Musings... about Mormons?

One of the tree branches I've been walking lately is a line of folks from the Norfolk, England area. They are variously Murrells and Johnsons, with some Bassingthwaightes thrown in for good measure. I was going merrily along, adding in some potential distant cousins to my database... when I hit a patch of polygamist Mormons. Now I think I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome...

While not a Mormon myself, I know that there are quite a few Mormon families scattered through the family tree. This group that I was looking at today originated in Suffolk, England and settled in Utah in the U.S.A. I would love to know what the impetus was for packing up everything, heading for North America, and then traversing most of the continent to arrive at their destination! Things must've been tough in England. Why else would you risk your family's lives by undertaking such a journey?

Charlemagne's descendant? So they say...

I've heard before that many people (especially if they are European) are descended from Charlemagne. Many are supposedly descended from British royalty, too. I was having a look at the Wikipedia page on the genealogical relationships of Presidents of the United States and marvelling at how many of them are related to each other... and to the British royals. Barack Obama and George W. Bush are tenth cousins? Wouldn't that make for an awkward extended-family reunion!

What boggles my mind, though, is how all of this was determined. Finding out about your tenth cousins requires going back quite a ways... probably about 300 years. My question is this: how on earth do they do that?

I've been researching my family tree for years (probably at least 10, at this point), and I've yet to come across anyone who even comes close to tying into a royal tree. Most of my ancestors were farmers, fishermen, labourers, or servants. I'm always on the lookout for that one person from long ago who can help me break into the royal trees... but so far, no luck. The brick walls at approximately 1800 in various branches of my tree don't help, either.

Mathematically speaking, there is probably some blue blood in the family tree; I just have no idea how to find it when the last two hundred years have been obscured by my family's less-than-royal pedigree. Poor folks didn't always keep the best records...

Carden family of... Ireland!

Thanks to my distant cousin, John, I've discovered that James Carden was actually Irish! He was born in a place called Island Bridge in Dublin around 1819. That still doesn't help me trace the tree any further back, but at least it helps explain why I couldn't find him in the English or Welsh birth records.

So now I've got at least two ancestors who were born in Ireland...