Jacob Holdt - my family roots 

Ancestors of my children 
 

I have so far found 9,170 direct ancestors of my children, Daniel and Lalou. In this family tree you can click your way almost 3,500 years back to pharaohs and high priests in Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. Click on the last names on each page to move back in history and on the 1st to move forward.  
Daniel and Lalou's great Internet Family Tree

Family index 

Or click your way through Daniel and Lalou's 3,182 Scandinavian ancestors made on a betaversion of the new fantastic WinFamily 6.
For a listing of most of our worldwide family members - with dates and locations of their births and deaths - look at Daniel and Lalou's Ancestor Report.

Royal lines 

For genealogists these are the easiest to research. Yet they can be quite interesting - enabling you to get way back in time and forcing you to take a closer look at what you learned - or more often - didn't learn in school. 
Daniel and Lalou have so far 987 kings, 98 pharaohs, 115 emperors and 11 Grand Dukes as direct great-grand fathers. Here are how they are related to some of them. (Most I found after I made these web pages in 1997 just as many minor faults have since been corrected). By clicking on their blue names you jump right to their blue blood lines in our family tree where you can see how exactly they are related to our family today - and perhaps to your own family...... 

Emperors of the Roman, Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires 
11 emperors and 9 empresses and princesses 

Pharaohs and High Priests of Ancient Egypt
40 pharaohs, 4 high priests and 18 queens and princesses

Royalty of Judea, Israel, Mitanni and the Hittites
12 kings and 3 queens and princesses

Royalty in Ancient Greater Persia
34 kings and 11 queens and princesses

Grand Dukes and Czars of Russia and Novgorod 
11 grand dukes and 8 princes and princesses 

Danish Royalty 
11 kings, 4 queens and 6 princes and princesses 

Early Swedish Royalty 
18 kings, 7 queens and 11 princes and princesses 

Early Norwegian Royalty 
7 kings, 3 queens and 2 princes and princesses 

Early English and Irish Royalty 
15 kings, 6 queens and 3 princesses 

Royalty of Burgund, Brittany and the Franks 
33 kings, 7 queens and 3 princes and princesses 

Hungarian, Polish and other Royalty 
28 kings, 3 queens and 19 princes and princesses 

Armenian and Iberian (Georgian) Royalty
37 kings and 5 queens and princesses

Distinguished citizens of Ancient Rome 
37 ancestors - among them  Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony 

Four distinguished Americans
To amuze my many American friends I include my family's relationship to 4 famous Americans:
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Rosevelt and .......well..... Walt Disney!

Distinguished Danish and Norwegian writers
This is only of interest to Danes and Norwegians: - how my children are related to 35 of our greatest writers and heroes such as N.F.S. Grundtvig, Steen Steensen Blicher, Sigrid Undset, "Tordenskjold" etc.

Royalty and Gods in Greek and Roman Mythology
3 Gods, 7 kings and several heroes from Homer's "The Illiad" whom our historical ancestors claim to descend from
 

Noble lines 

Behind the many royal lines there is naturally even more nobility. When researching Swedish ancestors around year 1500 I found to my astonishment that 11 of them had died on the same day. When I realized they were executed by Danish King Christian II in the Stockholm blood bath I discovered their nobility and traced their lines back to early Swedish kings. Almost 3,000 individuals in our family tree are now Scandinavian nobility from 1000-1500. You can find them in the ancestor index under capitalized names such as STURE, TROLLE, GYLDENSTIERNA, OXENSTIERNA etc. 

Peasant lines 

These were the most challenging since I had to dig up everything myself in church books, land records etc. with many trips to Danish and Norwegian State Archives. On the Norwegian side I have traced two branches back almost to year 1500 and actually found my children's live 12th grand cousins - still working with their cows on a mountain slope near Voss - 500 years after we "lost" close touch with each other. It was a wonderful family reunion! 

The oldest peasant I have been able to find in Denmark is Grumme from 1390. He lived 10 miles from where I grew up and was quite a rebel. He was severely punished for rebelling against Queen Margrethe I. 
We hope our present Queen Margrethe II doesn't hold that against our family. She is my children's 24th grand cousin, but unfortunately she doesn't know it! 

Presently I have only written about Grumme and other interesting family members in Danish. So this genealogy home page is still under construction! 

To exchange genealogical information please contact me: Jacob Holdt@american-pictures.com 

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