Are there any surviving relatives of Anne Boleyn today or has her bloodline ended? Rich Jones
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Unless you believe that Anne Boleyn had illegitimate children that we don't know about or that Elizabeth I had illegitimate children (Shakespeare, Earl of Oxford, Arthur Dudley etc.) then there are no direct descendents of Anne Boleyn. However, Mary Boleyn's wikipedia page states:-
"Mary Boleyn is a distant ancestress of many notables including Winston Churchill, John Davison Rockefeller, P. G. Wodehouse, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon [the late Queen Mother and therefore the Queen], Diana, Princess of Wales, Sarah, Duchess of York, Charles Darwin and Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr."
So there is still Boleyn blood around.
If we believe that the Carey children were fathered by Henry VIII then these people are also descendants of him.
Mary Boleyn's daughter Catherine Carey, Lady Knollys, had 15 children and Mary's son Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, had 12 children (not all survived infancy) plus some illegitimate children, so that's a lot of Careys!
I agree Claire, there is Boleyn blood lurking somewhere in the world, but Tudor blood, one can probably feet quite safe saying no way, but, always there is that infamous “but” who knows who was born to whom and if that be the case, then one would have to give in and say that somewhere out there is the diluted blood King Henry VIII, and for that matter why not go a step further and say King Henry VII, but then way should be leave Jasper and Owen Tudor out of the picture, same family, same blood……so..?? Leaves a mind to wonder and if it be true I would venture to say that those people with Tudor blood running in their veins today do not even know it!!!
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Alliana Reply:
January 29th, 2012 at 7:10 pm
i’m anne boleyn direct desendent you see i was doing a paper on my family tree and my grampa sent me four pages of my direct descendents that are royal she was on there
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Claire Reply:
January 30th, 2012 at 4:27 am
Hi Alliana,
Which branch of the Boleyns are you descended from? Anne only had one child, Elizabeth, who died childless so her line ends there, Mary Boleyn had children though.
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KaSandra Boleyn Reply:
May 17th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
my family name boleyn came from anne we are her desendent
Opps, In my comment I said feet…..meant feel…
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I am an indirect descendant of Catherine Carey Knollys who has descendants through the Woodson line in the US.
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K.Bolen Reply:
April 2nd, 2011 at 8:11 am
I’m wondering if i maybe some descendent of Mary Boleyn, My grandmother always told my father we were maybe you could help me out, I’m sure you are more knowledgeable than I on the subject. Please reply by Email. Thanks much,
K. Bolen
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I recently found out from Aunt who is doing her father’s genealogy we are cousin of Anne. My Mom’s her 15th cousin. So there are relatives out here. Our family blood line were one of the first settlers in America.
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susan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Please share more . This is the most interesting topics I have read. I have been reading the Boleyn Files for about a month. Addicted to them I guess. Thank you, Susan
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Andrea Reply:
June 9th, 2011 at 11:16 am
I had put my wrong relation to Anne. She was an aunt and her daughter Eizabeth was a 15th cousin to my mother and her siblings. I need to get the copy of the file my Aunt has on our relation and I will know more. I know the family she is related to surname is Gregory. The Boelyn family is very interesting!
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David – there is certainly Tudor blood. The entire English Royal family are related by blood to Henry VII through his daughter Margaret who married the King of Scotland.
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Related somehow. My grandmother received a letter years ago or it may of been my great grandmother in regards to the Boleyn Castle. The letter was asking if we wanted to pay the million dollar plus taxes owed on the property to keep it in our family, and stating that if not it was going to be turned into a tourist attraction. Of course the family didn’t have that kind of money, so it was than returned to state. Not sure who in the family has that letter, but hopefully one of these days I can track it down. Would be something cool to have, I guess it was real fancy.
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I am related to Mary and Anne Boleyn.
Anne is my 13th Great Grand Aunt,
Mary is my 13th Great Grandmother.
- Heather
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I am related to Anne, Mary Is my 14th great grandmother.
Judith
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Sounds like everyone and their best friend has been told by someone so many generations before them was related to the Boleyns….what rubbish!
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It’s reallly not all rubbish. There are lots of Mary Boleyn’s descendants running around, and most don’t even know it. And they are on both sides of the pond. I’ve been researching my family history for a couple of years and have found that Mary is my 13th GGmother. The line has been researched and the connection is there. Mary’s granddaughter Anne Knolleys married Thomas West, who was Lord De La Ware and some of their children settled in the Williamsburg, Jamestown Virginia area. Martha Washington is also related to Mary.
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I was tracing my grandfather’s line on ancestry.com and found that General Robert Lewis (also ancestor to George Washington and Meriwether Lewis) is directly descended from Sir William Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s paternal grandfather.
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Bobby Reply:
March 27th, 2012 at 11:07 am
I assure you, it was exciting to find all three of those names along a random branch of my grandfather’s ancestry. And from that point, the genealogy was already pieced together for me, which was really nice.
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Cat Reply:
April 13th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I agree with you Bobby, once you research and find the lines to those names, at that point the trees are much better researched and the lines just fall in place! We are cousins, then, through the Boleyns. The question is how many cousins apart we are.
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I am a descendent of Anne.
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my grandmother has a family tree thats looks more that a 100 years old and on there its shows that when her and her brother got beheaded the king told the sister to leave and never to return so she took the kings baby girl because he wanted a boyand she couldnt give him one.so when she got beheaded her sister took the baby to america when they came to america they started a new life and we are related to them by that baby girl the daugter of the king
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KaSandra Boleyn Reply:
May 17th, 2012 at 6:28 pm
ill try to get picks up of the family tree we have but its very old and my grand mother just started to put us all on it to it has been handed down for somany years im suprised it still readable
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Claire Reply:
May 17th, 2012 at 7:54 pm
Hi KaSandra,
Anne’s daughter stayed in England and became Queen Elizabeth I. English people didn’t start travelling to the US until the 17th century so way after Anne’s execution (1536). The first permanent settlement in the US was the colony at Jamestown which was set up in 1607 but it was in late 1620 that the Pilgrims travelled to the US on the Mayflower. Elizabeth was dead by then. Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn, stayed in England. She was married to William Stafford and she died in 1543, so I’m sorry but your story just doesn’t seem to make sense.
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