A History of the Stringers

The Stringer lineage is a long and winding one, from the best that your humble scribe has been able to deduce, the Stringers common ancestor  came from a real life Atlantis called Doggerland, which was kind of between the British Isles and Continental Europe. Somewhere during this time they intermarried with the subspecies or breed of Neanderthals.  When the island sank into the Northern Sea the Stringers migrated to the Germanic counties and became a part of the Norsemen or more commonly called the Vikings. 

From Doggerland to the North

    The meaning of Norseman was "people from the North" and was applied primarily to Nordic people originating from southern and central Scandinavia. They established states and settlements in areas which today are part of the Faroe Islands, England, Scotland, Wales, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, Russia, Italy, Canada, Greenland, France, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany.
Norse and Norsemen are applied to the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century. The Old Frankish Nortmann "Northman" was latinized as Normanni, famously in the prayer A furore normannorum libera nos domine ("From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord!"), attributed to monks of the English monasteries plundered by Viking raids in the 8th and 9th centuries, and entered Old French as Normands, whence the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the 10th century.

 

From Scandinavia to France

    The Stringers were a part of the Norsemen who conquered apart of Northern France now called Normandy.  Stringer (more properly Strenger) is in fact Old Norse for “the Stronger” and where we get the word Strength, which is rooted in Germanic origin.  Hypothetically William Stringer would have been called William the Stronger or more simply William Strenger.

The Normans

The Vikings started to raid the Seine Valley during the middle of 9th century. After attacking and destroying monasteries, including one at Jumieges, they took advantage of the power vacuum created by the disintegration of Charlemagne's empire to take northern France. The fiefdom of Normandy was created for the Viking leader Rollo (also known as Robert of Normandy). Rollo had besieged Paris but in 911 entered vassalage to the king of the West Franks, Charles the Simple, through the Treaty of Saint Clair-sur-Epte. In exchange for his homage and fealty, Rollo legally gained the territory which he and his Viking allies had previously conquered. The name "Normandy" reflects Rollo's Viking (i.e. "Northman") origins.
The descendants of Rollo and his followers adopted the local Gallo-Romantic language and intermarried with the area's original inhabitants. They became the Normans – a Norman-speaking mixture of Scandinavians, Hiberno-Norse, Orcadians, Anglo-Danish, and indigenous Franks and Gauls.
Rollo's descendant William, Duke of Normandy, became king of England in 1066 in the Norman Conquest culminating at the Battle of Hastings, while retaining the fiefdom of Normandy for himself and his descendants.

From Normandy to Nottingham  

As a people, the Stringers are Anglo-Norman

The Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the Norman conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. A small number of Normans were already settled in England prior to the conquest. Following the Battle of Hastings, the invading Normans and their descendants formed a distinct population in Britain, as Normans controlled all of England, parts of Wales (the Cambro-Normans) and, after 1169, vast swaths of Ireland (the Hiberno-Normans). Over time their language evolved from the continental Old Norman to the distinct Anglo-Norman language (an Old French dialect).
The composite expression regno Norman-Anglorum for the Anglo-Norman kingdom that subsumes Normandy and England appears contemporaneously only in the Hyde Chronicle.^[1]

Following the English Conquest of 1066 the Stringers settled into Nottinghamshire county England, It is in Nottingham where they took the name Stringer.

Historians have studied the Doomsday book compiled by William I of England in search of the first record of the Stringer surname. It has been determined that the Stringer name is of Norman origin, and was first found in Nottinghamshire England, where the held a family seat from early times. Where they Lords of the Manor of Eton, and were conjecturally descended from Fulk IV, who held the lands of Eton from Robert de Bully at the time of the taking of the Doomsday Book in 1086. The lands at that time consisted of two mills and a garden. Eton is the celebrated site of the battle of Idle in 617 between Redwald and Ethilfrith of Northumbiria.

Fulk IV, Count of Anjou

Birth:   1043 

Death: 14 April 1109

Fulk IV (in French Foulques IV) (1043 – 14 April 1109), called le Réchin, was the Count of Anjou from 1068 until his death. The nickname by which he is usually referred has no certain translation. Philologists have made numerous very different suggestions, including "quarreler", "rude", "sullen", "surly" and "heroic".

He was the younger son of Geoffrey, Count of Gâtinais (sometimes known as Aubri), and Ermengarde of Anjou, a daughter of Fulk the Black, count of Anjou, and sister of Geoffrey Martel, also count of Anjou.

When Geoffrey Martel died without direct heirs he left Anjou to his nephew Geoffrey III of Anjou, Fulk le Réchin's older brother.

Fulk fought with his brother, whose rule was deemed incompetent, and captured him in 1067. Under pressure from the Church he released Geoffrey. The two brothers soon fell to fighting again, and the next year Geoffrey was again imprisoned by Fulk, this time for good.

Substantial territory was lost to Angevin control due to the difficulties resulting from Geoffrey's poor rule and the subsequent civil war. Saintonge was lost, and Fulk had to give the Gâtinais to Philip I of France to placate the king.

Much of Fulk's rule was devoted to regaining control over the Angevin baronage, and to a complex struggle with Normandy for influence in Maine and Brittany.

In 1096 Fulk wrote an incomplete history of Anjou and its rulers titled Fragmentum historiae Andegavensis or "History of Anjou", though the authorship and authenticity of this work is disputed. Only the first part of the history, describing Fulk's ancestry, is extant. The second part, supposedly describing Fulk's own rule, has not been recovered. If he did write it, it is one of the first medieval works of history written by a layman.^[1]

Fulk may have married as many as five times; there is some doubt regarding two of the marriages.

His first wife was Hildegarde of Beaugency. After her death, before or by 1070, he married Ermengarde de Bourbon in 1070, and then in 1076 possibly Orengarde de Châtellailon. Both these were repudiated (Ermengarde de Bourbon in 1075 and Orengarde de Chatellailon or Châtel-Aillon in 1080), possibly on grounds of consanguinity.

By 1080 he may have married Mantie, daughter of Walter I of Brienne. This marriage also ended in divorce, in 1087. Finally, in 1089, he married Bertrade de Montfort, who was apparently "abducted" by King Philip I of France in or around 1092.

He had two sons. The eldest (a son of Ermengarde de Bourbon), Geoffrey IV Martel, ruled jointly with him for some time, but died in 1106. The younger (a son of Bertrade de Montfort) succeeded him as Fulk V.

He also had a daughter by Hildegarde of Beaugency, Ermengarde, who married firstly with William IX, count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine and secondly with Alan IV, Duke of Brittany.

From then to now

Fast forward 505 years to a time when records are a little more stable and we come to Richard Stringer, who’s descendent Nicholas Stringergnt. would own great swaths of land, and build the beginning of the Kilnwick House. His descendent Fancies Stringer would serve as a Captain in the American Revolution for Burke County Georgia, and his descendent John S Stringer would serve in the second revolution between the confederate and Union States for the side of the confederacy representing Alabama. After the civil war they would migrate to Texas buy property, and finally settle through Oklahoma and Texas.