Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(6)
This, though, is not the only royal bond. Meghan is also descended from the American immigrant Christopher Hussey, who lived on the whaling island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts, as well as the Reverend William Skipper, who landed in New England in 1639. His royal connections and subsequent links to the Markle family ensure that, according to Boston-based genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts, Meghan is a twenty-fourth generation descendant of the medieval King Edward III. Born at Windsor Castle, he successfully ruled England for fifty years until his death in 1377.
Furthermore, according to Roberts, Meghan is distantly related to most European royal families thanks to her English kinswoman Margaret Kerdeston, who lived during the fifteenth century and was the paternal grandmother of Anne of Foix-Candale, queen of Hungary and Bohemia.
As Roberts observed: “Much of American and English history is reflected in her diverse ancestry.”
Of course many Europeans can claim distant links to royalty, and Meghan has been curious about both sides of her family. During a visit to Malta, she was keen to trace her family roots. Her ancestor Mary Bird, who worked at Windsor Castle, was married to a soldier named Thomas. When he was stationed on the Mediterranean island, Mary joined him. Their daughter, also named Mary, married George David Merrill and eventually emigrated to New Hampshire in New England. It left another family branch for Meghan to explore.
Her mixed European and African American heritage has constantly reminded her, especially when she was growing up, about her difference and distinction. It is a difference she has learned to embrace and acknowledge.
2
Growing Up Markle
Growing up Markle in the 1950s was like a chapter from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Young Tom Markle, Meghan’s father, and his two older brothers, Mick and Fred, enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the small Pennsylvanian town of Newport, where they lived in a modest clapboard house. (Royal trivia: Newport is just 90 miles north of the birthplace of the last American to marry a royal prince, Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson.) The boys played on monkey vines in the woods at the end of their dirt road, went fishing for catfish in the Juniata River, and in summer picked blackberries, their mother, Doris, turning their trove into delicious pies and jellies. As a teenager Tom earned his pin money literally, setting the pins in the local bowling alley. Or he would join his father, Gordon, who worked in administration for the post office, watching his beloved Philadelphia Phillies score home runs on their black and white television.
By the time Tom graduated from Newport High School, his brother Mick had joined the United States Air Force, where he worked in telecommunications, though some say he was eventually recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency. Brother Fred headed south, found religion, and eventually ended up becoming the presiding bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church in America, located in Sanford, Florida, where he is known as Bishop Dismas.
Tom took a different attitude toward his future. After graduating, he left small-town Newport and drove to the Poconos, a mountainous resort area in northeastern Pennsylvania. There he worked at the local theater, learning the technical backstage side of the business and gaining valuable experience that gave him a step up the professional ladder. He then traveled to Chicago after getting a job as a lighting technician at WTTW, the local affiliate for the Public Broadcasting Service. He also worked at the Harper Theater alongside the new owners, Bruce and Judith Sagan, who wanted to give the Hyde Park district, also the eventual home of Barack Obama, a vibrant new cultural center. He soon became the theater’s lighting director, working on the controversial musical Hair, dance shows, and classic Russian dramas as well as jazz and chamber music concerts.
Tom worked hard and played hard, spending downtime with his student friends from the prestigious University of Chicago. During one rowdy party at the on-campus International House in 1963, Tom, then nineteen, met eighteen-year-old Roslyn Loveless, a student who worked as a secretary in the nearby Amtrak offices. Both tall—she is five foot nine; he is six foot four—and with similar red hair, the attraction was immediate, Roslyn amused by his quirky sense of humor and “light air.” They married the following year. Their only daughter, Yvonne, was born in November 1964 and their son, Tom Junior, two years later, in 1966. In those early years, life was a grind, Tom often working eighteen-hour days and Roslyn holding down a secretarial job herself while bringing up two children. It was a constant juggling act, and Roslyn’s mother, Dorothy, helped out when she could.
Despite the daily pressures they still enjoyed a busy social life and had a fun circle of friends, Tom keeping everyone amused with his offbeat brand of humor. Roslyn remembers one time at a Greek restaurant when he pretended to have a parrot called Stanley and passed the imaginary parrot from one person to the next, imploring the waitresses not to stand on him. “It was hilarious,” she recalls. When Yvonne and Tom Junior started to lose their milk teeth, he sent them long letters from two tooth fairies, Hector and Ethel, who described their lives and explained what would happen to their teeth. From time to time he’d take the children to work with him. It was a thrill, especially as at that time he was lighting the hugely popular puppet show Sesame Street. A trip to Wrigley Field to watch the Chicago Cubs baseball team, driving his dad’s car in the parking lot at WTTW, being lifted into the air on the studio lighting gantry, hunting for quarters on a stage filled with foggy dry ice: these were some of the good times Tom Junior treasures.