Another part of the correspondence. Jean in NS ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy Stockdill" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 5:25 AM Subject: [CHS] Bogus pedigrees Bonney has performed a very commendable service in posting this article warning of the gross inventions of Mr. Gustave Anjou (even his own name sounds like an invention!). I agree with Julie Vandersluys that it deserves the widest possible circulation. Just think how many of these bogus pedigrees there must be floating around and being totally believed by the gullible. Having looked at the long list of surnames covered, I suspect the works of the late Mr. Anjou are probably the source for many of those instant family histories that are being peddled by genealogical "bucket shops" in shopping malls. I might further warn that many newcomers will find in older editions of the supposedly reputable "Burke's Peerage and the Landed Gentry" similar dodgy pedigrees which were in wide circulation in the 19th century and the early 20th, and accept them without question. Danger, danger, danger.....! Please remember one of the most fundamental rules of genealogy, folks - just because something appears in print in a large and expensive glossy volume, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true!!! There were many Victorian magnates, newly rich self-made men, who paid out large sums of money to genealogists to find them a nice family tree and coat of arms they could hang on the dining room wall and boast to friends and business acquaintances about. Inevitably, they got what they paid for. You cannot even rely on the Heralds' Visitations of the 16th and 17th centuries, since the pedigrees were supplied by the subjects themselves and any checking was only cursory. There is only one worthy rule for genealogical research - never believe anything until you have checked and confirmed it yourself, preferably with more than one proof from primary sources. Roy Stockdill, Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society Web page:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- http://www.one-name.org "Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845) CHESHIRE interests - PLEVIN and WILLIAMS at Nantwich/Acton-by-Nantwich, pre 1814 ==== CHESHIRE Mailing List ==== Index to Cheshire Wills: http://www.fhsc.org.uk/wills