On 23/05/16 23:31, Richard Carruthers via wrote: > I wonder if there has been any attempt to create a web-based listing, > more or less comprehensive, of all the Landed, Manorial, or Gentry > Families in England, Wales, and the Irish Pale, on a county by county > basis for the period, say, 1066-1688 (taking the Conquest and the end > of Heraldic Visitations to be reasonable rough dates for coverage)? > > If not, is anyone else interested in the creation of such a list, > and/or contributing to it? I think the idea has potential, and if undertaken in the right way it could generate much interest. I'm assuming you're thinking of a voluntary project with a small or no budget. If so, I think very careful consideration will need to be given before the project starts to how it is coordinated. Who would you allow to participate? Anyone who wishes to sign up? Do you allow pseudonymous contributions? Do you take any steps to determine a contributor's competence before allowing them to participate? What steps do you take if it becomes apparent that a contributor is posting unsupported or fictional lines, or violating copyright? Is the research on a person, family or place (whatever you make the basic unit of research) "owned" by a particular researcher? What if another researcher disagrees with the published version, and the original researcher refuses to accept it is in error? What sort of oversight or review process exists to allow such disagreements to be considered on their merits? What sort of editorial body will there be to ensure consistency in style and levels of proof? For example, does a Heralds' Visitations count as a reliable primary source? Ever? What steps will be in place to ensure all research is sourced? Do you have some sort of peer review process to review the research that has gone into all, or particularly important, or a random selection of research areas? What copyright and licensing regime would the research be made available under? Would it be available on-line at no charge? Are you viewing this as a step on the way towards a published series of books? How is the scope of the project defined? Specifically, how obscure can a family be while still qualifying as "landed, manorial or gentry"? Certainly by the end of the period you mention, many people claimed to be gentlemen who, a century earlier, would only have been described as yeomen. Make the definition too broad and the work includes too many people of no general interest and unrelated to the other subjects of the research, which will be detrimental to the coherence of the work and to ensuring a high quality of research. These are all questions to which I would want considered answers as part of a coherent vision of the project before committing my time; I imagine other people would think similarly. I do not believe such a project will result in consistently high quality output in a loosely governed environment with an anarchic style governance where everyone's opinion is valued equally regardless of their experience. Arguably this strategy works well for the subset of most highly visible articles on Wikipedia, but one only needs to look at obscure technical articles on subjects you know a lot about, and you'll see they're riddled with misunderstandings, errors and crackpot theories. Their articles on obscure genealogical figures are no exception. And if you think Wikipedia is bad, try looking at Wikitree. I'm not against the idea -- indeed, I think there's the possibility of something very worthwhile arising from it -- but I do think it'll be very hard to get right, and getting it wrong risks poisoning the well for future attempts. In asking some quite detailed and slightly critical questions, I'm hoping that can be avoided. Richard

Dear Richard, Thank you for your response and the very valid points you raise in it. I think it essential that no obviously anonymous contributor be allowed to contribute. Indeed I think every entry should be tagged with the contributor's initials, and they a master list of contributors be kept. A way of vetting contributors and their contributions would need to be developed. One idea that comes to mind for a sort of vetting process involves some way in which contributing people could earn or gain higher levels of project experience and/or verification through their addition of entries to the project that could be noted with their contributions. Perhaps some sort of governing council could accord advancement to the next level of verification/experience. No one would have absolute ownership over the genealogy or other information association with a family surname entry in the listing as there would always have to be space allotted for peer review. The spirit in which this would be meant to occur would be collegial and polite. I hope I am not just being like Pollyanna in this regard. I think we could take contributions from Heraldic Visitations provided we took care to list the shortcomings of individual Visitations based on scholarly input and examples of known errors. There would have to be a system of explicit reference to sources including Visitations in order to allow users to weigh the merits of the entries. Indeed, we could allow for comments by qualified and experienced researchers warning people of what may be fictive entries in the listing. So while such entries would be allowed if found in some reputable source, they would nonetheless be subject to these caveats. That way the list could incorporate the notion of showing up known research hazards rather like navigational charts allow sea-farers to avoid shoals, rocks, and other dodgy areas for the unwary traveller. This would be an important way in which more experienced researchers could use their considerable and hard-earned knowledge and experience to raise the study of genealogy generally. On that front, some time ago, I came across an article about Verified Genealogy in which the author argued for a way of setting apart pedigrees in which all the data shown about a given lineage was carefully vetted and traced to its source material before gaining that distinction. Part of the object of the listing would be to serve as a help toward doing just that by making explicit reference to sources and building a list or lists of vetted sources with learned commentary and a discussion of problems of verification where required. This could be done in such a way as to allow for considered discussion of divergent opinion based on clear reasoning and reference to the bases of one's arguments. Since that is essentially part of what is meant to happen on gen-medieval already, I think that this could serve as a reasonable way of moving forward with such as scheme. In some ways a comprehensive listing such as I propose would serve a function akin to that of an annotated bibliography. None of these is perfect, but they can prove to be extremely useful when used correctly. Peer review of input would allow for ongoing oversight and should, if done in a spirit of friendly collegiality, serve allow for learned contributions by those whose expertise can benefit all users of the listing. That way the listing might help to show up crackpot theories, error, and misunderstandings as part of its underlying purpose making them explicit in a way that Wikipedia may not (save on its closed or semi-hidden discussion pages). For the moment, I am not envisaging a series of books, though such a listing could serve as the basis for myriad publications I imagine. A shoe-string or zero budget is indeed what I have in mind as alas genealogy has no Paul Getty to fund it, nor have I. I wonder if anyone knows of a suitable web space that would be interested in sponsoring such a project and/or someone with the computer savvy to advise on the technical aspects of such a web-based undertaking (should this idea get off the drawing board!)? Thank you, Richard C-Z

On 26/05/16 21:37, Richard Smith wrote: > How is the scope of the project defined? Specifically, how obscure can > a family be while still qualifying as "landed, manorial or gentry"? > Certainly by the end of the period you mention, many people claimed to > be gentlemen who, a century earlier, would only have been described as > yeomen. A good question. Consider, for example, two families in the Huddersfield area who had a baronet line by the end of the period. The Kayes are documented in visitations going back to the John Kay[e] who leased the manor of Woodsome and Farnley Tyas. In the 1379 subsidy roll he is described as a franklin. The two visitations I have for him both give him 6 legitimate sons although they differ in the name of the sixth. They also give him 6 unnamed daughters. One gives him an additional illegitimate son, John, and a father William of whom there is no trace in the subsidy roll unless he is the Willelmus de Ky Wodekirk. We don't know how many times he married. The mother of his first son from whom the main Woodsome line descended was evidently a Finchenden. Was she the Margaret, given as his wife in 1379 or was she Elizabeth, named, unfortunately without a source, in a local history? One of the visitations also gives a line from the fourth son to the Kayes of Heath. Who was the mother of this line? From the Wakefield manorial rolls we know there was a John Kaye active in the years about 1300. He is frequently presenting essoins or standing as surety. After his death in 1316 his son German appears a few times clearing up his father's affairs. Later C14th rolls have few mentions of the family and there are none for a generation before the subsidy roll so we have no idea how John the franklin connects back to the earlier generations. The other family is the Armytages of Kirklees. These only go back to a John Armytage d 1573 and said to have been killed after being shipwrecked off Ireland* but documented thereafter. The only Armitages in the subsidy roll are Willelmus del Ermytache & Agnes uxor ejus and they only paid the standard 4d but they were in North Crossland, convenient to the eponymous hermitage which, as far as I can make out, was located in a corner of South Crossland next to the boundary stream with North Crossland. Frances Collins in the appendix to vol 2 of the PRs of Kirkburton lists a number of Armitage wills but they only date back to the C16th so there is nothing I know of at present to connect the Kirklees family back to William of the subsidy roll nor to extend William's ancestry back beyond the subsidy roll. There is, however, a good deal of obfuscation resulting from what are undoubtedly fabrications connecting the Kirklees family with an earlier family from Leicestershire. I would expect that this sort of emergence from obscurity would be repeated up and down the country and although a study of these families would be of some interest to the wider genealogical community it would be of limited value**. In my local area, for instance, Kayes crop up everywhere. Although those of us with multiple Kayes in our lines almost certainly descend from the original John of Woodsome the likelihood is that they go back either to either his four or five sons who aren't followed up in the visitations or to descendants of the other two sons off the main lines. Likewise I can establish a connection to one of the Armitage wills in Collins but that doesn't connect to any of the other wills. * I think there's a question mark here. John of Kirklees died at that time and I can find no trace of a local burial. The shipwreck is reported at Liverpool but the John Armitage listed there is said to be of Farnley Tyas. The IPMs of John of Kirklees and of his son list many holdings but none of them can by any stretch of the imagination be said to be in in Farnley. A John of Farnley Tyas had certainly had had disagreements with the Liverpool authorities in the past. Had they conflated two John Armitages? Was John of Kirklees formerly of Farnley and given an anachronistic description in the shipwreck report? ** There's also a risk that it would present a target for those seeking to link a name to which they have a genuine connection to a name which gives them an instant pedigree, much as did the Leicestershire Armitages to the Kirklees family. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk