Our family Webb and its connection to Shakespeare

Our Frederick-Grohndorff pedigree has only four or five generations in America. The rest is in Europe, the Russian Steppes, Africa, Gondwanaland, the primordial sea, several generations of supernovae, and the Big Bang. I've followed the paper trail to the 1850's, and tracked their emigration from Germany, Prussia, and Bohemia. But to go further would require that I get off the couch. The internet is big, but the universe is even bigger, and the larger story of our family history is in languages I don't speak, in handwriting I can't decipher, and in libraries far, far away. So to keep myself amused, I sometimes stray to side branches connected to our family tree only by marriage. Our parents and grandparents, and most of our great aunts and uncles married within the clan of recent immigrants from north and central Europe. But a few were a bit more adventurous.

Our great aunt, Clara Alma Friedrich, married Edward Charles Taylor. And her cousin, William Friedrich married Edward's sister, Maude Taylor. Edward and Maude were children of George Alexander Taylor and Martha Minerva Webb. The Taylor line has been in America since at least 1630, and the Webb line has been here longer than the Pilgrims.

George Alexander Taylor (1845-1885), father of Edward Charles Taylor (husband of Clara Alma Friedrich), Leipsig Cemetery, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The inscription refers to Company A of the Wisconsin 17th Infantry, with which George served during the U.S. Civil War.

Vine Taylor (1780-1859), grandfather of George Alexander Taylor, Beaver Dam City Cemetery, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin

Oliver Taylor (1748-1797), father of Vine Taylor, Hartland, Windsor County, Vermont

Samuel Taylor Jr. (1716-1800), father of Oliver Taylor, Hartland, Windsor County, Vermont

Samuel Taylor Sr. (1688-1734), father of Samuel Taylor Jr., Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts

John Taylor came to America with the British Navy in 1630, and died at sea in 1645. He had a grandson, Orthniel Taylor, who fought with the Colonial Army against the British in the American Revolution. Orthniel was a step-brother of Samuel Taylor Sr., whose headstone appears above. 

The mother of the two Taylors that married into our family, Martha Minerva Webb, has an American pedigree that's even longer. No Webb descendant has yet bothered to post pictures of their headstones, but someone did post a picture or Martha and her immediate family.

The family of Charles Douglas Webb and Laura Deborah Berry, taken about 1889. Standing, left to right: Charles Curtis Webb and his wife, Mary Calkins, Martha Webb Taylor, Minnie, Willard, and Lynn Burr Webb.

Everyone in the picture, with the exception of Laura Deborah Berry (the scary bald lady on the right), was a first cousin of William Shakespeare. And when Martha's son, Edward, married our great aunt Clara, that made us, at least by marriage, first cousins of the bard -- or "Bill", as we may now call him. Her daughter, Maude, married William Albert Friedrich, our first cousin twice removed but, frankly, I don't know what that makes us. Second cousins, eleven time removed, perhaps? 

Cousins, as you know, share a common grandparent. Shakespeare, like most people, had four and the Webbs have a bloodline relation to all but one of them. Shakespeare's two grandmothers were sisters, his parents were cousins, and his family tree looks like kudzu. 

In 1533, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warkwickshire, England, Henry Alexander Webb (that's the 9th great grandfather of the old man in the photo above) married Grace Arden. Grace's brother, Robert, was married to Henry's sister, Mary, and Henry's other sister, Abigail, married a man related to neither of them: Richard Shakespeare -- which was fortunate, because their grandson, William, was already dangerously close to being born with eleven toes.