We have developed a series of web pages that list descendants of Alfred the Great that were born in about 950, 1050, 1150, 1250, 1350 and 1550. The pages list only those descendants that are shown in Wikitree and that have well documented descents. This first web page provides the start point for the descents - Alfred the Great.
One can show, with statistics, that, if one has any UK based ancestors atall, then one is almost certainly (more than 99% probability) descended from King Edward 1 (sometimes referred to as the father of the nation). Tracing back from him takes one to many interesting historical figures such as William the Conquerer, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Clovis, numerous saints, El Cid, etc.
A corollory of the above statistics tells us that, given any 20 people who were born in about 1350 and who are known to have left descendants, one is almost certainly (more than 99% probability) descended from one of these 20. Similar results are true for later dates but with larger groups than 20. For instance, 200 people is sufficient for 1450, 2000 for 1550 and 20,000 for 1650.
The ultimate aim of later pages, is to produce a list of at least 2000 people, who were born in the British Isles in about 1550, who left descendants, and who were descended from Alfred the Great. This list of people is arranged according to the counties (of the British Isles) in which the people were born. The list provides a useful gateway into medieval descents - if researchers can trace a descent from one of the 2000 in the list, they will have an entry point into medieval descents.
It would be nice to produce the list of 20,000 people for 1650, but this would be a daunting task. 1650 would be desirable, because it would reach people who lived after the chaos of the Civil Wars and would reach the time when record keeping was improving.
Each entry, in the lists points to the Wikitree page, for the relevant person, and to the Wikitree family tree that shows his or her descent from an earlier person in the lists.
Other pages will list descents reaching people born in about 950, 1050, 1150, 1250, 1350, 1450 and 1550). All of the descents start with:-