Researchers with alleged royal descents, including numerous “400”
society families and various tycoons, submitted their lines to Charles
Henry Browning for inclusion in Americans of Royal Descent and
other works. Later such volumes, most with a high percentage of royal
descents that have now been disproved, include the eight volumes of Magna
Charta by John Sparhawk Wurts, the five volumes of d’Angerville’s Living
Descents of Blood Royal, and the three volumes of Pedigrees of
Some of the Emperor Charlemagne’s Descendants (these last two sets
also contain many valid lines, but are either undocumented or
underdocumented). Non-royal descents to early colonists appeared in the
seven volumes of Colonial Families of the U.S.A. by George
Norbury Mackenzie (which again has much valid but undocumented data),
the seven volumes of Compendium of American Genealogy edited by
Frederick Adams Virkus, and the many volumes of Colonial Families of
America and Colonial and Revolutionary Families of America.
Much data in these last two sets is both correct and somewhat
documented, but false royal descents still abound. Virkus’s Compendium
is often cited as the pre-eminent printed work not to be trusted. I
find such judgment harsh but various English origins are false, and
since the data is largely copied from printed genealogies or derived
from family sources or the surmises of genealogists who were not very
scholarly, there are many errors regarding colonial generations or the
origins of “pioneers.”
Mormon family group sheets submitted by church members between, I am
told, 1943 and 1969 are now housed in the Joseph Smith Building,
formerly the Hotel Utah, on the opposite side of Temple Square from the
Family History Library. In 1982 I identified 175 problems in the
ancestry of various notable Americans and from these family group sheets
obtained data that led to answers for forty-five of them. The thousands
of family group sheets are filed alphabetically, include the extracting
onto such forms of many books (so that the families of daughters of
daughters, covered in various genealogies, now appear in one logical
sequence), and are usually quite reliable for the descendants in Utah of
the followers of Brigham Young. The group sheets are also usually
reliable for four or five generations, often more, of the ancestry of
these Utah pioneers, and much data on them was copied by Michel Call in
the Mormon Pioneer Genealogy Library. The family group sheets
should never be used for English origins, and for colonial
generations are only as good as the often late nineteenth or early
twentieth century genealogies that were copied.
I much prefer the family group sheets to the Ancestral File, begun in
1969 as in part a reworking of the sheets and for the recording of the
ancestry of all contemporary church members. One of my former colleagues
estimated that ninety to ninety-five per cent of the English origins
(not just royal descents, but any immigrant origins) are false.
Many users also have found large numbers of logical inconsistencies
(children of twelve-year-old parents, births after the deaths of mothers
or when the latter were in their fifties, middle names for seventeenth
century English colonists, etc.). Quite useful, however, is the
International Genealogical Index, or IGI, which contains millions of
extracted records (Massachusetts and Connecticut birth and death data,
an estimated one-third of all English parish registers, and most
Scandinavian registers), as well as thousands of patron submissions.
These last often provide clues and their placement beside extracted data
on the same people (the two are no longer distinguished in the online
IGI) makes it relatively easy to detect errors. Less-than-obvious
Ancestral File errors may take some research to detect.
Thus there are many precedents for the early Internet function of
helping “amateur” genealogists share information. During much of the
1990s the Internet served mostly as a kind of giant query column,
somewhat in continuation also of such columns in the Boston
Transcript, the Hartford Times, the Connecticut Nutmegger,
Yankee magazine, NEXUS, etc. Now, however, with numerous
databases on Ancestry.com,
Genealogy.com,
and many other websites, genealogists often extract much of their known
ancestry, especially colonial New England forebears, first from the
Internet – before using libraries, courthouses, vital records bureaus,
or state archives. On the reference desks at NEHGS I am often called
upon to examine such data – or information derived solely from the
Mormon Ancestral File.
Various warnings are required. All of the weaknesses of the previous
compendia are repeated – false royal descents and incredible English
origins, confused colonial generations, impossible chronology, numerous
typographical errors, and, for many of the earlier volumes, assumed
coats of arms. Apparently many of the early databases transferred from
print onto the Internet (and including the Ancestral File itself, part
of FamilySearch.org)
were highly flawed. In part for that reason, this website, NewEnglandAncestors.org,
has proceeded carefully in its selection of databases, including
firstly, the Register, the Great Migration volumes, lists
of colonial soldiers edited in the late 1970s, and the Massachusetts
town vital records series. In addition to databases that may be derived
from flawed books, family group sheets, etc., many genealogists now have
their own websites on which they often outline their own ancestor
tables, small-scale genealogies (their own first to fourth cousins, say,
in certain lines), and various formats of descendancy charts that cover
some ancestors and some cousins in an order chosen by the researcher.
Such information should be treated basically like genealogical letters –
as what someone thinks is their ancestry, and has put together from
sources that may be good and bad, but are quite often frequently
unidentified. Bible records, cemetery inscriptions, will and deed
abstracts, census extracts, and other such “primary” data is only as
good as its copyist, and of course books that have been copied and
recopied often contain both the errors of the original volume and those
added by successive genealogists.
The end result is often not only a list of clues and lineages to
verify, but many of the classic mistakes and long-disproved errors
identified by modern scholarship. Royal descents so derived are often
laughable, English origins wrong (with fully proved fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century forebears of other immigrants omitted), and children
or grandchildren long dissociated from various immigrants are
reinserted. Such dependence adds much false ancestry (sometimes reams of
printouts) to the work of genealogists who have probably carefully
compiled data on their immediate forebears but now work from the
Internet the way earlier generations of print genealogists used to rely
on Browning, Wurts, Virkus, and very poor nineteenth-century
genealogies.
My best advice is to ignore almost all pre-American data on the
Internet – unless the Register, TAG, NYGBR, The
Genealogist, or original parish records or wills are cited (and the
original article should still be consulted). For seventeenth-century
generations in New England, check the references in C.A. Torrey’s New
England Marriages Prior to 1700, now on CD-ROM. Most “classic”
New England genealogies (see my "top twenty" list) can be borrowed
through our Circulating Library or purchased from our online book store .
A useful check on the oldest of these, largely undocumented, are the
Massachusetts vital records database on our website and the New England
wills and deeds, mostly on microfilm, on the fourth floor of our
research library in Boston, in the Family History Library in Salt Lake
City, or in the state archives or original county courthouses. To check
mid-Atlantic and Southern data, an easy first reference are all of the
excerpts from major journals reprinted (as Genealogies of Long Island
Families, Genealogies of New Jersey Families, Genealogies
of Pennsylvania Families, etc.) in the 1980s and 1990s by
Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore. For New York Dutch
families, check the subject index by Jean D. Worden to The New York
Genealogical and Biographical Record, plus its update by Harry Macy,
and for the first Virginians, check Adventurers of Purse and Person,
3rd ed. (1987) by A.L. Jester and J.F. Dorman. M.B. Colket’s
Founders of Early American Families lists many New England and
New York immigrants before 1657, plus major genealogies and articles
that cover them, and of course New England immigrants 1620-1633 (and
part of 1634-35) are authoritatively treated in R.C. Anderson’s The
Great Migration Begins series. For Marylanders and Virginians, see
the bibliographies by Passano, Stewart, and Stuart Brown, plus Robert
Barnes’s British Roots of Maryland Families and Crozier’s older Virginia
Heraldica. Many researchers also consult PERSI (the
Periodical Source Index), also on CD-ROM.
I personally would prefer to review the ancestor charts of NEHGS
patrons without unconfirmed data from the Internet or Ancestral
File. As you might imagine, I spend considerable time deleting false
lines and eliminating old mistakes. As a compromise, readers visiting
NEHGS or planning a consultation with me might delete only English
origins derived from the Internet, the Ancestral File, or any of the
weaker compendia listed early in this article. Mistakes in colonial
generations are often obvious from chronology, and are sometimes
corrected by the very genealogy from which the data was copied – or by
articles with which I am familiar or that I helped to edit.
I look forward, regardless, to examining the ancestor charts of
members and visitors, and I hope everyone who uses the Internet
continues to share information with each other. Many “lost pioneers” and
nineteenth-century immigrants have a sibling or cousin who is in the
ancestry of another genealogist. The Internet is much speedier, and
potentially more comprehensive, than any past query column or other
medium of exchange. Information from the last 200 years can also be
corrupted, of course, but overall, given the care with which almost
everyone traces their immediate forebears, it is often more reliable
than colonial or pre-American data. The Internet is also, of course, a
splendid tool for updating your branch of a particular genealogy. An
electronic medium should never replace library and primary research, and
it may well expose beginning genealogists to many old mistakes. But use
the Internet, gather information from cousins online, and then begin
your real research with at least hints, if not resolutions, about
ancestors who might previously have remained “dead ends.”