When I first learned about Grandma Online (genealogy website for Mennonites, it’s cheap!) the first thing I did was look to see how far back this thing went for me. I wrote this post in 2017 stating, “Apollonia Ridley. She’s my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother… and I think her name is quite kick-ass. It doesn’t sound Menno at all. I don’t know anything about these people. I hope to learn though.” And then… I never mentioned her again. But she’s been on my mind. It’s a unique name you don’t forget so easily. According to Grandma Online, Apollonia Ridley was born in 1570 in Zeeland, Netherlands and died in 1640. One of the citations for this entry was from the Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 1871. And I remember that in the beginning of this blog, a reader emailed me to mention that I am descended from someone who was originally a Brit, who knew the king.
Okay, two things about this.
First, this sounded a tad too grand and I dismissed it.
Second, in going this far back, I’m not exactly going to be her only descendant.
Sure enough, in reading issue 50 of Preservings, I suddenly was face to face with the name Ridley once more. In Chris K. Huebner’s article Hold On to Your Hat: How to Read the Story of Dirk Willems, he writes, “According to some accounts, my genealogy includes a man named Christopher Ridley. If these accounts are correct, he would be my thirteenth great-grandfather.”
I appreciate his caution in stating that hey, you know what, this might not be accurate. It’s a reminder I constantly need.
Heubner goes on to state that Christopher Ridley was born in 1475 outside Newcastle, England, and was a friend of King Henry VIII. Christopher’s son Baldwin had a daughter named Apollonia, explains Huebner. She “got mixed up with Anabaptists when she married a man named Daniel Thijssen.” Sure enough, this is in my genealogy as well. My eyes widen as I lean in closer, to read that the Thijssen family “fled north to Vlissingen from Ghent to escape the fierce spate of persecutions known as the Spanish Fury, which were raging in Flanders at the time.”
Now, I know that none of this was the point of Huebner’s article, but I also know that he seems to have more information on the story of Apollonia Ridley and her family than what I can see on Grandma Online.
Hmmm okay so in googling it, I can see that familysearch.org has a bit more info. It says that when Apollonia was born, her father Baldwin Ridley was 25 and her mother Elizabeth Spleiss Ridley was 52. Okay WHAT.
wikitree.com says Baldwin Ridley was from Flushing, Zeeland and he was the nephew of Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London. AND there’s a link to the book mentioned above, about the landed gentry. But, a note on Grandma Online says this may have been an error. I am clearly getting confused.
But whether or not she (or the Thijssen family were truly of the British “landed gentry,” I feel like you might actually be able to call Apollonia Ridley the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother to all Manitoba-adjacent-Mennonites.