Immigrant - Christopher Branch

[Leo van de Pas via]

Christopher Brance born 1602/3, died between 1678 and 1682 in Henrico County
In London in 1`619 he married Mary Addie

In Genealogics he has 334 amcestors of whom 42 are flagged as interesting, such as

Charles Martel - Charlemagne - Egbert of Wessex - Alfred the Great - Rollo of Normandy - Berengar II king of Italy - Hugues Capet king of France - William the Conquerer - Robert de Caen earl of Gloucester

So far I found only one interesting descendant

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president

With best wishes
Leo van de Pas
Canberra, Australia

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[Stewart Baldwin via]

Leo van de Pas wrote:

> Christopher Brance born 1602/3, died between 1678 and 1682 in Henrico
> County
> In London in 1`619 he married Mary Addie
>
> In Genealogics he has 334 amcestors of whom 42 are flagged as interesting,
> such as
>
> Charles Martel - Charlemagne - Egbert of Wessex - Alfred the Great - Rollo
> of Normandy - Berengar II king of Italy - Hugues Capet king of France -
> William the Conquerer - Robert de Caen earl of Gloucester
>
> So far I found only one interesting descendant
>
> Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president
>
> With best wishes
> Leo van de Pas
> Canberra, Australia

The royal descent of Christopher Branch shown in Genealogics is not valid.
There are two problems. One weak link is that there does not seem to be any
good proof in the Bostock ancestry that John Wettenhall married a daughter
of John Arderne, although there might be a record somewhere that would
confirm this claimed connection. See my article "John Simcock of Chester
County, Pennsylvania," in The Genealogist 18 (2004): 3-53, at pp. 36-7.
More importantly, John Anderson Brayton has shown that the supposed Bostock
ancestry of Christopher Branch through the Jennings family is false (in
fact, chronologically impossible). However, he also showed that there must
have been some Branch-Bostock link, and suggested that Christopher Branch
might have the Bostock descent through a different route, but I do not know
the details, or whether he was able to solidify the proof of this. I
believe that his work on this subject was submitted to "The Virginia
Genealogist" at about the same time that that journal became defunct, and I
do not know if or where these results ever appeared in print. This is of
special interest to me because I have a descent from the Bostocks through
the immigrant John Simcock (see the above article), although the exact route
by which they connect to the "main" branch is still uncertain. According to
work done by the late William Addams Reitwiesner, John Simcock was also an
ancestor of former Vice President Al Gore (see
http://www.wargs.com/political/gore.html).

Stewart Baldwin

[Leo van de Pas via]

Dear Stewart,

Many thanks for this. I have wielded the knife into the ancestry and no
longer does Christopher Branch have royal ancestors. This will become
visible on Genealogics after the next update.
With best wishes
Leo

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[jhigg...@yahoo.com]

Apparently John Anderson Brayton did find a different acceptable link from Bostock to Branch, as a slightly different version of the descent appears in recent editions of Gary Boyd Roberts' books, citing "a forthcoming Branch-Bostock article by John Anderson Brayton...based in part on the wills of Richard and Elizabeth [Bostock] Branch".

Leo's database cites the 1995 edition of GBR's Ancestors of American Presidents, and the same line appears in GBR's RD500 in 1993. The pertinent part of the line is:
Hugh Bostock m. Joan Del Heath
George Bostock m. Joan Horne
Joan Bostock m. William Jennings
Thomas Jennings m. Alice Bright
Catherine Jennings m. William Branch

The new version of the descent appears in the 2008 edition of RD600 and in the 2009 edition of AAP and, interestingly, goes via William Branch instead of Catherine Jennings. The part of the line substituting for the above segment is as follows:
Hugh Bostock m. Joan Del Heath
William [or Richard?] Bostock m. Margery Higginson
Elizabeth Bostock m. Richard Branch
William Branch m. Catherine Jennings