Crossing Paths/Paths Crossing!

I was into geneology before the movie "Braveheart" came out. But after it did I dug into some of the history on William Wallace to find out how much of that movie was just Hollywood mumbo jumbo and how much was fact. For starters in physical appearance Mel Gibson is a midget compared to the size of Wallace. Wallace was 6' 7" tall. A big man even in our time, but in those days he was close to a giant in stature. They got some of the main points correct but other than that a lot of Hollywood went into that movie. What it did though, was to revive an interest in that time in Scottish history when the Scotsman fought for his freedom from English rule.

Now, imagine how surprised I was last year as I was tracing back my Maternal line, when I discovered that I have a direct line back to William Wallace's younger brother John. It starts with my mother and goes back through Jarboe, Greenwell, Taylor, Campbell then to Wallace. That in itself seemed amazing to me. But, then this past week I was researching some of my fathers ancesters and found that On my paternal side I am directly related to Robert De Bruce, who fought with Wallace in that quest for freedom. It goes back through my father to his mothers family the Hickeys to Mitchell, White, Shelton then to Robert de Bruces sister Margaret. These two lines crossed 800 years later to procduce me. There may have been other times that they crossed paths, but this is the time that I have appreciation for, else I wouldn't be here.

Above is an image of Robert de Bruce and a statue of William Wallace. X.