Ey up! Harry’s girl Meghan is a Yorkshire lass
Actress’s ancestors left England in search of the American dream, a C4 documentary will reveal
PRINCE HARRY’S girlfriend Meghan Markle could be from Yorkshire, a new documentary is set to reveal, as it traces her family back to its British roots.
To her fans, the 36-year-old is the star of hit series Suits, who has climbed to fame from humble beginnings in LA to have a fairytale romance – but few will realise her ancestors were actually from coal mining communities in northern England.
A Channel 4 documentary, When Harry Met Meghan: A Royal Romance, has traced her great-great-grandmother, Martha Sykes, back to England. Andy Ulicny, a historian, will tell viewers that Martha was born in Yorkshire and left with her parents, Thomas and Mary, to settle in the US when she was one year old.
“Most likely the Sykes family came from Yorkshire, a coal mining region, and the name Sykes was popular up that way,” he said.
Martha is a direct ancestor of Ms Markle’s father, Thomas, a lighting director. A copy of the 1870 census from the Mahanoy Township in Schuylkill County, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, shows the family living with three-year-old Martha in the mining area of Pennsylvania.
The family left England during the reign of Prince Harry’s ancestor Queen Victoria in 1868 in search of a better life. But the American dream they had hoped for was short-lived, as just eight years later Martha’s father, Thomas, died of heart failure aged 43 while working in a local colliery, leaving behind his wife and, by then, five children.
Perry Pillar, a former miner, said the family would have lived in “a poor rough lumber home with no indoor plumbing with open sewers outside”.
Martha later married into the soonto-be Markle family.
Her family history is a far throw from Ms Markle’s celebrity life. Just last week she reportedly took afternoon tea with Prince Harry and the Queen, prompting rumours of an imminent engagement announcement.
The hour-long documentary, airing at 9pm tomorrow on Channel 4, is set to reveal more of Ms Markle’s background through interviews with friends and colleagues, and will also trace her African-american ancestry.
It looks at the similarity of the pair both having divorced parents – Ms Markle’s father and her mother, Doria Ragland, parted when she was six – and how her humanitarian values are similar to Princess Diana’s. Prince Harry and Ms Markle made their official public debut last month at the Invictus Games.
Ms Markle clapped from the sidelines with her mother, and Prince Harry later disappeared from his official seat, slipping out to join them to watch part of the ceremony away from the spotlight.
In September, Ms Markle broke her silence on their relationship with an extensive Vanity Fair interview. Calling him her “boyfriend” publicly for the first time, she said: “We’re two people who are really happy and in love.” Ms Markle, who has been dating the Prince since summer 2016, said they were treasuring “our time”, before sharing details of their relationship with the world. It has inspired speculation of an imminent engagement. Prince Harry, as fifth-in-line to the throne, must ask the Queen’s permission before marriage.