General Notes

For the benefit of those that find Othere of Haolgalander in various books
:
Tom Magness contributed the following discussion - from various e-mails...
Notice that you have Othere of Haolgalander in your data base as the ances
tor of Other.  Be advised that my conjecture was based upon the followi
ng . . .
Here's what Round had to say about Other . . .
"In The Earls of Kildare we read that 'In 1078 Walter fitz Otho is mention
ed in Domesday Book as being in possession of his father's estates.' To th
is statement, which is obstinately repeated in the pages of Burke's Peerag
e, I reply, as in Peerage Studies (p. 69), that the date of Domesday Bo
ok was 1086, not 1078; that Walter was the son of Other, not Otho; and, th
at Domesday does not state that his lands had been held by his father, bu
t, on the contrary, proves them to have belonged to forfeited Englishmen
." (Round, FitzGeralds, ii., p.121-22) "Thus, the 'Otho' story is sho
wn to be absolute fiction." (Round, Peerage Studies, p. 69)
And, here's what Collins had to say about Other . . .
"Othoere is mentioned, in the appendix (vide p. 205) to The Life of King A
lfred, to be living in his reign, a rich and powerful Lord, and to deri
ve his descent from ancestors in the kingdom of Norway. It also appears, t
hat Other, as wrote in the Doomsday Book (Ex lib. vocat. Doomsday), was li
ving in England in the reign of King Edward the Confessor; and in the pedi
grees is made to be the son of Othoere." (Collins, Peerage, vol. 4, Windso
r, Earl of Plymouth, pp. 37-38.)
Add to Collins this piece of information . . .
From Fisher's Anglo-Saxon Age . . .
Othoere of Haolgalander, frequent guest of Alfred, King of Wessex (871-99
), who was "among the foremost men in his land; even so he had not more th
an twenty head of cattle and twenty sheep and twenty pigs, and the litt
le that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. His principal wealth was deri
ved partly from fishing for walrus and whale but was chiefly derived fr
om tribute in skins and furs levied from the Lapps who lived further nort
h, and it was in order to dispose of these goods that he traveled to Engla
nd."
There is mention on page 19 of the Brut Y Tywysogion:  Chronicle of the Pr
inces (edited by Rev. John Williams ab Ithel) for the year 910 . . .
Nine hundred and ten was the year of Christ, when Other came to the isla
nd of Britain.
A thorough reading of the Doomsday Book reveals the only mention of Oth
er is as father of Walter the tenent-in-chief of lands in Berks, Bucks, Ha
mpshire, Middlesex and Surrey.  Collins assumes that Other was a contempor
ary of Edward the Confessor because he found a pedigree that made Other t
he son of Othoere.  What pedigree that is Collins fails to note.
To my way of thinking the threads that tie Other to Othoere are just too w
eak to be accepted.
Then there is Round.  No doubt Round was aware of the Collins article (181
2) but did not give it any credence in his work on the origins of Carew (1
903) which is the best reason not to include it in the data base.
. . . and, perhaps our ancestors concocted the 'Geraldini' relationship be
cause they were embarrassed about being descended from one of the "foremo
st farmers of the Anglo-Saxon
era."
Tom Magness submits another writer's comments and then his own critique: M
onograph Madness
W. P. Williams, A Monograph of the Windsor Family, with a full accou
nt of the rejoicing on the coming of age of Robert Geroge Windsor-Cliv
e, 27 August 1878, (Cardiff, Owen, 1879).
"The first Other on record, so far as can be discovered, is the great Nor
se Viking 'Othere, the old sea captain, who dwelt in Helgoland,' commemora
ted as the discoverer of the North Cape in the appendix to King Alfred's t
ranslation of Orosius, so finely versified by Longfellow:
His figure was tall and stately,
Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in h