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Wednesday, 30 May 2018

Fake Pedigrees


‘Genealogy and the medieval historian’ by Michael Maclagan from the paper presented at the 1978 English Genealogy Congress held at St Catherine College, Cambridge.

In a recent workshop at NWKFHS Society Library I explored errors, lies and other misinformation in records found in the commercial and government indexes online. There are also a number of fake pedigrees that are known within the genealogical community such as those written by Gustav Anjou between 1890 and 1942 [Online https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Fraudulent_Genealogies]. Michael Maclagan mentions a case of someone embellishing their Ancestry. Sir Walter de Norwich d 1329 became Chief Baron of the Exchequer and his son John Admiral North of the Thames became a peer in 1342. The pedigree compiled with supporting forged documents (Maclagan p12 quoting Bodleian MS Top. Gen.c.62 (formerly Phillips 3796)) claims to go back to a companion of William the Conqueror.

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