Batman's Victorian ancestors ??

[Chris S]

Aren't we forgetting something here people?

Bruce Wayne's character couldn't have had just one set of grandparents and one set of great-grandparents and one set of great great-grandparents. Unless of course we are postulating that Bruce is descended from a long line of brother-sister incestuous unions......

Bruce should have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great great-grandparents etc. It shouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that at least one of his 16 great great-grandparents or even one of his 8 great grandparents who wasn't surnamed as "Wayne" might have been a bit on the screwy side or at least morally questionable.

 

[Prince Charon]

I don't know that his mother's maiden name has ever been mentioned in canon.

 

[Archangel Michael]

I don't know that his mother's maiden name has ever been mentioned in canon.

Yes they have - it's Kane. I wonder if she's related to Batwoman...

 

[drrockso20]

~WAYNES' WORLD or A Blue-Eyed Branch of the Wold Newton Family Tree~ September 15, 2000.

If there is any one character in the comic books who cries out to be included in the Wold Newton family, it's Bruce Wayne. Superbly athletic, and supremely cerebral, he deserves to be on a family tree that includes both Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. Luckily, that will not be hard to do. Please note that the eyes of many mentioned here are BLUE eyes. Although grey eyes predominate in the Wold Newton family, there seems to be a strong subset of blue-eyed luminaries.
A note on sources. As far as Batman is concerned, his father was named in Detective 33, in 1939, in "The Batman--Who He is and How He Came to Be", written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane, both of Batman's co-creators. Bill Finger wrote the 1948 tale, "The Origin of the Batman" which gave new details about Dr. Wayne and named Bruce's mother. In December 1958, in BATMAN #120, "The Failure of Bruce Wayne" was published...drawn by Bob Kane, Batman's co-creator and originator, and introducing Horatio, Caleb, and Ishmael Wayne, added new details about Bruce's father, and introduced his great-uncle, Silas. In a late forties' story, another Silas Wayne, Revolutionary era silversmith, is mentioned. All these were done by one or both of Batman's co-creators, so, without committing myself to the truth or fiction of any later stories, these stories are as real as Bruce Wayne himself.
There were other stories, printed in the early seventies, that indicated that Bruce had a Scottish uncle named Wayne who was Lord of Waynesmoor. Since the bulk of references indicate that the Waynes belonged to an old American colonial family---no less than Bob Kane talked about the connection between the family name and "Mad" Anthony Wayne---I reject that uncle, and that connection to Scottish nobility, as one of the numerous additions and exaggerations involved in writing several stories a month for over five decades about the same character. I do think he has some Scottish nobility in his blood, as you will see, but not through the Waynes.

The earliest Wayne we're sure of is Silas Wayne,silversmith during the Revolutionary War. He fought in the Revolutionary War, and his young son, Horatio, also ran off to join Washington's troops. Silas was a cousin of famed Revolutionary War General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, and they shared the same grandfather, the Irish General Anthony Wayne who served under Monmouth.
Silas Wayne married Hortense Rogers, the sister of blue-eyed Captain Steven Rogers, a noted revolutionary war hero and farmer. (Interestingly enough, Steven Rogers is the direct ancestor of Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America.) Silas' sister Willa married Steven Rogers, also, and the two families were friendly with several intermarriages in the next few decades.

Horatio, who fought as a young man in the Revolutionary War, wanted to emulate his famous cousin, "Mad" Anthony, and pursued a military career, growing to be a general himself in the new American republic. He married Antonia Wayne, a daughter of "Mad" Anthony's, his second cousin.

There were two sons of that union, Anthony Silas Wayne and Caleb Wayne. Anthony Silas built up his grandfather's silversmithing business to a very profitable concern. His brother Caleb, being a more adventurous sort, became a scout, and led a wagon train through hostile Indian territory. He went very far, and once met Panchita de la Vega at a Spanish settlement. Charmed by her beauty and her elegant ways, they embarked on a whirlwind romance, and the unconventional Panchita decided to run away with Caleb. He brought her back to Philadelphia, only to find his brother Anthony Silas Wayne had died, thrown from his horse, and Caleb was now heir to the modest fortune his brother had built up. Marrying Panchita, he settled back in Philadelphia.
Panchita's father was the famed Don Diego de la Vega, better known as the Fox, or Zorro in Spanish. It was a movie about Zorro that the Waynes saw just before they were killed. Zorro, like his descendent Bruce Wayne, would sometimes adopt a bored style, only Don Diego would overplay it into foppery. Like his descendent, Batman, Zorro had a masked dual identity (in Zorro's case it was often a DUEL identity) and a cape, and dressed in the darkest of clothing.

Caleb's and Panchita's son Ishmael was a strange figure. Panchita had died giving birth, and the grief-stricken Caleb blamed his son for it...hence, the name Ishmael, a son, but not a son who would be acknowledged or cherished. Caleb treated his son Ishmael with scorn until the boy, fed up, finally left the Wayne home (Caleb had built a new manor in New York State, close to New York City.) Ishmael Wayne had decided to become a whaler and though his portrait on Uncle Silas' wall show him as an older man, with a beard, he started boating when he was very young, barely more than a boy.
Could Ishmael be THE Ishmael, the one who narrated MOBY DICK, as edited by Melville? It seems likely. Moby Dick's Ishmael talks of being from a "good family". Like Bruce would later have problems with the mad Joker, Ishmael had problems with the mad Captain Ahab. Like his great-grandson, Bruce, or his grandfather, Zorro, or his great-grandfather "Mad" Anthony Wayne, he was a survivor in unlikely circumstances, as evidenced by his being the only one to survive the PEQUOD's demise.
Besides, how many whalers could there have been with the scornful name of Ishmael, even as a nickname?
Ishmael Wayne went on other whaling voyages, and eventually, became captain of his own ship, and later owner of a good fleet of ships. The Waynes have a talent for money-making in unlikely circumstances. When he was in his forties, he received word that Caleb Wayne had died, and that he had inherited his father's fortune.
Caleb had used lands he had discovered as a scout for silver mining ventures, expanding the silversmithing business into the silver mining business, and had become much wealthier.
Adding his own fleet of whaling vessels to the Wayne aegis, Ishmael went from grizzled whaler to one of the wealthiest men in the New York area.
(As anyone can see from reading the early Batman stories, "Gotham City" was a later addition---Batman's stories were originally explicitedly set in New York City, and of course Gotham is another name for New York City.)
The change from whaler to plutocrat wasn't easy, but his own father had been a frontier scout, so many were used to the plain-spoken but wealthy Waynes, and his plain-spokenness made him refreshingly different among the city's elite. A visitor from Britain certainly thought so...Thomasina Blakeney, the daughter of Percy Armand Blakeney and the granddaughter of blue-eyed Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and part of the Wold Newton family. She and Ishmael fell in love with each other, and in due course, married. Thomasina brought sophistication and elegance to a rather roughshod Wayne family.

Ishmael and Thomasina had three children. The eldest was a daughter, Roberta. She married a South African of British descent named Templer, and emigrated to South Africa...just in time for the Boer War. Her husband died in one of the first skirmishes of the Boer War, and she who had barely been a bride, was left a widow. She encountered another Englishman while there, a distant cousin, A.J. Raffles, related through the Blakeneys. They had a brief affair and then Roberta went to her husband's holdings in Britain.
The child she bore had many of A.J. Raffles' (a remarkable thief of the Victorian and Edwardian era) character traits, but physically, he looked a lot like his mother's side of the family. That son, Simon Templar, is dark-haired, blue-eyed, and extremely handsome, a splendid athelete and extremely bright when it came to the matter of solving crimes, as his first cousin Thomas Wayne's son Bruce would be. He became known as the "modern Robin Hood of crime", stealing from dishonest men. For a while his identity was not known, and few suspected that the notorious master thief, the Saint, was also Simon Templar. His adventures were narrated by Leslie Charteris.
Raffles' brief affair with a South African woman and his fatherhood of Simon Templar was first proposed in "the Incredible Raffles Clan" by Brad Mengel, which in turn was derived from a suggestion by Dennis Power, in his SECRET HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE.
The second child and eldest son, Adam Wayne, followed his father example and married an Englishwoman. Agatha Marple was the daughter of a Reverend Marple of St. Mary Mead in England. Interestingly enough, Agatha also brought some Wold Newton genes with her. The Reverend's mother was Jane Holmes, a daughter of Dr. Siger Holmes and Violet Clarke, who were also affected by the Wold Newton meteorite. (Her brother Mycroft, an English squire, was Sherlock Holmes' grandfather.) Worth mentioning on that side of the family is the thin blue-eyed Englishwoman called Jane Marple, who in her old age began solving mysteries like a modern Nemesis. Her career was narrated by Agatha Christie. A nephew of Jane and Agatha's, Raymond West, would also be involved in police work, but not as brillantly as Jane would or her great-nephew, Bruce Wayne. It is safe to say the genes for Bruce's brilliant detective work probably derived from his grandmother's side of the family.
Adam devoted himself to building up the family fortune, but also to philanthropy, and made himself a good name in an era of "robber barons".
The baby of the family, Silas, was Adam's younger brother. He became a university professor, teaching history, with a strong interest in genealogy.

Adam had three children. Philip, the eldest, Thomas, the middle child(named for his grandmother, Thomasina), and Agatha, the youngest, named for her mother. Philip was determined to follow in his father's footsteps, maintaining the by-now vast Wayne fortune. (Philip was not a character introduced by either Kane or Finger, but E.Nelson Bridwell and Gil Kane. Yet the fact that Dr. Wayne went into medicine, although obviously very well off also--he had an English butler, Alfred's father-- argues there was an older brother who maintained the family fortune. So I am provisionally accepting him, because if he wasn't named in the story, his existence could be deduced.)
Thomas, as the middle child, decided to go into medicine, to rise above his wealthy origins and spend his life helping people. Yet his time in medical school was interrupted by World War I, and he enlisted as an army doctor. Thomas' rise was rapid, not only for his medical knowledge but his tactical knowledge and his tirelessness on the battle field. He rose to the rank of colonel. After World War I ended, he came back to medical school---and his young bride and son.
While still an intern, in 1916, Dr. Wayne had married Martha Kane, and had had young Bruce a year later, in 1917.
Later, when Bruce was a young boy, Thomas would dress in a "Batman" outfit for a costume ball, and even fought a criminal because of it....who would later hire Joe Chill to try to kill Dr. Wayne and his wife. ("The First Batman" written by Bill Finger.) The sight of his father in the Batman outfit was probably another psychological source for the costume Bruce would later adopt.

On his mother's side of the family, Bruce also inherited some remarkable genes. Martha's mother was scottish, and named Matilda Drummond. (She was proud of her half-scottishness, and we know that Bruce was named for Robert Bruce, the Scottish king.) Matilda was sister to Roger Drummond, who was the father of Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond and John Drummond Clayton, also known as Korak. The blue-eyed "Bulldog" fought many evil men with his great strength. He also, as the leader of the Black Gang, for a while dressed in a mask and a dark cloak. Korak was as strong, or stronger, and furthermore, had all the acroBATic ability that his cousin Martha's son, Bruce, would have...except that Korak exercised it in the jungle, while Bruce exercised it in the city.
Much of Roger and Matilda's genealogy is covered in TARZAN ALIVE---I'll briefly cover it here, though---Matilda and Roger's parents were William Drummond and Venetia Rutherford, both Wold Newton descendents. (Venetia was descended from the Scarlet Pimpernel, so Bruce gets Sir Percy's genes from his mother's side of the family, also---and his ability at disguise and double identity is reinforced by that.) William's father was another William, who married an American wife, Oread Butler, related to Rhett Butler. William's parents, Sir Hugh Drummond and Georgia Dewhurst, were present at Wold Newton. So Bruce is descended from Sir Percy and his wife twice, and Dr. Siger Holmes and his wife, and Sir Hugh Drummond and his wife.
Through these relationships, Bruce is also second or third cousins to such heroes, great detectives, and vigilantes as his greatest influence, the Shadow, as well as the Spider, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Lord Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, and many others, as readers of Farmer's TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE know.
Incidentally, according to an article called "The Magnificent Gordons", that would make James W. Gordon, alias "The Whisperer" in the thirties, and later Batman's defender and sponsor among the police, a distant relation, both descended from Sir Hugh Drummond and his wife. That might be one reason Wayne and Gordon were such good friends, being introduced by that geneaological turn of events.
Martha's father, though was from New York City, and was a cousin of the father of Bob Kane, who would later bring a fictionalized version of Bruce Wayne's adventures to the world. (Whether these Kanes were descended from Solomon Kane is unclear---but through the Scarlet Pimpernel's wife and Dr. Siger's wife, Bruce was already descended from Solomon Kane.)
As I have recently found out, a cousin of Martha Kane was originally raised in poor circumstances, but inherited a great deal of money through his mother, and became the eccentric millionaire and newspaper publisher, Charles Foster Kane.

Kane, born in 1865, was a controversial and headstrong millionaire, who made a bid for governorship of the state he lived in, but lost due to an unfortunate scandal. His first wife Emily Norton (a President's niece) and his son Junior unfortunately died in a car crash. After his death, Orson Welles made a filmed biography of him...
...Known as CITIZEN KANE.

Dr. Thomas Wayne and his wife, Martha Kane Wayne, were shot by a hoodlum named Joe Chill as they walked back after seeing ZORRO, about Dr. Wayne's ancestor. (Actually, Martha, who inherited a bad heart from her father's side of the family, died of a heart attack before the bullet hit her.) Dr. Wayne was outlining Zorro's connection to their family when the killer stepped forward.
Afterwards, Bruce Wayne made that famous vow on his father's grave.
Philip Wayne was given custody of him, but Philip travelled a lot, building up the now far-flung interests of the Wayne financial empire. Whether Bruce was mainly raised by his housekeeper, as ENB maintains, or his aunt Agatha, who in later life, in a story by Finger, treated Bruce like a little boy, is an interesting point not yet resolved. Philip evidently never married or at least never had any legitimate children who survived, because Bruce inherited the vast Wayne fortune after Philip passed away. (His fondness for his great-uncle Silas also argues that he spent some time with his great-uncle.)

Meanwhile, young Bruce trained for the career he had vowed to undertake. When he was thirteen, Bruce fooled his guardians. Instead of going to a summer camp, he joined a circus, and tried to learn the acrobatics he would someday need, paying a newly married couple, John and Mary Grayson, to take him on as an apprentice. Bruce, even at thirteen, was very handsome and attractive to the opposite sex, and one night, after John had gone to bed, and Mary was training Bruce on an acrobatic routine, she fell into Bruce's arms...and hormones took over...and she had a brief affair with the young boy, who had his sexual initiation with her. She was ashamed of it afterwards, but the child that resulted was Dick Grayson, and John and Mary never let on that the child was not John's. (John was sterile.)
Understandably, Bruce kept track of the Graysons, and his son, over the years, and attended that circus every time it came near town. When the Graysons died due to Boss Zucco's protection racket, Bruce immediately took the young Dick Grayson under his wing, something he never did with the hundreds of other crime victims he had already encountered, taking him to "his home". The similarity of what Dick was feeling---even though Dick didn't know the man he thought of as his father, John Grayson--- wasn't...and what Bruce himself had felt, a decade and a half ago...was haunting.
Certainly the similarity between Bruce and Dick---dark-haired, blue-eyed, fine detectives, fine acrobats---is striking. Certainly Dick "felt" something and almost immediately accepted Bruce as a father-figure. Whether he ever found out the truth has never been recorded.
The theory that Dick Grayson is actually the son of Bruce Wayne was first proposed by Adam-Troy Castro in an "Infernal Gall" column in AMAZING HEROES. I thought up the idea independently, but he was first. I don't follow the rest of his ideas concerning who really killed the Graysons---it strikes me as psychologically unsound---but he was a trailbalzer.
Dick was named for his uncle, who came from more humble surroundings than the wealthy Waynes, but like his nephew would became a famed fighter of bizarre criminals. Mary's maiden name was Tracy, and her brother was named Richard. Dick Tracy was a member of the Chicago police famous for fighting such foes as the contract killer Flattop, and the crime boss Pruneface. He was also famous for the innovative technology he adapted to crime-fighting, like the two-way wrist radio he used in the thirties. His adventures were fictionalized and made into a comic strip by Chester Gould. (Tracy, like Wayne, would adopt an orphan, an interesting coincidence, although as far as I can determine, there is no direct relation between Tracy and Wayne.)
Thus, Bruce Wayne is shown to be where we fans always knew he would be...a member in good standing of the same gene-blessed family that produced Sherlock Holmes and Lord Greystoke, better known as Tarzan.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:
THE BATMAN WHO FILES---Bob Hughes' wonderful list of who created what in the Batman stories.
THE GOLDEN AGE BATMAN CHRONICLES, Hobby Lane's wonderful look at the stories in the thirties and forties and fifties about Batman.
"The Magnificent Gordons" Mark Brown's excellent article, which gives a geneaology for some very famous Gordons, including Commisioner James W. Gordon.
"The Case of Commisioner Gordon" by Arn McDonnell for the first time links the pulp hero, The Whisperer, whose other identity was police commisioner James "Wildcat" Gordon, with the Commisioner Gordon of the Batman stories.
"The Incredible Raffles Clan" by Brad Mengel proposed the affair of A.J. Raffles and a "wealthy South African woman" who in turn fathered Simon Templar, an addition I gratefully built on, building on a suggestion from....
SECRET HISTORY OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE evidently was the first to propose that there was a link between A.J. Raffles and the Saint.
TARZAN GENEALOGY shows many of the relationships between Farmer's Wold Newton family in easy to follow charts.
Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com
Return to NOVA NOTES
Return to AL'S COSMIC COMIC HOME PAGE
Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. "Batman", of course, is copywrighted by DC Comics Inc. and Warner Communications.

according to the article Martha Kane is supposed to be related to Bob Kane who as we know would go on to chronicle The Batman's adventures just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would publish Watsons biographical records of Sherlock Holmes as would be the case with many fantastic individuals over the years whose adventures would be chronicled or published by a trusted outside source

 

[Prince Charon]

Yes they have - it's Kane. I wonder if she's related to Batwoman...

You're right, I forgot about that. IIRC, Kathrine Kane was Bruce's cousin, though whether first or second, I'm not sure. Explains why he prefers Catwoman, though. Less creepy that way.

 

[Archangel Michael]

You're right, I forgot about that. IIRC, Kathrine Kane was Bruce's cousin, though whether first or second, I'm not sure. Explains why he prefers Catwoman, though. Less creepy that way.

He might also prefer Catwoman because Batwoman doesn't swing that way.

If ya know what I mean.

 

[Prince Charon]

He might also prefer Catwoman because Batwoman doesn't swing that way.

If ya know what I mean.

Modern-era Batwoman doesn't. I'm talking about Pre-Crisis Batwoman, who did like men, and Batman, in particular.