The Queen’s Table: A Legacy of Messy Charity
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink… truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” — Matthew 25:35, 40
My journey through this particular “Cloud of Witnesses” begins with a queen who happens to appear in both my paternal and maternal family trees. Saint Margaret, Queen of Scotland, is my 31st great-grandmother through both lines.
Margaret lived during a turbulent period of English and Scottish history. Born into the Anglo-Saxon royal family, she experienced exile before becoming the wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland in the eleventh century. She is remembered for her religious devotion, influence on the Scottish Church, and extraordinary generosity toward the poor.
She was also known as the “Pearl of Scotland,” and there’s an interesting connection behind that name. Her biographer, Turgot, who knew her personally, compared her to a precious pearl because of her faith and charitable works.
But what interests me most about Margaret isn’t her crown or her royal ancestry. It’s what I like to call her messy charity.
Turgot’s account describes a queen who did considerably more than distribute money to the poor.
During Advent and Lent, Margaret and King Malcolm washed the feet of six impoverished people as part of her nightly religious observances. Imagine the feet of people who spent much of their lives walking the roads of medieval Scotland. They were hardly likely to be clean! There would have been dirt, mud, and all the other unpleasant realities of life without modern footwear or sanitation.
Mud-caked feet and a queen kneeling to wash them. That’s an image worth remembering.
And she didn’t stop there.
Turgot tells us that Margaret arranged for nine destitute orphans to be brought to her each morning. She held the little children on her lap, prepared their food, and fed them herself, using her own spoon.
He also describes King Malcolm and Margaret serving meals to as many as 300 poor people gathered in the royal hall. In addition, Margaret personally supported twenty-four poor people throughout the year, ensuring they received food before she sat down to her own meal.
These weren’t simply occasional acts of charity performed for public admiration. According to Turgot, caring for the poor was part of Margaret’s daily religious life.
Of course, we should remember that Turgot was writing a saint’s biography, not a modern historical investigation. His admiration for Margaret is evident throughout the work. Nevertheless, his firsthand familiarity with her makes his account particularly valuable.
What strikes me is how practical her charity was. People needed food, so she fed them. Children needed care, so she held and fed them. People needed help, and she used the resources available to her as queen to provide it.
I find something appealing about that kind of holiness. It wasn’t confined to prayer, religious observances, or royal patronage. It involved getting personally involved in the lives of people who had very little.
As someone who volunteers with the Salvation Army, I can’t help noticing the connection. My circumstances are certainly different from those of an eleventh-century Scottish queen, but the needs of people experiencing poverty have hardly disappeared.
I don’t imagine that my family has followed some unbroken thousand-year tradition of charitable service. Genealogy rarely provides such tidy stories! But discovering an ancestor whose faith found expression in practical compassion gives me something meaningful to reflect upon.
There is another connection worth mentioning: the Pearl of Great Price in Matthew 13:45–46. Jesus tells of a merchant who discovers a pearl of such value that he sells everything he owns to obtain it. The parable concerns the incomparable value of the Kingdom of Heaven.
For Margaret, royal privilege and material possessions were not ends in themselves. Her Christian faith shaped how she used them, particularly in her treatment of the poor.
And perhaps that is what I appreciate most about her story. Nearly a thousand years later, we can still learn something from a queen who understood that serving Christ sometimes meant putting aside the comforts of royalty, picking up a basin, and washing someone’s dirty feet.
The Sword of Courage: The Guardians of Orléans
“Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground…” — Ephesians 6:13
From the royal court of eleventh-century Scotland, my family history takes me to fifteenth-century France and one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages: Saint Joan of Arc.
Through my maternal line, I descend from the Beauharnais family of Orléans, a family with a fascinating connection to Joan and the events surrounding the Siege of Orléans in 1429.
At the time, France was embroiled in the Hundred Years’ War. English forces had besieged Orléans, a strategically important city on the Loire River. When Joan arrived in April 1429, she was still a teenager. Yet within days, the French forces had broken the siege, an extraordinary turning point in the war.
For me, this is more than an interesting episode in French history. My genealogical research connects my Beauharnais ancestors to the city and the people who knew Joan personally.
One particularly interesting member of the family was Jean Beauharnais, the brother of my direct ancestor. Jean was among the witnesses who testified during the proceedings to overturn Joan’s condemnation, more than twenty years after her execution in 1431.
His testimony offers a glimpse of Joan that we don’t always encounter in paintings of a young woman wearing armor and carrying a sword. He remembered her as humble, sincere, devoted to God and the Church, and someone whose conversation brought him comfort.
That last detail especially appeals to me.
We tend to remember Joan for her military courage, her visions, and her extraordinary determination. Yet here was someone who had actually spoken with her, remembering not simply a warrior but a young woman whose presence he found reassuring.
In 1456, the Church tribunal declared Joan’s original condemnation invalid. She would not be canonized until 1920, nearly five centuries after her death.
The Beauharnais connection gives me a particularly personal reason to study Joan’s life. It also reminds me why I enjoy genealogy so much. Sometimes a name in a family tree leads us into events we first encountered in history books. And sometimes those events become considerably more interesting when we discover that our relatives were actually there.
I’ve called this section The Sword of Courage, but courage doesn’t always involve a battlefield. Joan’s story raises questions about conviction, conscience, and the willingness to act when circumstances are difficult.
As I begin serving on the Salvation Army’s local board, I hope to bring some of that courage to my own responsibilities—not the courage of a medieval soldier, but the willingness to speak up, ask difficult questions, and advocate for people who need help.
After all, standing up for others can take many forms, and most of them don’t require a sword.
The Religious Peacemakers in Germany & England
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” — Ephesians 4:2–3
Religious disagreements have been part of Christian history for centuries, and few periods were as turbulent as the Protestant Reformation. As I explored my German and English ancestry, I discovered two clergymen in different branches of my family tree whose lives were shaped by those religious conflicts.
My paternal ancestor, Johannes Schwebel (1490–1540), was a German Protestant reformer who became an important figure in the religious history of Zweibrücken, in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Schwebel lived during the early years of the Reformation, when the teachings of Martin Luther and other reformers were challenging established religious practices and church authority. These disagreements extended far beyond theology. They affected political alliances, local communities, education, and everyday religious life.
Schwebel supported Protestant reform, but he is also remembered for efforts to bring greater organization and consistency to church life. His work in Zweibrücken included developing church regulations, promoting religious instruction, and helping establish a framework for the emerging Protestant church.
What interests me about Schwebel is that religious reform required more than criticizing existing practices. It also involved deciding what should replace them and how communities would function afterward. That was no small undertaking in sixteenth-century Germany!
Across the English Channel, another of my ancestors was navigating religious and political tensions of a different kind.
My maternal ancestor, Rev. George Lloyd (1560–1615), served as Bishop of Sodor and Man before becoming Bishop of Chester in England. His career unfolded during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, when the Church of England was still dealing with divisions following its separation from Rome.
Lloyd served in a church that faced disagreements involving Catholics, Puritans, and other groups with differing views of religious authority and practice. A bishop’s responsibilities included administering his diocese, supervising clergy, and maintaining church discipline.
Biographical accounts have described Lloyd as a man of mild or gentle disposition. That is an interesting characteristic for someone holding ecclesiastical authority during a period when religious disagreements could have serious consequences.
Still, I would hesitate to portray either Lloyd or Schwebel as a modern champion of religious tolerance. They were men of their own times, working within institutions that held very different expectations about religious conformity than we do today.
What makes their stories interesting to me is that both men had to deal with the practical consequences of religious disagreement. Schwebel helped establish a Protestant church in Germany, while Lloyd served as a bishop within the established Church of England.
They belonged to different generations, countries, and religious circumstances, yet both remind me that religious history is about much more than doctrines and debates. It is also about the people responsible for guiding congregations, educating believers, and maintaining communities during periods of change.
As a Catholic whose family tree includes Protestant reformers, Anglican bishops, and members of several other Christian traditions, I find these connections especially fascinating.
Genealogy has a wonderful way of reminding us that our ancestors didn’t all think alike—or worship alike!
And perhaps that is one reason I enjoy studying them. Their lives encourage me to look beyond religious labels, understand the circumstances in which people lived, and appreciate the complicated history of Christianity within my own family.
The Seeker in the Wilderness: Rev. William Davis
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” — Hebrews 11:8
One of the more interesting religious journeys in my family tree belongs to my maternal ancestor, Rev. William Davis, whose life took him from Wales to colonial Pennsylvania and eventually to New Jersey.
Born in Wales and reportedly educated at Oxford, William immigrated to Philadelphia in 1684. His religious life was anything but straightforward. Over the years, he became involved with Quakers and different Baptist congregations, eventually embracing the Seventh Day Baptist tradition, whose members observed the Sabbath on Saturday rather than Sunday.
In 1745, he helped establish the Shrewsbury Seventh Day Baptist Church in New Jersey.
What interests me about William is his willingness to question his religious beliefs and reconsider where he belonged. Religious affiliation was hardly a casual matter in colonial America. Differences over baptism, worship, church authority, and observance of the Sabbath could separate congregations and sometimes families.
I wonder what prompted William to make each of those changes. Was he dissatisfied with particular teachings? Did he find answers in one tradition that he had not found in another? Or was his journey influenced by the people and communities he encountered along the way?
We cannot know all his private reasons simply from the surviving records.
Still, his story makes me think of Abraham’s journey in Hebrews 11:8. Abraham set out without knowing where the road would lead. William certainly knew the geographical destinations of at least some of his travels, but his religious journey seems to have taken a considerably less predictable course!
As a Catholic with ancestors belonging to many different Christian traditions, I find his story particularly interesting. It reminds me that questions about faith, conscience, and religious belonging are hardly new.
And when I consider his life through the lens of Divine Providence, I don’t see a man whose every decision must necessarily have been directed by God. Rather, I see someone whose changing circumstances and religious convictions invite me to reflect on the relationship between faith, uncertainty, and the courage to follow one’s conscience.
Sometimes trusting Providence means continuing to seek understanding, even when we don’t yet know where that search will lead.
The Red Kettle and Divine Providence: Faith Across the Generations
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” — Ephesians 2:10
As I look back over these branches of my family tree, I am struck by the different ways my ancestors expressed their Christian faith. Their lives span centuries, countries, and religious traditions. They certainly didn’t all share the same beliefs, and their circumstances were very different from mine.
Yet their stories have given me much to think about, particularly when I consider my own relationship with Divine Providence.
What Is the Charism of Providence?
As an Associate of the Congregation of Divine Providence (ACDP) in San Antonio, Texas, the concept of trusting in God’s Providence has special meaning for me.
The word charism comes from the Greek charisma, meaning a gift of grace. In Christian usage, a charism is a spiritual gift given for the benefit of others and the wider community.
The Congregation of Divine Providence traces its origins to Blessed Jean-Martin Moyë, who founded the first community of Sisters of Providence in 1762. His spirituality emphasized trust in God, openness to Divine Providence, and a willingness to respond to the needs of others, particularly those who were poor or lacked educational opportunities.
One important aspect of this spirituality is sometimes described as abandonment to Providence. That doesn’t mean sitting back and expecting God to take care of everything while we do nothing. Rather, it means learning to trust God while remaining willing to act, especially when we encounter someone who needs our help.
As an Associate, I try to carry that understanding into my own life.
Looking Back Through the Family Tree
When I consider the people featured in this article, I see different examples of faith in action.
Saint Margaret of Scotland reminds me that charity is more than giving money. Her willingness to feed the poor, care for children, and wash dirty feet illustrates a very practical expression of Christian love. I still think messy charity is a particularly good description!
The Beauharnais family and their connection to Saint Joan of Arc bring me to questions of courage and conviction. Joan’s story reminds me that standing by one’s beliefs can require extraordinary strength, while Jean Beauharnais’s testimony offers a personal glimpse of the young woman behind the familiar historical image.
Johannes Schwebel and Bishop George Lloyd represent two different chapters in the history of the Protestant Reformation. Their experiences remind me how complicated religious history can be, and how much responsibility religious leaders carried during times of disagreement and change.
Rev. William Davis, with his changing religious affiliations and eventual involvement in the Seventh Day Baptist tradition, reminds me of the importance of conscience and the search for religious understanding.
I don’t suggest that all these ancestors understood Divine Providence in the same way. Some lived long before Blessed Jean-Martin Moyë, and others belonged to Christian traditions quite different from my own.
But their lives provide opportunities to reflect on charity, courage, faith, responsibility, and trust.
From the Family Tree to the Red Kettle
And that brings me to something much closer to home: the Salvation Army’s red kettle.
Each Christmas season, I volunteer as a bell ringer, often dressed as Mrs. Claus. I enjoy the people I meet, the conversations, and the opportunity to help raise money for those in need.
I choose to volunteer my time because I believe in the work being done. It’s a simple way to contribute, and one that brings me a great deal of happiness.
Recently, I also accepted an invitation to serve on our local Salvation Army board. It’s a new responsibility and another opportunity to support an organization whose work I value.
When I think about Saint Margaret feeding the poor or caring for orphaned children, I see a connection with the practical charity that remains so important today. The circumstances have changed considerably since the eleventh century, but people still need food, shelter, compassion, and assistance.
And when I think about the other people in my family tree, I am reminded that serving others can require courage, patience, careful judgment, and a willingness to keep learning.
I cannot claim to know exactly how Divine Providence has worked through every generation of my family. Nor do I believe that being descended from particular historical figures makes me more charitable or faithful.
What I can say is that researching their lives has encouraged me to think more deeply about my own.
Perhaps that’s one of the unexpected gifts of genealogy. We begin by searching for names, dates, and places, and occasionally discover stories that challenge us to consider how we want to live.
For me, the connection between faith and service is especially meaningful. Trusting in Providence does not remove our responsibility to act. Sometimes it encourages us to notice the needs right in front of us and do what we can.
And sometimes that means putting on a Mrs. Claus outfit, picking up a bell, and standing beside a red kettle!
“For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of charity and of righteousness will have fullness of life.” — Tobit 12:9
A word about the Book of Tobit:
- Roman Catholic: In the Catholic tradition, Tobit is classified as a deuterocanonical book, a term meaning “second-listed” but no less inspired than the first. While Martin Luther moved it to a separate section, the Catholic Church definitively reaffirmed its place as God’s inspired word at the Council of Trent.
- Lutherans: Historically, German Lutheran Bibles always included the Apocrypha. Luther himself found great moral value in the book, especially for married couples, and even preached from apocryphal texts. Today, some Lutheran and Anglican lectionaries still include readings from Tobit for worship.
- Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East Christians: Tobit is considered fully canonical and an inspired part of the Old Testament.
- Anglicans / Episcopalians: The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England list Tobit as a book that the church reads for “example of life and instruction of manners”. It is often used in Holy Matrimony services.
- Other Traditions: The book is liturgically used by Methodists in their Eucharistic liturgy and serves as the basis for Amish wedding sermons. It is found in the original, unabridged King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.
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References and Further Reading:
- The Life of St. Margaret by Turgot, Bishop of St. Andrews
- Saint Margaret of Scotland | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
- St. Margaret of Scotland (16th November) | by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
- St. Margaret of Scotland: Sharing Her Very Self | Catholic Stand
- Jean-Martin Moye | Wikipedia
- Feast of Blessed Jean-Martin Moye (May 4) | SUNDRY THOUGHTS
- History of the Reformation in Germany by Lloyd Ranke
- Schwebel, Johann (1) | Biblical Cyclopedia
- Palatine Zweibrücken (Johann Schwebel) | Wikipedia
- George Lloyd Bishop of Chester | The Ancestry of George Lloyd (Havens Family)
- George Lloyd (bishop of Chester) | Wikipedia
- Rev. William Davis History | William Davis DNA Project
- Collection: William Davis Family Genealogy | West Virginia University Archives
- Davis, Venerable Son of Pioneers, Protects Indian Burial Plot With Care Is Descendant of Long Line of Seventh Day Baptist Church Leaders by WILBUR C. MORRISON | Smithsonian Digital Volunteers
- 6 things you might not know about Saint Margaret | by Samuel Wilson
- So Great a Cloud of Witnesses | Catholic Apostolate Center
- A Great Cloud of Witnesses | CultureWatch
- The Pearl of Great Price | Catholic Daily Reflections
- THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE | Lutheran Spokesman
- The Book of Tobit | Our Lady of Mercy | Sunderland, United Kingdom
- Martin Luther on the Apocryphal Book of Tobit | Lutheran Ladies Connection
- Congregation of Divine Providence – San Antonio, Texas
- What is divine providence? | Diocesan News | Southern Nebraska Register.
- Great variety in associate religious life provides many options | Global Sisters Report
- Seventh Day Baptists | Wikipedia
- Ministry Magazine | The Seventh Day Baptists
A Note on the Research
The genealogical research, historical sources, biblical passages, and spiritual reflections presented in this article are my own. AI-assisted editing was used to help refine portions of the writing, and some illustrations were created with AI. The historical and genealogical conclusions remain my responsibility.
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If you use any information from my blog posts as a reference or source, please give credit and provide a link back to my work that you are referencing. Unless otherwise noted, my work is © Anna A. Kasper 2011-2026. All rights reserved. Thank you.
