​​​​The fellow on the left is Alfred the Great

Only not really. It’s actually an early 19th century etching by an unknown artist who was taking his best guess as to what Alfred might have looked like. Alfred had been dead over 900 years by the time this etching was made, and the only known likenesses from his lifetime are from coins, and they were not very… ​​​​​

Well, they were…

​They looked like this:

The reason Alfred got his picture on coins is because he was the King. The reason he got the sobriquet “the Great” is because he was the first King of the unified Anglo-Saxon nations.

He didn’t start his career that way. Upon the death of his brother Æthelred in 871, Alfred ascended to the throne of Wessex, a region comprising most of the southern border of Britain. Alfred inherited a realm under constant siege from the invading Vikings. While he was never able to drive the Danes from the island entirely, he did manage to negotiate peace with them, in the process gaining control of the areas of West Mercia and Kent, extending his reign over most of what would become known as England.

What cemented Alfred’s reputation was the fact that his empire did not immediately unravel after his death in 899. Anglo-Saxon control over England would remain intact for the next six generations. His son Edward the Elder would extend the empire eastward into the Midlands, East Anglia and the rest of Mercer. Three of Edward’s fourteen children would become kings themselves, including Edmund the Magnificent, who spent most of his reign fending off further Viking invasions until his murder in 946.

It was Edmund’s son Edgar who most firmly cemented his great-grandfather’s legacy. Edgar became known as “the Peaceable”, but not because of his kind and loving nature. Edgar was tiny but feisty, and is rumored to have won his wife Ælfthryth by murdering her first husband. Nevertheless, he established the authority of a central monarchy so firmly that six lesser kings of Britain are reported to have celebrated his coronation by personally rowing his royal barge down the River Dee. Edgar died in 975, content in the knowledge that the Kingdom of England would remain united under Anglo-Saxon rule for generations to come.

Then it all went to hell.

Edgar was succeeded by his eldest son Edward the Martyr. That epithet should be your first clue that things would not end happily for Edward. At the age of 16, three years after taking the throne, he was stabbed in the back by an unknown assassin. He was succeeded by his brother Æthelred, who would eventually earn the equally unfortunate epithet of “the Unready”. By all reports, Æthelred wasn’t a terrible king, but his reign did see renewed invasions by the Danes. Æthelred’s response was to pay the invaders tribute, a solution the Danes liked so much that they decided to stay.

Æthelred’s conflicts with the Danes spelled the end of the House of Wessex. The Danes would rule England for the next half century, until supplanted by the Normans. And while that is an interesting story in its own right, it is not our story. Instead, we turn our attention to Æthelred’s eighth child with his first wife, Ælfgifu. Their second daughter, also named Ælfgifu, would marry Uchtred the Bold, Ealdorman of Northumbria around 1014. Uchtred would be murdered by the same Danes who had plagued his father-in-law, but not before siring a daughter by the name of Ealdgyth.

Ealdgyth was the mother of Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria, whose primary claim to fame was backing the wrong horse in the Norman Conquest. Stripped of his title, Gospatric fled to Scotland, where his daughter Uchtreda would marry Duncan II, the 23rd King of Scotland. Duncan gained the throne by forcibly usurping his uncle, King Donald III. As he was only able to accomplish this feat with the support of the newly installed Norman court, Duncan was popularly perceived as a foreign invader. He was ultimately murdered by his own subjects, at the instigations of his deposed uncle, who was restored to the throne.

Duncan’s ignominious end is the last we’ll see of kings in our cast. The next player we know primarily from his witnessing of several royal charters. Informally he was known as Uchtred Fitz Scott, which translates to “Uchtred, son of a Scot”. The fact that we see “Fitz” here rather than “Mac” indicates he was not a legitimate heir, but his lineage becomes clearer when we see the formal, Latin variant of his name, “Lord Uchtredus Filius Duncan”.

The next few generations see the “Fitz Scott” epithet evolve into a proper, modern surname. After another Uchtred Fitz Scott, we find a Richard Galloway MacFergus DeGalloway le Scot, whose son would simplify his own name to simply Sir Richard Scott.

From here, a succession of a dozen Scotts will carry us through the next three and a half centuries.

Mary’s husband was named Samuel Houssam, though for some reason their son would come to be known as Alfred Houston. Alfred was born in Ireland, but emigrated to the New World, and died in August Virginia. This begins the American portion of our chronology:

• Robert Houston (1612-1662) born at sea on the way to Jamestown colony
• James Houston (1661-1715)
• Hamilton Houston (unknown to 1733)
• John Houston (1705-1769) born in Ireland, but emigrated to Lancaster PA
• James Houston (1740-1805)
• Robert Huston (1756-1838)
• James Huston (1784-1821)
• Andrew Huston (1818-1879)
• Jacob Huston (1840-1892)