales, not Monthault in Ille-et-Vilaine, as some unsourced accounts have stated. Page 32.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5O...man%22&f=false

Unfortunately, it contains no hint of the "deeds" hinting at the Gerards' origins as cadets of the de Montalts. Page 23.

https://books.google.com/books?id=R9...ley%22&f=false

I think these deeds really need to be reviewed for their content, because I suspect that the de Montalts were simply acting in their capacity as stewards for the earl of Chester, rather than as kin to the Gerards. Since the compromise MRCA position for Dorey DEAGD with respect to the 'Garnett' group and the 'Swift' group is around ~1250, I don't think we can take for granted that FGC28370 really has its origins in Normandy. It could be native to Cheshire or Lancashire.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . I think these deeds really need to be reviewed for their content, because I suspect that the de Montalts were simply acting in their capacity as stewards for the earl of Chester, rather than as kin to the Gerards. Since the compromise MRCA position for Dorey DEAGD with respect to the 'Garnett' group and the 'Swift' group is around ~1250, I don't think we can take for granted that FGC28370 really has its origins in Normandy. It could be native to Cheshire or Lancashire.

A bit of unexpected luck. I was able to come upon an online archive of the referenced book by Ormerod which directly quotes the relevant deeds. Pages 128 and 129.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dI...warden&f=false

William, son of Gerard, is definitely referred to as the uncle of Roger, son of Robert II de Montalt, which is more than I expected. But the specific word from the original Latin is a derivative of "avunculus"--which means maternal, not paternal uncle.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any trace of the identity of the family of Roger de Montalt's mother, Matilda.

Robert I de Montalt, Roger's grandfather, married a member of the Neel dynasty of Saint Sauveur, and Roger himself married a member of the Arundel branch of the d'Aubignys of Saint Martin d'Auginy--themselves allegedly a branch of the Neels.

This tight web of intermarriage, plus the dates involved (i.e., Gerard must have been born around 1140) convinces me that the agnatic ancestry of the Gerards most likely does go back to the Hebridean vikings who settled the Cotentin.

Still, it's unresolved as to how this FGC28370+ signature came to be associated with these families. With the close association of Gerards and Garnetts--but especially the Gerards--to this part of Cheshire, it's tempting to conclude that this Cotentin theory must be the answer.

Too bad there's so much confusing surname variety associated with FGC28370. I guess if I had to pick a single theory as the strongest among those I've seen to date, this would be it, but results of future tests may refute that.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

A closer reading of that Garnett genealogy site leads me to believe that the modern Garnett gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire may have tacitly acknowledged that they were, in reality, cadets of the Gerard family, rather than descendants of the Medieval lords of Halton.

'"Crest: A swan's head and neck held in a dexter hand, ppr . . . The crest appears on the seal of Benedict de Gernet, the sixth and last hereditary Royal forester as early as AD 1243, while the arms are given in a Harleian MSS of 1549." - from "The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography." The Talbot's, Earls of Shrewsbury, quartered their arms with Gernet. See "An Alphabetical Dictionary of Coats of Arms Belonging to Families in Great Britain and Ireland" by John Woody Papworth for a complete list of the families that used the Mowbray arms.'

http://shissem.com/Hissem_Gernets_of_Halton.html

So the situation we have, of modern Garnetts using arms essentially identical to the ancient arms of Garnetts of Kingsley, except for a change in tincture and the addition of a bordure, cannot be dated any earlier than 1549. None of them seem to have an uninterrupted pedigree going back to the royal foresters, whose documented male line seems to end in the 13th century, although there were some Garnett families of significance around Warrington in the 1400s.

Note that the 50% to 95% confidence interval for the Gerard-Garnett relationships extends between 1640 and 1310, with 1520 at 75%. Luckily, I found a couple of high resolution FGC28370+ haplotypes for Gerards which enabled me to make this comparison with a higher level of assurance.

So while there may not be a specific MRCA even tentatively identified, I think the current state of evidence leans towards Gerard as the "true" ancestral surname of this group, with all appropriate caveats, etc. Maybe an agnatic Gerard assumed the Garnett name for purposes of collecting an inheritance. Not an uncommon practice, and there were a number of marriages between the Warrington Garnetts and the Gerards of Ince.

It would be interesting to know more about the English origins of those Gerard DNA donors, but I think their pedigrees only begin a generation or two after their likely immigrant ancestor(s). They don't appear to be much more closely related to one another than to Garnett or Edgeworth.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . The earliest records give their [i.e., the Gerard family's] original arms as azure, a lion rampant ermine ducally crowned or--identical to those of the Garnetts except for their tincture and a bordure, typical of the ways cadency was indicated in early heraldry. Page 23.

https://books.google.com/books?id=R9...ley%22&f=false

That author hints that there is documentary and further heraldic evidence suggesting the Gerards--and now we can presume the Garnetts as well--were cadets of the de Montalt family of Hawarden in Flintshire, whose name was often rendered "de Mohaut". . . .

A bit of unexpected luck. I was able to come upon an online archive of the referenced book by Ormerod which directly quotes the relevant deeds. Pages 128 and 129.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dI...warden&f=false

William, son of Gerard, is definitely referred to as the uncle of Roger, son of Robert II de Montalt, which is more than I expected. But the specific word from the original Latin is a derivative of "avunculus"--which means maternal, not paternal uncle.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any trace of the identity of the family of Roger de Montalt's mother, Matilda. . . .

I think I may have come very near to the origin of the Gerard family's relationship with the de Montalts. My line of reasoning starts by noticing another coat of arms sharing this "lion rampant, ducally crowned" motif in their heraldry. It also appears in the family of the Barons Burnell, also along the Welsh March, but further south, in Shropshire.

https://books.google.com/books?id=aU...ell%22&f=false

Actually, except for the tinctures, this coat is 100% identical to the Garnett arms appearing from 1549 onwards.

More than that, there is actual contemporary documentary evidence for a William, son of Gerard in the Burnell family who was alive at the same period as the man from the Roger de Montalt charter of 1232, from my first quote above in this post. Begins on page 65 of the link below, and continues on the next page.

https://books.google.com/books?id=X4...Scolay&f=false

So this says that William's father, Gerard, was witness to documents in 1170 and 1190 for the 4th and 5th de Lacy barons of Pontefract.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lac...scy.2C_Laci.29

This fits in well with an estimated birth date of 1140 for Gerald, father of William, the maternal uncle of Roger de Montalt from the 1232 charter, since Roger must have been born around 1200.

This fits in well,too, with the specific network of relationships surrounding the de Montalts. Remember that the de Montalts were stewards to the earls of Chester. Here we learn that the heir of Robert de Lacy, 5th baron of Pontefract was Roger Fitz John, constable of Chester, who later adopted the de Lacy surname.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_...0%E2%80%931211)

So it makes sense that Robert II de Montalt, Roger de Montalt's father, would have married into another family so closely connected to the earldom of Chester.

The family's origin is almost certainly Norman, but it's hard to get much a read on the specific neighborhood.

Gerard b. ~1140 is described as the 'dapifer' or 'steward' of the earl of Warren, whose origins were from near Arques-la-Bataille, in the north-east of Normandy. That seems to be a point in common with the geographic origins of the followers of William Fitz Osbern, 1st earl of Hereford, another great lord of the southern Welsh March, although the reference is rather late.

The first specific mention of the Burnells seems to be the burial of Sir Robert Burnell at Buildwas, Shropshire in 1087. Judging by the entries near Acton Burnell, Shropshire in the Domesday Book (1086), this Sir Robert Burnell was probably identical with Robert Fitz Corbet, a follower of Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury.

http://opendomesday.org/place/SJ5302/acton-burnell/

https://books.google.com/books?id=6U...bet%22&f=false

As I noticed during some other inquiries in this series, the de Montgomeries had estates in every part of Normandy--including nearby to the Neels of Saint Sauveur at Montaigu-la-brisette, where the name of Dorey (i.e., DNA donor DEAGD) is first mentioned. But the bulk of the estates were further east and south, like Tournai-sur-Dive, in Caux, where another Shropshire vassal, Gerard de Tournai, probably came from.

https://books.google.com/books?id=BF...ies%22&f=false

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . The family's origin is almost certainly Norman, but it's hard to get much a read on the specific neighborhood. . . .

Maybe not as hard as I thought. The great authority Lucien Musset believes the Fitz Corbet family "probably" came from Boitrons et d'Essay, near modern Le Mêle-sur-Sarthe, which the de Montgomery family inherited from the Bellême family, counts of Alençon. Page 147.

https://www.persee.fr/doc/annor_0570..._hos_17_1_6662

I believe this part of Normandy is not considered to have been heavily settled by vikings, so the Fitz Corbet family's origin would more likely have been Frankish.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

There may be some compelling evidence against identifying the origins of the Gerard family of Kingsley, Cheshire with the Burnells, despite impressive coincidences in the charters cited above.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public...frame=yresults

Two donors in Lineage 7 of the Corbett genealogy project have tested as G-L497, a subclade of G-P303. I believe they are ID #'s 5N4W8 and U8SCE in YSearch.og. This family seems to claim descent from the Corbett family of Moreton Corbett, Shropshire, descended from Roger Fitz Corbet. This is a problem because they obviously are not a match for the FGC28370+ people I've been talking about.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:3H9K-XB1

Those English historians I cited in my earlier posts who bothered to opine on the Burnells' origins identify the Robert Burnell buried in 1087 at Buildwas Abbey as the brother of Roger Fitz Corbet, which makes sense to me because Roger occupied Acton Burnell in the Domesday Book in 1086. Fitz Corbet definitely had a brother named Robert, though there doesn't seem to be much information on him.

The crux of the whole thing may be in tracing the original documentation of the ancestor of these DNA donors, Robert Corbett b. 1640 in England and d. 1695 in Windham, Connecticut.

https://www.geni.com/people/Robert-C...00009237225641

From what I can tell, the connection to Moreton Corbett is extremely speculative, with no references to any original documents whatsoever which could be interpreted as connecting these families.

So at least one of the following scenarios must apply:

1. The FGC28370+ folks don't descend from William fitz Gerard de Burnell. To come to this conclusion, we'd have to accept that the charters, the similarities in heraldry, and their well-documented position among the gentry of Cheshire were just coincidences. It's certainly possible, because there are some nasty documentation gaps from the mid-1500s, but it's hard to simply write off the accumulated weight of that evidence, circumstantial though it may be.

2. The G-L497 people don't descend from Roger Fitz Corbet. Normally, this would have been my default assumption, due to the much weaker documentation of the American Corbett family on this point. But the much more characteristically "French" nature of their haplogroup gives me pause. Maybe there is something here after all.

3. The Robert de Burnell who died in 1087 was not the brother of Roger Fitz Corbet. From what I can tell, the Corbetts of Moreton Corbett pretty much have the documentation of their descent sewed up. And given Roger's occupation of Acton Burnell in 1086, I would be very reluctant to accept this conclusion, even if there is no direct, explicit evidence on this point.

Kind of a nail biter. Luckily, these testers had documented their results, or this type of unknown conflict would only have festered as a latent possibility.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

There may be some compelling evidence against identifying the origins of the Gerard family of Kingsley, Cheshire with the Burnells, despite impressive coincidences in the charters cited above. . . .

So at least one of the following scenarios must apply: . . .

3. The Robert de Burnell who died in 1087 was not the brother of Roger Fitz Corbet. From what I can tell, the Corbetts of Moreton Corbett pretty much have the documentation of their descent sewed up. And given Roger's occupation of Acton Burnell in 1086, I would be very reluctant to accept this conclusion, even if there is no direct, explicit evidence on this point. . . .

The consensus of the serious, publishing historians who care about this sort of thing and have access to the relevant archives seems so firm that one is reluctant even to suggest this, but: What if they have only taken for granted that Robert [de Brunell] was Roger Fitz Corbet's brother? Here is a 19th century review of some donations to the abbey at Séez. Page 98.

https://books.google.com/books?id=WV...bet%22&f=false

This touches on a couple of important points.

Firstly, it describes the lord of Boitron as 'Girard Corbet', not simply 'Corbet de Boitron', or even 'Girard le Corbet'. This could establish the use of Gerard as a favored name in this lineage, would be useful considering our discussion began with a putative descendant in England named William, son of Gerard.

But it also makes me question the traditional identification of Roger Fitz Corbet with this family. Wouldn't it have been more usual to call the son of the lord of Boitron simply Roger Fitz Girard?

In this case, there seems to be so much evidence associating this Girard Corbet as an associate of the de Montgomery overlords of the former Belleme territories such as Boitron, that the tendency to assume that this represents the Shropshire tenant's origins is overwhelming.

But what is the origin of the name 'Corbet', anyhow? I know it is universally said to derive from the word for 'crow' or 'raven', but did Girard use this as a family name or merely a personal nickname? If it were a nickname only, wouldn't it have been more usual to append the definite articel 'le'? Seeing a transcript of the original charters referred to would have been useful.

Secondly, and more importantly, it establishes that Girard Corbet had a vassal named Jean Burnet, from a nearby fief called des Fontaines. From what I have read, at least in older forms of French, the suffixes "-et" and "-el" in surnames have the same meaning, an indication of dimunition. Isn't it at least possible that the relationship between Roger Fitz Corbet and Robert Brunell was more complicated than simply brothers? Maybe relatives of a kind--like brothers-in-law--instead of children of the same parents?

Several reviews of the Norman nobility mention that in former times there were at least two distinct families of Brunet in this area, one of which eventually acquired Boitron itself. Page 22.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Js...taines&f=false

Could the family of Acton Brunell be their agnatic cousins, and have simply shifted the name gradually from "-et" to "-el"?

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

. . . So at least one of the following scenarios must apply:

1. The FGC28370+ folks don't descend from William fitz Gerard de Burnell. To come to this conclusion, we'd have to accept that the charters, the similarities in heraldry . . .

My line of reasoning starts by noticing another coat of arms sharing this "lion rampant, ducally crowned" motif in their heraldry. It also appears in the family of the Barons Burnell, also along the Welsh March, but further south, in Shropshire.

https://books.google.com/books?id=aU...ell%22&f=false

Actually, except for the tinctures, this coat is 100% identical to the Garnett arms appearing from 1549 onwards. . . . [/url]

One very plausible argument could be that the similarity of the Gerard to the Brunell arms was only incidental, and occurred much later than any possible familial connection. A close reading of Ormerod's account pretty much says that, claiming that the earliest versions of the arms, from king John's reign (.i.e., <=1215) do NOT contain the crown. Page 131.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dI...les%22&f=false

I think I got a misleading impression because the 1884 edition of Burke's general armory (page 394) lists most of the Gerard family arms containing the lion rampant motif as containing a crown, also. That could simply be a function of the Crewton branch being relatively more prolific.

Unfortunately, that interpretation would render the following observations from contemporary charters merely coincidental, too.

. . . More than that, there is actual contemporary documentary evidence for a William, son of Gerard in the Burnell family who was alive at the same period as the man from the Roger de Montalt charter of 1232, from my first quote above in this post. Begins on page 65 of the link below, and continues on the next page.

https://books.google.com/books?id=X4...Scolay&f=false

So this says that William's father, Gerard, was witness to documents in 1170 and 1190 for the 4th and 5th de Lacy barons of Pontefract.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lac...scy.2C_Laci.29

This fits in well with an estimated birth date of 1140 for Gerald, father of William, the maternal uncle of Roger de Montalt from the 1232 charter, since Roger must have been born around 1200.

This fits in well,too, with the specific network of relationships surrounding the de Montalts. Remember that the de Montalts were stewards to the earls of Chester. Here we learn that the heir of Robert de Lacy, 5th baron of Pontefract was Roger Fitz John, constable of Chester, who later adopted the de Lacy surname.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_...0%E2%80%931211)

So it makes sense that Robert II de Montalt, Roger de Montalt's father, would have married into another family so closely connected to the earldom of Chester. . . .[/url]

Unfortunately, the deeds related to the founder, Gerard "of Hawarden", don't appear to be very precisely dated, and even this epithet may be anachronistic, so I'm not sure I have very clear evidence that he could not be the same man as Mr. Brunell from the Pontefract charters. Though, in context, it seems unlikely.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

Okay, so to summarize: Attempts to pursue the origin of the Cheshire Gerard family who appear within the core FGC28370+ go back to the circle of the de Montalt stewarts of the first Norman earls, but the well-publicized claim that they are a branch of the Dukes of Leinster is clearly wrong.

I thought I had found a very clever correspondence between the first well-documented members of this family, William son of Gerard (fl. 1232) and the de Brunell stewards of the de Warren earls, but that was based on an anachronistic view of the heraldry of the Crewton cadets of the Gerard family.

To test Ormerod's original hypothesis that the Gerards represent a cadet line of the de Montalts themselves, we could compare to documented Y chromosome haplotypes for the Maude family of Yorkshire, their modern descendants.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public...frame=yresults

None of those participants seem to make a direct claim of descent from the de Montalts, but there are two very intersting high-resoltion kits in Group # 3.

One of them claims a Scottish earlist known ancestor named "Moffett" and the other doesn't specify geographic location, but the surname is "Maude". They're about GD of 13 at 67 against one another, but belong to the same subclade, R-U106. One has tested at least up to L48 and the other to A5616, which is a descendant clade, so there is no obvious conflict.

This is interesting because Moffett is often said to be a variation of the Scottish Mowatt, itself the usual rendering in Scotland of de Montalt. This branch of the family is said to have become established in the reign of king David I (1124-1153). A genetic distance of 13 at 67 markers would be at about the 33% confidence level if they had a most recent common ancestor born around 1100.

To my knowledge, neither of these donors claim to have a supportable paper trail leading to the historic de Montalts, but the "Maude" participant is likely the administrator of Ysearch.org kit Q8RJ6, which states his family is from Yorkshire, and Burke's makes it sound as if the de Montalts did have recognized branches there.

So, tentative though it may be, this evidence leads me to doubt that the FGC28370+ people are an agnatic branch of the de Montalts, even if they are someday proven to be male line descendants of William fitz Gerard.

I guess it was always a long shot, considering that the specific relationship of William fitz Gerard to Roger de Montalt was "avunculus". But it also demonstrates the perils of over-interpreting heraldry.

I started this thread, not knowing of the significance of FGC28370, but impressed by the distribution of its parent clade, FGC23343, by suggesting a relationship to the Neel de Saint Sauveur viscounts of Cotentin. Maybe that is still a viable hypothesis. The Neel barony of Halton, Cheshire became extinct in 1149, but considering the web of relationships surrounding the early de Montalts, it might not be impossible that they represent a cadet line prevented from inheriting by reason of illegitimacy.

Another curious point: By the mid-1400s, a cadet family of the Garnetts of Lancashire held Rainhill, near Widnes, which had previously been held by William fitz Nigel, 2nd baron of Halton, by right of his mother, heiress of the last Saxon baron. Although ostensibly of a distinct agnatic origin, the Garnetts and Gerards seem to have intermarried extensively. I don't know the deep history of Rainhill, but it may be worth hypothesizing that it wound its way to the Garnetts through the Gerards and the 1st Norman barons of Halton.

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. . . I started this thread, not knowing of the significance of FGC28370, but impressed by the distribution of its parent clade, FGC23343, by suggesting a relationship to the Neel de Saint Sauveur viscounts of Cotentin. Maybe that is still a viable hypothesis. The Neel barony of Halton, Cheshire became extinct in 1149, but considering the web of relationships surrounding the early de Montalts, it might not be impossible that they represent a cadet line prevented from inheriting by reason of illegitimacy.

Another curious point: By the mid-1400s, a cadet family of the Garnetts of Lancashire held Rainhill, near Widnes, which had previously been held by William fitz Nigel, 2nd baron of Halton, by right of his mother, heiress of the last Saxon baron. Although ostensibly of a distinct agnatic origin, the Garnetts and Gerards seem to have intermarried extensively. I don't know the deep history of Rainhill, but it may be worth hypothesizing that it wound its way to the Garnetts through the Gerards and the 1st Norman barons of Halton.

There may be actual, contemporary documentary evidence that supports this theory, however indirectly:

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi...65&style=TABLE

If this version of Roger de Montalt's parentage is correct--I have seen several--his mother, Leucha, brought several legacy Fitz Neel manors into the family as part of her dower. If the William or Gerard mentioned in the 1232 charter were "avunculus" to Roger, it would most likely be as brother or half-brother to Leucha, although I guess it is possible that the relationship was only by marriage.

[benowicz FTDNA Customer Find all posts View Profile Close benowicz]

There may be actual, contemporary documentary evidence that supports this theory, however indirectly:

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi...65&style=TABLE

If this version of Roger de Montalt's parentage is correct--I have seen several . . .

I see part of the confusion now. The Roger from our 1232 charter was the nephew of the man referred to above.

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi...cat3&id=I19649

That may not invalidate my point, however. An "avunculus major" would be a maternal great uncle. The use of the dative singular case for both William and the "avunculus" in the original charter gives the strong impression that they would be speaking only of a regular "avunculus", but it's not a crazy interpretation. And in any event, whoever William, son of Gerard was, he was close to the Fitz Neel circle.

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Actually, according to Ormerod, at least until the mid-1300s, Cheshire was crawling with agnatic relatives of the Fitz Neel family--the Hattons and Duttons, coming from sons of Neel's father, Ivo.

I kind of exhausted myself looking through the various branches, but I think these particular Duttons, at least, died out in the direct male line in the mid-1300s. Easily enough time for one of them to have become the mother of the Roger de Montalt from the 1232 charter which contains such valuable clues to the origin of the Gerard family of Kingsley.

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Ormerod's earliest notices of the Gerard family pertain to Gerard, father of the William who appears as "avunculus" (maternal uncle) of Roger de Montalt in the charter of 1232. This Gerard received lands in Hawarden and the manor of Ledsham at some point during the reigns of John and Henry III, a period extending from 1199 to 1272.

The significance of Hawarden is that it was one of the primary estates of the de Montalts.

The manor of Ledesham, according to Ormerod, partially confirmed by the Domesday Book, was owned by Walter de Vernon in 1086. The significance of this place may be twofold:

One: The de Vernons derive in some way from the de Reviers family. Nehou, the former caput of the Neel dynasty, was later among the de Vernon family estates. The wife of Neel II, the 2nd vicomte de Saint Sauveur was a member of this family. Page 8.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ck...eur%22&f=false

Interestingly, one of their sons was named Girard, though this cannot be our man, who, based on the context of the 1232 charter, was probably born around 1140, or perhaps 100 years after the son of this de Reviers woman.

Two: The adjacent manor of Neston was among those cited as having come into the de Montalt family by marriage to a daughter of William Fitz Neel.

https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi...65&style=TABLE