Meghan Markle's maternal African-American ancestry has so far received most of the genealogical attention, but there are some interesting things on her paternal side too:
- Her 3x great grandmother, Irish-born Mary Bird née McCaugue, might have worked as a maid at Windsor Castle in 1856. See
this article.
- The Markle name is Pennsylvania Dutch, i.e. actually
Deutsch rather than Dutch. Most likely it hails from the small Alsatian village of Lampertsloch, today in France, (according to
this article) whence a certain Hans Martin Merckel (1699 - 1777) emigrated to Pennsylvania. At that time Lampertsloch, part of the Lordship of Lichtenberg, was already under French suzerainty, but in 1736 the lordship passed from the last Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg through his late heiress Charlotte to her widowed husband Landgrave Ludwig VIII of Hesse-Darmstadt. Her maternal aunt was BTW British George II's Queen Caroline of Ansbach. After the extinction of the House of Hanau a minor war almost broke out between Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Cassel because of the partition of the Hanau inheritance (Hanau-Münzenberg, including Rumpenheim, going to Hesse-Cassel and Hanau-Lichtenberg going to Hesse-Darmstadt.)
When the French Revolution ended the feudal Hessian lordship in this part of Alsace, Charlotte of Hanau-Lichtenberg's grandson was soon to be Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and her granddaughter Wilhelmine had already lived and died as Grand Duchess Natalya Alexeyevna (first wife of Emperor Paul).
The name Markle is thus an Anglification of the rather widespread German surname Merkel, a diminutive of male first names like Markwart or Markhard. The future member of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is probably no relation to Chancellor Angela Merkel née Kasner's first husband Ulrich Merkel, who hails from the S-C-G-ish ancestral woods in Thuringia, specifically from Cossengrün just outside the city of Greiz. Those Merkels seem to have lived there ever since it was part of the Principality of Reuss, Senior Line.
