Customer Reviews

Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study In Colonial And Medieval Families (Royal Ancestry)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though I do not, to my knowledge, have a single drop of royal blood in my veins, I have a longstanding interest in peerage genealogy -- if only because the earliest surviving records concern the lineages of European society's movers and shakers, not the yeoman farmers and small tradesmen whose genes I carry. Richardson is well known and widely respected in this field, having published numerous peerage articles in the most respected journals and having been a contributor to the last couple of editions of Weis. Those of us who hang out on the soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup have watched for years as this massive work took shape (always keeping in mind that the level of discourse in that venue often verges on the sophomoric). The final result is close to being a masterpiece not only of genealogy of the traditional sort but of comparative historiography. His purpose is to document the lines of descent for about 190 individuals who immigrated to the North American colonies before 1700 from the Plantagenet dynasty who ruled England from 1154 (the accession of Henry II, Duke of Anjou) to 1485 (the defeat and death of Richard III at Bosworth Field at the hands of Henry Tudor). He notes that his work is an expansion and major revision of David Faris's _Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists,_ but the new work is so very extensive, this must really be regarded as an entirely new work; Faris considered only the descendants of Henry III (who died in 1272), where Richardson traces the progeny of all sixteen of Geoffrey's great-grandchildren who left descendants, both legitimate and illegitimate. Further volumes are planned to cover descents from Magna Carta sureties, the early feudal barons, and the Emperor Charlemagne. (Remember that anyone who descends from a single royal house in Britain or on the Continent will also have descents from most of the others.)

The plan of organization is reminiscent of that devised by Frederick Weis, with each family's listed lineage beginning at the point of bifurcation from the previous, earlier lines; all generations are numbered from Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, the first "Plantagenet." Citations are very, very full, which is sure to make this a heavily cited secondary source itself. In fact, Richardson seems to have read everything (the bibliography is the most complete I have ever seen, running to more than seventy-seven pages!) and obviously has thought very carefully about what he read. A number of important discoveries and changes to previous scholarship are included, such as the proven parentage of both Margery de Bohun and Joan Hastings (both major problems for decades), and the maiden name of Margaret de Mowbray (important for descendants of Mayflower passengers). Even more important is the discovery that the "Fair Rosamond" Clifford, mistress of Henry II, was not the mother of William Longspée (created Earl of Salisbury); that dubious honor now goes instead to "Countess Ida," wife of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. Nor does he consider his work to be complete: His snail-mail and e-mail addresses are included, as well as a website address, with the plea that new discoveries, additions, and corrections will be submitted by readers. This oversized volume was my birthday gift to myself this year and it already has two dozen bookmarks tucked into it.

Exceptionally well-sourced and well-indexed. One can tell at a glance which immigrants are descendants of each person listed. Where possible, the author has listed both parents for each person, along with all possible siblings. A must-have for anyone doing research on American colonial ancestry.

I bought this book because it was the first "Royal Ancestry" tome to list one of my own ancestors, namely Richard Parker, 17th century immigrant to Virginia. The author accepted the research of amateur genealogists Waunita Powell and Fred Olen Ray, and included Richard and George Parker, allegedly sons of James Parker and Catherine Buller of Cornwall, in the "Courtenay" line (pp 238-243). Reading this part of Richardson's book, one would naturally assume that this descent was "proven," at least as much as any pedigree can be without DNA verification. However, because these are my ancestors, I have looked in great detail at this Parker family, and I have found a great many problems that would make me hesitate to take the ancestry shown by Richardson at face value. To look at Richardson's bibliography for this line on p. 243, you couldn't tell that McSwain (1980) is a book (now long out of print), while Powell (1990) is just a typewritten collection of notes. There is also no mention of the fact that McSwain and Powell came to opposite conclusions, nor any mention of the fact that the identification of Richard Parker of Cornwall with Richard Parker of Virginia essentially rests on one document which appeared in the late 19th century, the original of which has apparently vanished. When I wrote to Mr Richardson and laid out in great detail the problems associated with the Parker identification, his reply was short, dismissive, and showed a complete lack of understanding of the issues involved. If there are all these ambiguities and uncertainties with this one line, which are not even touched upon by Richardson in his presentation, how many other lines in the book rest on equally shaky ground? How did he get such a reputation as a thorough genealogist? I don't think I'll ever buy any of his books again, because I do not feel I can trust the ability of the author to evaluate sources. Gary Boyd Roberts, in the most recent edition of The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States Who Were Themselves Notable or Left Descendants Notable in American History includes this Parker family in an addendum, and that has made me wonder now about him. Genealogy is big business, and everybody wants to be able to trace their family tree back to Charlemagne, never mind that it's often hard enough to find out who great-grandma really got pregnant by!

I give "Plantagenet Ancestry" 4 Stars because its competition is so uniformly bad. I'd like to see Richardson combine "Plantagenet Ancestry" and "Magna Carta Ancestry" into one book. The 4 Star rating is also due to the fact these volumes are still available and relatively inexpensive for the amount of material covered. They're based upon the books of medieval pedigrees by the late David Faris.

Richardson's interpretation of sources is sometimes questionable. But at least he gives the reader some idea of the nature of his sources and how they relate to the line, which helps in evaluating a line's plausibility. And occasionally, through primary research, he turns up evidence useful in documenting a line.

Of Genealogical Publishing Company's medieval book list, "Plantagenet Ancestry" and "Magna Carta Ancestry" are the best. Considering the rest of their catalog, it's a dubious achievement.

This is an important study on some of the descendants of the Plantagenet family, whose ranks include many kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, counts, and many more of the ranks of royalty and nobility, in almost every country of the world. The sources used are original or transcriptions of original records (as much as possible), along with other records, to document the family ties between the people listed in this book. Mr. Richardson et al, have also attempted to give many of the individual royal and noble titles held by each person (if any), to aid in finding these persons in other original and printed resources. Though I'm sure there are mistakes here and there, Mr. Richardson et al does a wonderful job straightening out as many of the known errors as well as a few new ones that had yet to be addressed. The great part is that this work seems to be an ongoing work - I haven't as yet gone online to check out the website, and we can look forward to many new family tidbits in the future. This book is a "must have" for those researching historically or for those with family ties to the Plantagenets!

One of the best sources for the amateur and professional alike, Douglas Richardson's books rank as the be all and end all along with John Dorman's Adventurers of Purse and Person for those wishing to tie their American genealogical lines with the petty nobility and royalty of Europe. A must-have for every genealogist. Extremely well sourced.

Douglas Richardson has produced an incredible reference work. I have used it extensively, and although there are a few errors they are easily detected and corrected (except in a very few cases). For the most part, the information contained in this book is very accurate. I have entered source material for my entire genealoy file, and find that the work of other authors usually agrees with Mr. Richardson. I wonder at the other reviewers that criticize this work because they find a few errors. All genealogies contain errors! That is a fact we have to live with. Our goal, as genealogists is to do all we can to find and correct those errors. That is not an easy task! We research everything we can find to try to make our genealogy as accurate as possible, but there are still errors that crop up. When you are dealing with information that is many hundreds of years old you sometimes have no choice but to accept that which is the most logical as true. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. I think Plantagenet Ancestry is well researched, well written and quite accurate. I have also written to Douglas Richardson and pointed out some of the errors I found. I assume he keeps track of them for a future release, but since he doesn't answer my emails, that is only my opinion. I look forward to his future volumes and will surely buy them!

Great book! Ties together a lot of missing information. I highly recommend this book for anyone from the beginner to the expert researcher.

What a wonderful book! As a beginning family historian, I can't figure out how anyone could organize so much material, and keep it both interesting and easy to use. I read about a different part of my family almost every day, and have great fun imagining life back when "Grandpa" was king!

I'm a retired printer. This is the perfect companion to my hardback edition of Magna Carta Ancestry. It is in one way superior, this multi-volume edition is lighter to lug around.

The typography is superb. I prefer the lighter weight for utility of use. The cover and binding look to be of superior quality. It resembles the PoD public-domain books I've had re-published. Some pages of text to not align square to the sheet. I regard this as minor.

The URLs linked and I will return. Very High Quality.