I need volunteers.

[smittyi...@gmail.com]

I fear this is a futile request even before I make it of you, but I feel I am at an impasse as far as my resources are concerned.

Some of you may know of an author named John Horace Round. Many people say good things about him as a genealogist. I am seeking to counter his work entitled "The Carrington Imposture".

I have a poorly organized (and imcomplete) critique of his work on my blog, https://smithgenealogy.wordpress.com.

Despite other researchers finding conclusive proof of at least one of Round's claims being wrong (see Hamon de Carington) I can find no support to do an unbiased investigation of the subject matter of John Smyth (alias Carrington) of Rivenhall, Essex. The few I have reached out to simply claim Round as dogma and dismiss my analysis.

It appears that this John Smyth may be part of a lineage that touches on the very identity of English culture itself. If the lineage is proven to be true, this John Smyth would have been:

an agnate (and likely descendant) of Rollo
a descendant of a Norman-French Marquis
a descendant of Sir Mychell of Carrington, standard bearer to Richard I
a descendant of a Knight Templar (likely)
a descendant of the original Lords Carrington
a progenitor of a line of 17th century Viscounts (Smyths)
involved in the Epiphany Rising plot
involved in wars in Italy

As you can see there is much room for legend and lore to embellish the true story of this man and, despite at least two author's citations of primary sources (and some very damning and provable fallacies), this man's true ancestry is still in question. (Round claims the whole story a fabrication but does not give an alternative lineage.)

I am looking for volunteers who can help identify:

primary (or credible secondary) sources for the identities of
- John Carrington of Cheshire temp. 1401 and earlier
- John Smyth of Rivenhall circa 1404 and later

If we can show that John Smyth of Rivenhall and John Carrington of Cheshire are two different people, the matter will be closed. That is all that is needed to be done.

One thing that may prove challenging is the claim that John Smyth kept from public matters to conceal himself. This is a reason given for the lack of traditional evidence for his existence.

I know Round states that his work is conclusive, but others have published works with sources that seem far more credible than Round's opinions, opinions that can be shown to be incorrect now that the internet is available.

I apologize for my blog's lack of aesthetic; I am no web developer and have made my site as more of a working area for my projects.

I feel that Round can be shown to be wrong, conclusively, regarding Hamo de Carington. This matter is simply one of the dozen or so he adamantly addresses with certainty, certainty in some cases that can be shown to be errant.

Hamo can be proven to have existed by looking at the records for Sir Jordan of Carrington. We are clearly shown his inheritance of the Manor of Carrington from his father William, and he inherited it from his father, Hamo de Carington. Round also claims that Hamo de Carington and Hamo de Massey are one in the same. I also can show that there are records that can disprove this. One of the big pieces Round (ironically) was missing was a suppliment to the Domesday survey which contained the information on "Carrington", lands near Hamo de Massey's holdings.

If he has incorrectly dismissed the existence of one individual, where else has he err'd?

I find everyone that sees Round's work simply takes it at face value and many quote his own words to prove him correct. I have been looking at the collective works of the authors that have published on the subject and feel there is likely, at the very least, a thread of truth to the Carrington/Smyth story.

Lionel M. Angus-Butterworth - Old Cheshire Families & Their Seats (pub. 1932)
(seldomly mentioned but one of the better works with sources, in my opinion)

John Horace Round - Pedigree and Peerage (pub. 1910)
(aforementioned)

Walter Arthur Copinger - History and Records of the Smith-Carington Family (pub. 1907)
(criticized for connecting three seemingly unconnected Smith lines, provides cited sources)

George Ormerod - The Visitation of Cheshire in the year 1580 (pub. 1882)

William Dugdale - The antiquities of Warwickshire, illustrated (pub. 1656)
(one of the oldest mentions of the Carrington/Smyth story)

There are some shorter intermediary works that can be found on Google Books fairly easily. Many of the visitation compilation works also contain this lineage.

I am looking for someone to assist in my critique of "The Carrington Imposture" (and my ideas). It can be done and will be very insightful. Round got some stuff wrong, and if you dig deep enough into his claims, you'll see it too.

Thank you for reading,

Chris Smith

[taf]

On Monday, January 23, 2017 at 6:48:13 PM UTC-8, smittyi...@gmail.com wrote:

> I am looking for someone to assist in my critique of "The Carrington Imposture"
> (and my ideas). It can be done and will be very insightful. Round got some stuff
> wrong, and if you dig deep enough into his claims, you'll see it too.
>
> Thank you for reading,

I get the impression you are going about this backwards, that critiquing Round somehow supports your line. Round could be completely wrong in almost every one of his arguments, and John Smyth still not be the same as John Carrington.

And don't get carried away with the 'touching on the very identity of English culture' bit. A genealogical line is a genealogical line. Too much focus on the ramifications tends to produce increased credulity. It leads to confirmation bias - one tends to be more willing to accept a dubious connection if one wants it to be true.

(Oh, and by the way, those claimed lines to agnates of Rollo are very late and unreliable.)

taf

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 3:48:13 AM UTC+1, smittyi...@gmail.com wrote:

As one of the people contacted by Christopher before posting here I give some handy links:

1. Round's article can be found here: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE222605&from=fhd

2. Copinger's book can be found here: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1916532&from=fhd

3. The wikitree profile for the person who is in my opinion the first critical link to check is here, and gives a bit more information than Round does: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smyth-471

I think the first question is whether this man really changed his name from Carrington to Smith, after the fall of Richard II.

I think the key piece of evidence is the supposedly Middle English letter which Round thinks is obviously fake. (And I agree with him.) A transcript can be found in Copinger, and excerpts in Round.

(I think it is uncontroversial to say that Round's way of writing does lead to lots of temptation to chase false leads, and not home in on whatever is most critical. taf's points are well taken.)

Best Regards

Andrew

[wjhonson]

Wikitree is a problematic endeavor.

You have to be approved by whatever yahoo started the page, and they may not approve anyone. It gives it an air of legitimacy when it has clearly outrageous claims mixed in with good research.

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 6:04:05 PM UTC+1, wjhonson wrote:
> Wikitree is a problematic endeavor.
>
> You have to be approved by whatever yahoo started the page, and they may not approve anyone. It gives it an air of legitimacy when it has clearly outrageous claims mixed in with good research.

I don't think I have heard of anyone being blocked in this way from editing wikitree. In any case I wonder if this is a reply to another thread? Did you have anything specific to say about the Smyths and Carringtons?

[wjhonson]

There is a particular link in this thread about wikitree.
When you go *to* that link there is erroneous information on this line.
When you try to *edit* that information, you cannot.

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 5:49:09 PM UTC+1, wjhonson wrote:
> There is a particular link in this thread about wikitree.
> When you go *to* that link there is erroneous information on this line.
> When you try to *edit* that information, you cannot.

Like in any wiki, you have to join and become an editor, but this is not difficult normally. But even faster, which information is erroneous? I am sure many people reading the list are editors and can fix it. Indeed information about that profile was a topic for discussion here.

[taf]

On Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 9:59:42 AM UTC-8, Andrew Lancaster wrote:
> Like in any wiki, you have to join and become an editor, but this is not
> difficult normally. But even faster, which information is erroneous? I am
> sure many people reading the list are editors and can fix it. Indeed
> information about that profile was a topic for discussion here.

Probably beating a dead horse, but I just looked at a wikitree pedigree in which a man was born when his father was 3 years old and his supposed maternal grandfather had no surviving children. The child of the precocious father and non-existent mother married a woman born when her mother was six and whose father was born four years before his father, her grandfather. This miracle couple are given a son whose marriage has been shifted 50 years, to a over decade before he was actually born, in order to allow him to be father of (probably) his first cousin, who is in turn shown marrying his wife when she was aged 8.

Maybe too much crap got in before the standards were improved, but with this amount of garbage, can it ever be raised to the level of reliability by individual editors correcting individual profiles? There is just too much problematic material and no way to know whether the profile you are looking at is accurate, has been corrected to bring it up to acceptable standards, or is still nonsense.

taf

[mk]

There's a lot of garbage that's been downloaded from old gedcoms, and it's
a long slow process weeding out the nonsense. Some areas are well rounded
and sourced, others still look as if they were input by a six-year-old. A
lot depends on the level of interest in that particular family. Obscure
ones are not going to get much attention when there is so much to flesh out
that can be soundly sourced and where many people overlap.

I didn't bother with it for a long time, but now am trying to clean up at
least the lines of most interest to me. And the forums can be very helpful.
One thing I've discovered is that, because of the way wikitree entries come
up in google searches, you can discover a lot of living cousins. And that
means photos and shared info, which is a real treat.

If the profile is one you know something about, it doesn't usually take
long to tidy it up. Dates of the the last edit should be showing on the
page.

My advice is to consider the dates last. Wikitree requires a date of birth
estimate and people can be generations off when they make random guesses.

mk

> -------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
> GEN-MEDIEV...@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the
> quotes in the subject and the body of the message
>

[joe...@gmail.com]

Like all genealogy wikis that have been tried, you can cherry pick areas of them that are 'improving' and show great promise. And you can cherry pick areas that are miserable. The same is true for findagrave, familysearch trees, etc. The whole lot. The fact there may be some areas better than others is irrelevant to users unless they already have the expertise to separate the wheat from the chaff. And if they do, then the website offers nothing for them.

The ultimate problem is that the scope is just way too broad and the average level of expertise is very very low to ever make it work. It is a fool's errand. One hundred dedicated people cannot ever repair fifty thousand people dumping in junk daily.


Crowd sourcing relies on a principle that the average knowledge of the group is superior to the knowledge of any individual of that group. When you take your average group of genealogy hobbiests, this is complete wrong. The average genealogy tree online is far,far lacking compared to a single dedicated knowledgeble researcher.

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 8:53:15 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:

> Maybe too much crap got in before the standards were improved, but with this amount of garbage, can it ever be raised to the level of reliability by individual editors correcting individual profiles? There is just too much problematic material and no way to know whether the profile you are looking at is accurate, has been corrected to bring it up to acceptable standards, or is still nonsense.

(Also in answer to Joe.) It is impossible to write a post here that will convince anyone 100%, and in fact no one can predict the future. I think that wikitree is a site some of us optimists are giving a chance at this time. But I do think that:

(a) it is hard to judge a general tendency by looking at static individual examples; better to try it or observe some part of wikitree over time

(b) there is no logical proof, really, that a wiki can never possibly work

[mk]

I originally had the same opinion: that it was just too much and getting
swamped by those wishful-thinking Ancestry trees and people with no
apparent sense of logic.

That said, I think they now disallow the dumping in of gedcoms, and you
have to have special permission to edit at certain levels and on protected
profiles. So what is now accepted by consensus shouldn't get swept away by
enthusiastic amateurs.

It will still take time to undo the damage, but considering how much the
internet has changed genealogy over the past twenty years or so, we really
can't complain. And there are a lot of dedicated people, many of them quite
gifted, working on the project. Many hands, week after week.

Wikipedia wasn't created in a day and neither it nor Wikitree will ever be
complete. It's unrealistic to expect it to be a complete and finished
resource for the picking. But it can and does get better every day. And if
there's deadwood in there, and it's your family, don't just deride it,
change it. It sometimes takes less time to weed the garden than to complain
about it.

mk

[wjhonson]

I don't want someone else to fix it, I want to fix it.
I am a member of Wikitree, but *each and every* page has a list of approved editors and only the creators of the page can approve a new editor of that page.

That's a big problem. The birth year on this page is an error. You should not have a birth year when we don't even know what *decade* the person was born. And we don't. Assuming a birth year, just creates more problems down the road. So that's one thing I would like to remove.

[wjhonson]

I mean just look at all these hoops you have to *supposedly* jump through

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pre-1500_Profiles

And then these supposed same people are allowed to post utter nonsense with no sources cited whatsoever ?

[Richard Smith]

You can't have it both ways. First you moan that everyone and his dog
is able to edit WikiTree (and frankly, from some of the crap present, I
suspect the dog wrote the lion's share of the content). Now you're
moaning that editors have to jump through hoops to be able to edit
mediaeval profiles. That's a recent introduction since I gave up on
WikiTree, but it was abundantly clear while I was active on it that such
a change was necessary if the project was to gain any credibility.

The reason I gave up on WikiTree is nothing to do with the crap there.
While I was active it was clear they were actively trying to improve
things, maybe not fast but the situation was demonstrably improving.
For example, they prevented users from uploading GEDCOM while I was
active on the project, and either introduced or tightened up the
pre-1700 certification process (I forget precisely).

What really concerned me, and what finally caused me to give up, is the
licensing of the content. Almost all successful large wikis and
similarly large collaborative projects have some form of permissive
licensing, allowing anyone to copy the content with certain
restrictions, such as perhaps not using it for commercial use or
attributing content to its authors. WikiTree doesn't. It has a fairly
standard commercial copyright statement and they explicitly ban
automated copying from the site. The company owning the copyright
(Interesting.com Inc.) is not a charity, non-profit organisation or
member-owned organisation. It is a normal profit-making company. If
they cease business, WikiTree may well die. Also, Interesting.com or a
future owner may well start charging for access to WikiTree or start
putting adverts all over it. The permissive licence most wikis have
protects against this. If Wikipedia closed, or started charging, or
added intrusive adverts, someone would put up a copy of the data
somewhere else. That's legal and an explicitly intended consequence of
the licensing model. With WikiTree we have no such protections, and
that's why I now refuse to use it.

Richard

[wjhonson]

No Robert I did not moan that everyone and his dog was able to update Wikitree

I moaned *moooooooaaaaaannnnn* that everyone and his dog is able to create pages on Wikitree and then keep those pages *locked* down to only their trusted set of editors.

Quite a different animal.

[wjhonson]

Really what Wikitree needs to do, is start over, WITH this policy in place.

That's going to be the only way to fix the countless nonsense

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 5:32:27 PM UTC+1, wjhonson wrote:

> I don't want someone else to fix it, I want to fix it.
> I am a member of Wikitree, but *each and every* page has a list of approved editors and only the creators of the page can approve a new editor of that page.

Occasionally and for some key bits of information, there is a situation like that, but for a birth year anyone with pre 1500 approval can do it? And getting that is really not difficult (although I think having some hoops is a good thing). You basically just have to apply.

[taf]

On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 12:36:30 PM UTC-8, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

> Occasionally and for some key bits of information, there is a situation like
> that, but for a birth year anyone with pre 1500 approval can do it? And getting
> that is really not difficult (although I think having some hoops is a good
> thing). You basically just have to apply.

There is a lot hidden in that 'basically' qualifier:

Confirmed account more than one month ago.
Signed our community's Honor Code.
200 or more non-GEDCOM contributions.
Two or more postings in G2G.
Participation in a WikiTree Project.
Pre-1700 Self-Certification.

So, having been berated earlier in this thread, ". . . don't just deride it,

change it. It sometimes takes less time to weed the garden than to complain

about it," I find that all one has to do to correct a problem is to first make 200 other edits and wait a month and do all of the other stuff in the list.

So no, sorry, it basically takes a whole lot less time to complain.

taf

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 11:54:57 PM UTC+1, taf wrote:

> So no, sorry, it basically takes a whole lot less time to complain.

Except that the context of my "basically" remark was in response to someone who said they were already a wikitree editor. Most of the requirements would be met automatically by an existing wikitree editor. In any case I repeat my offer to try fixing or commenting on problems noted on this list, at least while I remain an optimist about wikitree, "giving it a go".

Comments on this list are already often referenced on wikitree.

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 8:13:38 PM UTC+1, Richard Smith wrote:

> What really concerned me, and what finally caused me to give up, is the
> licensing of the content.

Richard I think this is a complex point, but more worth making. I think many editors keep watching these points while we try it out. The website does have various discussions about it posted. I think I would say there are other similar concerns sometimes made about other ways in which wikitree has made a rather quirky variation of how wikis normally work. I think one big theme of the excuses given has been the idea that the variations have helped the wiki gain momentum (again I use that word referring to quantity).

When I decided to look around at what genealogical wikis were working a few years ago (I really do not like Ancestry, geni, etc) I decided that Werelate was much the one worth experimenting on. As an old wikipedian I found the approach more "pure", and not only in the way you mention. The only problem is that it just seems to move too slowly, with too few people working on it. Maybe it will pick up momentum more slowly also, and one day come to dominate.

Question to list. Apart from Wikitree and Werelate I think all other wiki-software single tree collaborations are smaller? (I distinguish the online collaborations which allow every editor to have their own versions of the same people and family trees, as I think these lead to massive problems now that genealogy has been online for decades.)

Size does matter when it comes to collaboration success of this type.

On the other hand (to remind of an old discussion) a small wiki which sets itself a smaller target, for example only dealing with certain lines of descent, could do well and aim at quality. I have proposed in the past that small quality projects like the Henry III project could be made using wiki software.

[Ian Goddard]

On 27/01/17 22:54, taf wrote:
> Signed our community's Honor Code.

Which is so touchy-feely it makes me queasy to read it. e.g.

We know mistakes are inevitable. We don't want to be afraid to make
them. We assume that mistakes are unintentional when others make them
and ask for the same understanding.

How about:

We know mistakes are undesirable. We try to avoid them. We expect to be
corrected if we make them and we will correct others' mistakes if we
find them.

--
Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng
at austonley org uk

[Ian Goddard]

On 28/01/17 09:39, Andrew Lancaster wrote:
> I decided that Werelate was much the one worth experimenting on. ... The only problem is that it just seems to move too slowly, with too few people working on it.

I did a little on there but it seemed to have the same problem as the
rest - being bootstrapped by loading gedcoms.

Gedcoms, AFAICS, are a means of uploading conclusions. The format
throws away any detail that might have been found in the original
evidence, citations to it and reasoning from evidence to conclusions.

As long as this is used as the basis the result will inevitably be
chaotic. It doesn't take long to come to the decision that life is too
short to get mired in that.

A good genealogical wiki would start with evidence and work from there.
It would acknowledge that some conclusions were tentative and even allow
for alternative reconstructions. By far the most important part of this
content would be the evidence; if new evidence were to contradict
existing reasoning any consequent lines based on the latter could be
thrown away, the original evidence would remain alongside the new and be
reinterpreted.

[Richard Smith]

On 28/01/17 09:39, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

> On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 8:13:38 PM UTC+1, Richard Smith wrote:

>> What really concerned me, and what finally caused me to give up, is the
>> licensing of the content.
>
> Richard I think this is a complex point, but more worth making. I
> think many editors keep watching these points while we try it out. The
> website does have various discussions about it posted.

Is there any prospect of the licensing changing? It is certainly
possible if the Interesting.com are so minded, as they have retained the
power to make such a change unilaterally.

> Question to list. Apart from Wikitree and Werelate I think all other
> wiki-software single tree collaborations are smaller? (I distinguish the
> online collaborations which allow every editor to have their own
> versions of the same people and family trees, as I think these lead to
> massive problems now that genealogy has been online for decades.)

It depends what you count. geni.com has a World Family Tree which has
nearly an order of magnitude more individuals in it than WikiTree. It's
a commercial service by MyHeritage, which itself isn't a problem, but
it's licensing prevents proper reuse of content, though it does go
further than WikiTree.

Roglo and Rodovid are the other two big collaborative trees, and the
only other ones I know to include more than a million people. Roglo is
bigger than Werelate but smaller than Wikitree. Rodovid is smaller than
either.

> Size does matter when it comes to collaboration success of this type.
>
> On the other hand (to remind of an old discussion) a small wiki which
> sets itself a smaller target, for example only dealing with certain
> lines of descent, could do well and aim at quality.

If the intention is to prioritise quality, I think starting small and in
a targeted fashion is essential.

> I have proposed in the past that small quality projects like the
> Henry III project could be made using wiki software.

I'm not sure whether you mean the existing and largely complete Henry
Project, which is Henry II's ancestors, or a proposed new one to extend
it to his grandson's ancestors. As I understand it, the current Henry
[II] Project was largely the work of one man, Stewart Baldwin. My
apologies to those involved if I've misunderstood that. In such a
situation it makes complete sense to use whatever technology the lead
contributor chooses, but that's not necessarily a scalable. Something
more wiki like could be scalable, but quality will only be maintained if
the project manages to keep strict control over who has edit rights.
(For what it's worth, I think WikiTree has gone in the right direction
with its pre-1700 and pre-1500 accreditation processes. Whether the
details are right, I don't know, but the direction is right.)

Richard

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 1:52:36 PM UTC+1, Richard Smith wrote:
> It depends what you count. geni.com has a World Family Tree which has
> nearly an order of magnitude more individuals in it than WikiTree. It's
> a commercial service by MyHeritage, which itself isn't a problem, but
> it's licensing prevents proper reuse of content, though it does go
> further than WikiTree.

But geni.com is a tree which does not push users to create one consensus, and I think that type of tree has been shown to have natural tendencies not to constantly improve.

> Roglo and Rodovid are the other two big collaborative trees, and the
> only other ones I know to include more than a million people. Roglo is
> bigger than Werelate but smaller than Wikitree. Rodovid is smaller than
> either.

I should look at those. Thanks.

> If the intention is to prioritise quality, I think starting small and in
> a targeted fashion is essential.

Logically impossible to start from the other direction? Not sure about that. I think having both would be better for genealogy.

> I'm not sure whether you mean the existing and largely complete Henry
> Project, which is Henry II's ancestors, or a proposed new one to extend
> it to his grandson's ancestors.

No indeed it is more or less complete. I am thinking however that it is a model for future quality-oriented projects. Pick a project: descendants of Edward III or whatever.

[Peter]

Roglo


I am one of the wizards of this database. There is copying of some unreliable tertiary sources, but the data is getting better. I for one, give as many sources as humanly possible with specific page numbers or chapter numbers relating to each individual. The space for sources is not exhaustive but I circumvent that problem with added sources in the 'additional information section'. I am currently trawling through some of the Scots families to try to amend or co-relate some individuals.


Peter

[Richard Smith]

On 28/01/17 14:26, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

> But geni.com is a tree which does not push users to create one consensus,

I think they try, though perhaps not hard enough, and they're rather
less successful at it than WikiTree or WeRelate.

> and I think that type of tree has been shown to have natural tendencies not to constantly improve.

Agreed.

>> If the intention is to prioritise quality, I think starting small and in
>> a targeted fashion is essential.
>
> Logically impossible to start from the other direction? Not sure about that.

Perhaps not "logically impossible", but it's been tried lots of times
with no success.

> I think having both would be better for genealogy.

A cynic would agree with you as it keeps the clueless novices away from
the worthwhile projects. But I'm not that cynical. I think a large
collaborative project can potentially be both high quality and popular,
but only if you get the right ethos from the start. Get the ethos wrong
and it is the wrong people who are looked up to within the project: it's
the people who've contributed tens of thousands of pages, regardless of
whether nine-tenths of them are complete crap. Start small, start
quietly, start with a relatively well constrained project, and gradually
build the right ethos and develop the right tools to maintain it. Above
all, don't rush to expand.

>> I'm not sure whether you mean the existing and largely complete Henry
>> Project, which is Henry II's ancestors, or a proposed new one to extend
>> it to his grandson's ancestors.
>
> No indeed it is more or less complete. I am thinking however that it
> is a model for future quality-oriented projects. Pick a project:
> descendants of Edward III or whatever.

I appreciate it was only an example, but its too open-ended to be
exactly the right starting point. Maybe five generations of descendants
of Edward III would be a suitable start. Or mediaeval male-line
descendants of Edward III (in which case you might as well go back to
Henry II or even the Comtes du Perche).

Were the current Henry Project people on board, I might suggest a new
Henry Project building on the current one, starting with Henry III. But
it rapidly became clear that almost all the new people that would be
added are obscure early mediaeval French comtes. That's all well and
good if they interest you, but offers little variety if they don't. The
ancestors of Edward III are a much more diverse bunch, but a much larger
project; for a smaller project, probably comparable in size to the
original Henry Project, Louis VII's ancestors are fairly interesting
with a relatively small intersection wtih Henry II's ancestors. Also,
Louis VII's ancestors are all ancestors of Henry III so it's a necessary
part of any future project to do his ancestors.

Finally, perhaps its not necessary to choose a mediaeval starting point
at all. The descendants of James I might be more tractable, though it's
not an area I've looked at much.

Richard

[Roger LeBlanc]

For quite some time now I have been using the Roglo as my homepage. Although
there are flaws it nearly always helps me place individuals being discussed
by this group.

Roger

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 7:16:33 PM UTC+1, Richard Smith wrote:
> On 28/01/17 14:26, Andrew Lancaster wrote:

> Perhaps not "logically impossible", but it's been tried lots of times
> with no success.

Going from a massive collaboration towards a higher and higher quality has been tried? As we seem to agree though, most of these did not even push participants to agree on one single tree, so how hard did they try. We also seem to agree that Wikitree's gradual tightening of rules has worked?

> > I think having both would be better for genealogy.
>
> A cynic would agree with you as it keeps the clueless novices away from
> the worthwhile projects. But I'm not that cynical. I think a large
> collaborative project can potentially be both high quality and popular,
> but only if you get the right ethos from the start. Get the ethos wrong
> and it is the wrong people who are looked up to within the project: it's
> the people who've contributed tens of thousands of pages, regardless of
> whether nine-tenths of them are complete crap. Start small, start
> quietly, start with a relatively well constrained project, and gradually
> build the right ethos and develop the right tools to maintain it. Above
> all, don't rush to expand.
>

> Maybe five generations of descendants
> of Edward III would be a suitable start. Or mediaeval male-line
> descendants of Edward III (in which case you might as well go back to
> Henry II or even the Comtes du Perche).

Recently I proposed exactly this on wikitree and work has started. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:A_table_of_descendants_of_Edward_III Basically just me and one other person working on it as a project, but I think it has potential. I also think it is a bit easier or at least different concerning the level of specialist knowledge required, if you compare to Henry II or earlier.

> Were the current Henry Project people on board, I might suggest a new
> Henry Project building on the current one, starting with Henry III. But
> it rapidly became clear that almost all the new people that would be
> added are obscure early mediaeval French comtes. That's all well and
> good if they interest you, but offers little variety if they don't. The
> ancestors of Edward III are a much more diverse bunch, but a much larger
> project; for a smaller project, probably comparable in size to the
> original Henry Project, Louis VII's ancestors are fairly interesting
> with a relatively small intersection wtih Henry II's ancestors. Also,
> Louis VII's ancestors are all ancestors of Henry III so it's a necessary
> part of any future project to do his ancestors.

If you are looking for more ideas, Stewart Baldwin's webpage, which houses the Henry project, also has single page webpages about Wales, the Isle of Man, and Denmark. In all cases of course his website is very strong for pre 1066 genealogy which is of course a weak point for more people, and websites. I wish there was more accessible material online for France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

> Finally, perhaps its not necessary to choose a mediaeval starting point
> at all. The descendants of James I might be more tractable, though it's
> not an area I've looked at much.

Indeed such a project would be worthwhile, on whatever platform.

[Ian Goddard]

On 28/01/17 14:26, Andrew Lancaster wrote:
>

> But geni.com is a tree which does not push users to create one consensus, and I think that type of tree has been shown to have natural tendencies not to constantly improve.
>

Pushing to one consensus is fine providing the consensus is correct.
But you need to be able to hold the possibility that two are even more
alternative views are equally valid and be able to live with that until
you can resolve them. You may need to be able to heed the voice that
says your consensus is wrong because this and this and this evidence
contradicts it or it.

As I said in another post, collecting evidence is much more important.
Acquire a new piece of evidence that conflicts with your line and you
need to be able to start again with an interpretation that fits better.
A system that pushes to a single view will probably make that harder to do.

On the whole I think most genealogical software tends to be unsuited to
an evidence-first approach. Trees have a a nice computery structure.
They have a siren song that lures developers to build software around
them. If that tree then needs to be demolished or, even worse, you need
to maintain two alternatives pro tem, and the evidence is hung from the
tree then you have a problem.

[wjhonson]

The reason why Wikitree's "gradual tightening of rules" does *not* work is because Wikitree is *already* filled with mountains of nonsense

It would take twelve lifetimes to fix it.

The only solution would be to complete purge every person living before 1800 and start over :)

[Andrew Lancaster]

I am not seeing any evidence of that, and it is not something you can prove just based on logic. The lifetimes problem also takes no account of the exact strategy wikis use: get lots of people working on the same thing, so all can do a small job. You write as if the number of people makes no difference?

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 1:52:40 PM UTC+1, Ian Goddard wrote:

> Pushing to one consensus is fine providing the consensus is correct.
> But you need to be able to hold the possibility that two are even more
> alternative views are equally valid and be able to live with that until
> you can resolve them.

This is a dilemma in presenting any family tree, not just in the digital age. I see no logical reason to say that this problem became bigger by using software. Software could handle this I think, but of course it would complicate various functions and tools that software can offer to genealogists (by changing the nature of some of the relationships).

[Richard Smith]

On 30/01/17 12:21, Andrew Lancaster wrote:
> On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 1:52:40 PM UTC+1, Ian Goddard wrote:
>
>> Pushing to one consensus is fine providing the consensus is correct.
>> But you need to be able to hold the possibility that two are even more
>> alternative views are equally valid and be able to live with that until
>> you can resolve them.
>
> This is a dilemma in presenting any family tree, not just in the
> digital age. I see no logical reason to say that this problem became
> bigger by using software.

It needn't be but it is.

When research was being stored on paper, if I drew up a tree, I could
represent a dodgy connection as a dotted line or just pencil it in. I
could annotate the line with a warning that it was conjectural or there
was also evidence against it. I could even draw a tree showing two
alternative lines of descent if I wanted.

Some software does allow you to mark such uncertainties, but they tend
to be quite well hidden on reports and trees it generates.

> Software could handle this I think, but of course it would
> complicate various functions and tools that software can offer to
> genealogists (by changing the nature of some of the relationships).

Precisely so.

Richard

[wjhonson]

Give me ten links to what you think are "good" write ups of medieval people and I can find twenty errors of commission and omission.

The incredibly vast majority of people who are "genealogists" fail when they get behind 1600. Allowing those people to upload all their gedcoms, in the beginning, introduces the same tired errors that it takes a week to untangle.

Who wants that task?

[Richard Smith]

On 30/01/17 18:00, wjhonson wrote:
> On Monday, January 30, 2017 at 4:19:31 AM UTC-8, Andrew Lancaster wrote:
>> On Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 5:26:09 PM UTC+1, wjhonson wrote:

>>> The reason why Wikitree's "gradual tightening of rules" does
>>> *not* work is because Wikitree is *already* filled with mountains
>>> of nonsense
>>>
>>> It would take twelve lifetimes to fix it.
>>>
>>> The only solution would be to complete purge every person living
>>> before 1800 and start over :)
>>
>> I am not seeing any evidence of that, and it is not something you
>> can prove just based on logic. The lifetimes problem also takes no account
>> of the exact strategy wikis use: get lots of people working on the same
>> thing, so all can do a small job. You write as if the number of people
>> makes no difference?
>
> Give me ten links to what you think are "good" write ups of medieval
> people and I can find twenty errors of commission and omission.

I'm not going to dig out ten, but here's one I wrote back when I was
active on WikiTree.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rogers-1594

It has been altered a bit since I left, and there are some things I
would have done differently now, but it still seems quite reasonable.
Certainly it's a counterexample to your proposition that all pre-1800
profiles need deleting.

Richard

[wjhonson]

There is no evidence at all that he was born *in* Bryanston or even in Dorset. The mere fact that a family lived in or acquired a piece of land at some point is not evidence that all their children were born at that place.

What is your evidence for this exact birth day?

What evidence do you have that he died about 1507 or even within a decade of this date? We know he was alive in 1498, I believe that's the last we know about him.

[Richard Smith]

On 30/01/17 20:06, wjhonson wrote:
> There is no evidence at all that he was born *in* Bryanston or even in Dorset.

I agree. That's not a detail I added.

> What is your evidence for this exact birth day?

Read the page.

> What evidence do you have that he died about 1507 or even within a decade of this date?

Read the page.

Richard

[wjhonson]

Well the point isn't in details that *you* added.
The point was that the database is full of these sort of situations.

[Joe]

>
> Give me ten links to what you think are "good" write ups of medieval people and I can find twenty errors of commission and omission.
>

Will,

Last year, I fixed up the profile of Alice Freeman. I do think it is an example of a good profile on WikiTree and an example what is possible. Alice Freeman comes up not infrequently here, and I believe you know a lot about her, so have at it. I am happy to fix any errors.

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Freeman-1326&public=1

As someone noted, it is easy to cherry pick examples of good profiles and even easier to find awful examples. The bad currently out numbers the good by quite a bit. But I do believe it is fixable and WikiTree is getting better every day.

[wjhonson]

Really I am not a proponent of using "about" dates that are wild guesses.

Margaret Thompson does not *have* to have been born in that parish you know. So guessing that she was born before the parish register began and thus had to be aged 20 at her marriage is just guessing.

To use that same failed logic to then "guess" that her mother was about 20 at *her* marriage is ridiculous.

We have examples *in this time period* of women marrying as young as 12 and as old as 30 at their *first* marriage.

This sort of thing just leads people to use this as a basis to build upon when it's baseless.

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

On 2017-01-31 00:03:00 +0000, Joe said:

> Will,
>
> Last year, I fixed up the profile of Alice Freeman. I do think it is
> an example of a good profile on WikiTree and an example what is
> possible. Alice Freeman comes up not infrequently here, and I believe
> you know a lot about her, so have at it. I am happy to fix any errors.
>
> https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Freeman-1326&public=1

This seems like a pretty good writeup, but I would like to question one
piece of it:


> Disproved Royal Ancestry
>
> A Royal Ancestry was developed and published for Alice Freeman to John,
> king of England. This was repeated in multiple secondary sources. This
> line has been broken in two places. First, it has been shown that Joan
> de Harley, wife of John de Besford, was not a daughter of Sir Robert de
> Harley by his wife Joan Corbet. Second, Margaret ferch Llewelyn is no
> longer considered a granddaughter of John, king of England. Alice
> Freeman's ancestry is remarkable in how long of medieval heritage she
> has without being a descendant of a king before Charlemagne.


This paragraph is mostly quite correct. But that final sentence is both
confusing and, to the best of my knowledge, wrong.

It's confusing, first, because "remarkable in how long of medieval
heritage she has" is very hard to parse, and second, because the
sentence uses "before" to mean what normal people call "after." Leaving
aside the fact that I'm not sure that the sentence's assertion is
factually correct, I would recast it to read "Alice Freeman's ancestry
is remarkable for how much medieval heritage she has without being a
descendant of a monarch who lived after Charlemagne."

Second, to the best of my knowledge, and acknowledging that most of us
Euro-Americans are probably descended from Charlemagne thousands of
unknowable ways, to the best of my knowledge Alice Freeman has no
documentable descent from Charlemagne, either, and yet a lay reader
could be easily be forgiven for deducing from that sentence that Alice
Freeman has such a descent.

Third, according to several reasonably reputable sources Alice Freeman
was indeed a descendant of a king who lived after Charlemagne: the
Anglo-Saxon king Aethelred II (d. 1016), called "unraed",
ill-counseled. I posted my own understanding of this descent to SGM on
5 Jun 2016; it's here:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-MEDIEVAL/2016-06/1465139087

If any of the steps in this descent are incorrect or even questionable,
I would be very interested to hear about it.


--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
p...@panix.com
http://nielsenhayden.com/genealogy-tng

[wjhonson]

Alice Freeman, is in my database as a descendant of Malcolm King of the Scots (slain in 1034) and in two different lines from Aethelred II King of England, and also from Hugh King of France, and Henry the Holy Roman Emperor

[Joe]

>
> This paragraph is mostly quite correct. But that final sentence is both
> confusing and, to the best of my knowledge, wrong.

> --
> Patrick Nielsen Hayden
> http://nielsenhayden.com/genealogy-tng

Thanks. I removed the confusing and possibly misleading sentence. The main point of the paragraph was supposed to just be that there is a royal ancestry to more recent English kings in print which has been disproved.

[J. Sardina]

On Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 3:15:04 AM UTC-5, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 3:48:13 AM UTC+1, smittyi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> As one of the people contacted by Christopher before posting here I give some handy links:
>
> 1. Round's article can be found here: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE222605&from=fhd
>
> 2. Copinger's book can be found here: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1916532&from=fhd
>
> 3. The wikitree profile for the person who is in my opinion the first critical link to check is here, and gives a bit more information than Round does: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smyth-471
>
> I think the first question is whether this man really changed his name from Carrington to Smith, after the fall of Richard II.
>
> I think the key piece of evidence is the supposedly Middle English letter which Round thinks is obviously fake. (And I agree with him.) A transcript can be found in Copinger, and excerpts in Round.
>
> (I think it is uncontroversial to say that Round's way of writing does lead to lots of temptation to chase false leads, and not home in on whatever is most critical. taf's points are well taken.)
>
> Best Regards
>
> Andrew

Hello,

Coming back to this thread, I would like to confirm or deny the line of Caringtons leading to Emma Carington, who appears as wife of one of the Randall Brereton of Malpas.

One of the published visitations of Cheshire contains a chart for the Carryngtons, though short and lacking the names of the wives,
The Visitation of Cheshire in the Year 1580 By Robert Glover, William Fellows, Thomas Benolt, Sir Thomas Chaloner · 1882.

It lists the following
1 William, given, father of
2. William, father of
3. George, father of several sons:
3.1 sir John, father of two sons
3.1.1 Hamlet
3.1.2 Thomas
and one daughter
3.1.3 Emme, ux. Randoll Brereton (father of Thomas Brereton, father of Urian Brereton)
3.2 Nicholas
3.3 Ralph
3.4 William (who continues the line)
and finally
3.5 Edmond

Copinger's book shows Isabel de Beeston as wife of sir John (p. 84, and others)

The same book, on page 62 and others, brings Mathilde le Wareyn as the wife (second to the author) of George. According to Copinger, she was daughter of Nicholas le Wareyn , lord of the manor of Stockport, son and heir of sir John de Wareyn Has this information been verified?

The same book, on pages and 42 and 43, shows one Matilde de Arderne as wife of the second William of this line. She is presented as daughter of Peter Arderne, second son of sir John Ardene.

At least one Matilda, widow of William of Carryngton, knight appears in a surviving document listed through the National Archives:
Reference: SC 8/40/1959
Description:
Petitioners: Matilda Caryngton (Carrington), widow of William de Carrington, knight.
Name(s): Caryngton (Carrington),
Matilda Addressees: King and council.
Nature of request: Caryngton states that her husband bought from the justice and chamberlain of Chester the wardship and marriage of Thomas Weaver, etc...

Is there proof that Emme was in fact the daughter of sir John?

Copinger says on page 84 that her parents married in 1417, and in other pages that her father died in 1452 and her mother in 1455.

I have been trying to get some dates on these lines since there is some information of one Alice Brereton, married to William de Sandford of the Lea, living in 1508. She might be one of Emma's daughters. Alice is claimed to have had female descendants down into the 1500s.

J. Sardina

[Elizabeth A]

Hi J.,

For what it's worth, Roberts' RD500 has at least one line that runs through Randle Brereton and Emma Carrington, apparently.
(https://books.google.com/books?id=-k5lAAAAMAAJ&q=carrington+brereton+ormerod&dq=carrington+brereton+ormerod&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUor6Jm-L0AhUejYkEHYfUDnMQ6AF6BAgCEAI)

Unfortunately, RD500 has not been available through Ancestry Library Edition for some time, or I would offer to send you the page images off-list. I would try to get your hands on a copy through inter-library loan if possible--it's certainly not worth buying the volume just for this one lead, not least because Roberts didn't typically due detailed primary source research on many of the families in his works, but largely relied on secondary sources.

However, royal ancestry may not be present, at least as claimed. Certainly the line as given by Douglas Richardson in Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd ed. (2011), pp.322-3, which runs Ipsontes->Swinnerton->Holland. I'm not sure, but I suspect Gary Boyd Robert's brief account in RD500 relies at least in part on Richardson's PA. The connection between the Brereton and Ipstones families appears sound, as does the connection between the connection between Ipstones and Swinnerton. The problem is that, although there is probably some connection between the Swinnerton and Holland families, it is not as given in PA. Nat Taylor wrote an article on this, at at http://nltaylor.net/pdfs/a_Gresley.pdf. It's also worth noting that Boyer mentions that the Swinnertons descend from the Beck or Beke family, which in turn has a close connection to the Stafford family, but the exact nature of the Beke-Stafford connection is also unclear (see https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/c/oHoMF9NAQjg/m/S37ZMQLFfKoJ).

Randle Brereton and Emma Carrington are also mentioned in "Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell" by Carl Boyer. Boyer's account cites Paul C. Reed's excellent article, "Another Look at Joan de Harley: Will Her Real Descendants Please Rise?" in The Genealogist, Volume 10, pp.35-72. Frustratingly, I once ordered this article through interlibrary loan, but I've lost access to the device on which I kept those old files, so I don't have a copy for you. Boyer also cites the Visitation of Cheshire, which I see you've already found, as well as Omerod's Cheshire, which has been published in at least two editions, frustrating my attempt to track down that citation. Boyer's book can be found here:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/1028677?availability=Family%20History%20Library

I'm not sure if you can view either of these volumes if your IP address is based outside of the United States--if not, I can send you both off-list if you send me a private email.

-Elizabeth A

[J. Sardina]

Hello,

Many thanks for the links.

Since I am in the United States, they work. I have been looking through them. I have seen only one of Ormerod's Cheshire as well as the visitations. Apparently, the Bulkeleys are still not completely confirmed, and I have not seen proof that Catherine was a daughter of the William that is known to have been justice of Cheshire. There seems to be quite a lot of information on his family in the National Archives, but I don't know if there are any documents proving the marriage of his daughter to one of the Randall Breretons of Malpas.

A few years ago the identity of William's wife came up in a thread, and apparently, she was a half-Welsh woman, daughter of Gwilym ap Gruffudd of Penmynyth, and of his second English wife, Joan Stanley.

Gwilym's biography can be found at https://biography.wales/article/s1-GRIF-PEN-1300.

As far as Carrington's go, Boyer does list them, but it would help to proof that Emme was really sir John's daughter. I am not on clear as to why her two brothers who died with no children are said to have been succeeded by a cousin on their father's side and not by their Brereton nephews if Emme was their sister.

I am hoping to receive a copy of a file from the Spanish National Archives regarding an Englishman who settled in Biscaya and who claimed to be a descendant on his mother's side of the Breretons and Sandfords mentioned above, but in any case, it will not likely to add details on the Breretons.

J. Sardina

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:23:29 -0800 (PST),
Elizabeth A <starwa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Randle Brereton and Emma Carrington are also mentioned in "Medieval
> English Ancestors of Robert Abell" by Carl Boyer. Boyer's account
> cites Paul C. Reed's excellent article, "Another Look at Joan de
> Harley: Will Her Real Descendants Please Rise?" in The Genealogist,
> Volume 10, pp.35-72. Frustratingly, I once ordered this article
> through interlibrary loan, but I've lost access to the device on
> which I kept those old files, so I don't have a copy for you.

A nice thing about the current periodical bearing the name The Genealogist
is that you can order any back issue all the way back to the first one in
Spring, 1980, for $15, or any two issues for $25:

https://fasg.org/the-genealogist/subscribing-and-back-issues/

-- and, at least in my experience, they're prompt in fulfilling such
orders. I certainly felt I got my money's worth out of the Paul C. Reed
article mentioned above, which is a model of how to present highly
technical genealogical reasoning in an entertaining fashion.

[guineapi...@gmail.com]

Hi everyone
I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I'm feeling I need a laugh, I read The Carington Imposture. It is a simply overwhelming massacre of the alleged line.
Nancy

[J. Sardina]

Yes. It is quite definite in its conclusions, though i do not know how many of them are entirely certain. In any case, I read both works, and unfortunately, they did not serve to establish the identity of Emma Carrington, which is what i was trying to confirm. It is not clear how reliable the earlier part of the work on the older generations of the Carrington family might be, given what Round says about the rest of the work. If what it shows about the wives of the Carringtons, it is possible that Emma was a descendant of Warren and Ardene families.

J. Sardina

[J. Sardina]

Note: It seems that Emma may have been a daughter of George Caryngton, not of sir John Caryngton, according to some pedigrees attached to a long lawsuit between the Breretons and others and the Caryngtons :

Catalogue description
Short title: Brereton v Caryngton. Plaintiffs: Uryan BRERETON, esquire, groom of the...

Reference: C 1/952/65-68
Description:
Short title: Brereton v Caryngton.

Plaintiffs: Uryan BRERETON, esquire, groom of the Privy Chamber, descendant and heir of George Caryngton.

Defendants: John CARYNGTON.

Subject: Manor of Carrington, messuages and land in Partington, and one-third of half the manor of Ashton-on-Mersey and of messuages, a mill and landin Kenworthy (in Northenden), Stockport, Hattersley, Wooley (in Hollingworth), and Mottram.

Pedigrees given. Cheshire

Date: 1538-1544
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Closure status: Open Document, Open Description

J. Sardina

[J. Sardina]

Unless the George mentioned here is the father of sir John Caryngton and not his nephew of the same name.

The pedigrees in question should show the exact link.

J. Sardina

[Ian Goddard]

On 18/12/2021 18:24, J. Sardina wrote:
> a mill and landin Kenworthy

It may be useful to know that an alternative spelling for Kenworthy
(which has more or less disappeared under a road junction on the M60) is
Kennerly. The two can be interchangeable as place name and surname.

[J. Sardina]

I am not sure if there will information regarding how each of those properties came into the hands of the Caryngtons, which
I am assuming tookplaceearlier than, or with their common ancestor, which seems to be sir George Caryngton.

http://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Cheshire/Northenden/53283644b47fc4085600119f-Kenworthy

I wonder how this manor came up to be divided in a way that the Caryngtons inherited or adquired exactly:
"one-third of half the manor of Ashton-on-Mersey."

J. Sardina

[Ian Goddard]

On 19/12/2021 02:54, J. Sardina wrote:
> I wonder how this manor came up to be divided in a way that the Caryngtons inherited or adquired exactly:
> "one-third of half the manor of Ashton-on-Mersey."

Oddly enough I was thinking about a similar thing this morning,
remembering being told about a one sixth of an advowson. I came to the
conclusion that it could well have been the result of inheritance
through daughters were there was no male heir.

In that particular instance, although I'd need to go back over the whole
circumstances to see if was relevant, I know there was a division of
property between two sisters at one stage. A further split between tree
sisters in a later generation could have produced a one-sixth.

Something along those lines could have happened to the manor.

[Chris Smith]

If anyone is interested, I have started a WikiTree project page and would like to share my latest findings with you. I encourage peer review and open collaboration.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DNA_Group_R-M269-9

I am sure some of you will find some of the details of my content rather interesting. It's worth a careful read.

Thank you.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Yes it might have been better to start a different thread. (Not that this is a big issue of course, but I wonder if things will get confusing.) I would say that Round was not careful at all about what he said concerning earlier generations of the Smyths either. But obviously this was not his focus.

Concerning the Carrington imposture the biggest point he was making (at least looking at the medieval end) was about the supposed Carrington who turned himself into a Smyth. And I think his arguments for dismissing that story are very strong indeed.

As someone who has worked on them I believe the Smyth family involved are a quite interesting one, and a lot more can probably be said about them. I have posted some notes on Wikitree https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smyth-471. I have never really looked at the real Carrington family. I think it is a good thing if we can move on and study these two families again now that we know they were not one family.

(OTOH, as can be seen on the Wikitree page there is a recent note which shows that not everyone accepts this.)

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Hi Christopher. It would indeed be great if you could prove a connection between those various American Smiths who apparently share a Y DNA match, and the Essex/London Smiths of Blackmore etc. However, I looked at your Wikitree project and I did not yet spot which evidence this idea is based on. As it is a long page, I would suggest pasting the evidence for this proposal right at the top. Do you have matches from England for example, or have you discovered American documents which push the line back further?

[Chris Smith]

Hey Andrew,

To summarize, I have found that my dad and a number of our cousins who descend from my Smiths of Salt Creek Twp, Jackson Co, IN share autosomal DNA on Cr7 with two women who are 2nd cousins related via half-siblings who share a common Smith ancestor whose family was from the Ongar, Essex area in the 18th century. They have no ancestry in North America.

Further I find this same segment on Cr7 brings me into proximity other Smith populations to which I am yDNA matched. These are the Smiths of Washington Co, VA, Scott and Campbell Co, TN c. 1860.

Please see this blog posting of mine for the details:
https://smithgenealogy.wordpress.com/2021/08/04/exploring-my-dna-matches-possible-smith-connections-to-campbell-and-scott-cos-tn-and-possibly-to-england/

Further, I think it important to understand that I have a very credible yDNA match to the male line of Hervey Walter de Clare, as mentioned on my WikiTree project page. The pedigree of my match has been autosomally verified as well, back to 15 generations. I will not share their identity for privacy reasons. This was able to be accomplished as many relevant people have taken autosomal DNA tests with the large commercial companies and they descend from families that have impeccable records going back quite a ways, many of which are also academically scrutinized public record.

I am a Smith in North America who is yDNA matched to the line of Rollo. There is only one Smith line that would fit this profile: the Carrington Smiths of Rivenhall. The fact that it is well understood that Smiths of Blackmore settled in colonial era Virginia along the James River is surely the clue to how this could happen, and this hypothesis is supported by my group's autosomal triangulation with descendants of Josiah Smith who married Elizabeth Collier. Josiah Smith was a grandson of Nicholas Smith who married Mary Flood. This Smith family, based on paper trail records, is a good candidate for being descended from the Smiths of Blackmore. (We do know a Thomas Smith of Blackmore existed in Virginia, but he does not have a will that has survived into modern day so we are unable to be 100% sure of who his children were). There are currently three candidate immigrant ancestors from Blackmore: Thomas and Arthur who are said to have been brothers, and a Nicholas Smith who is suggested to have been a son of a Capt. Stephen Smith of Blackmore. These individuals are on my plate to dig into thoroughly, but other matters have had my attention in the recent months.

There was a Nicholas Smith (different, I believe from the previously mentioned one), Josiah's grandfather, who lived on Fountains Creek in Brunswick Co, VA (c. 1720) and this is from where we also find a Henry Smith of 1810 Knox Co, KY originated, near Fort Christian. Henry knew a KY Militia Col. Elisha Smith (an attorney and statesmen), a son of KY Militia Gen. William Smith who was a "neighbor" to my 4th great-grandfather Isaac Smith in Rockcastle Co, KY in 1810. It is among the descendants of Isaac do we find the relevant autosomal DNA that links them to the two aforementioned 2nd cousins who have no ancestry in North America.

As far as Round's arguments go, I find no one in the records before him that disputed John Smith, Esq's descent from Sir Michael of Carrington. The Heralds themselves declared this fact at the funerals of Smith men descended from John Smith, Esq.

I find it interesting that it is the integrity behind the use of the authority of the state that comes into question in this genealogical inquest. I think that is healthy, but it is the crux of Round's arguments that the Heralds were corrupt. I believe that to be highly unlikely in this case, as are many other of Round's arguments (i.e. Sir Michael of Carrington never existed or that Hamo de Mascey and Hamo of Carrington were the same person). That said, I do have some outstanding questions about the pedigree retrieved from the charter chest of the Nevilles of Holt, but nothing that defeats my hypothesis.

I am a Smith male who has yDNA matched to the male line of Rollo. Yes, this yDNA information exists in one of the databases of one of the commercial DNA testing companies. The funny thing is, there is so much nonsense on the internet about this subject that my science based research is drowned out by the noise of loud, poor quality researchers and trolls. The 12/12 yDNA match is sufficient to provide 90% confidence that my Smith line and the Butler family to which I match share a common ancestor on the male line around 48 generations ago. This fits well for a possible Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) to be around the time of the Dukes of Normandy (800 CE).

I've not gone public with this information before as I had not received a proper blessing from my match's family to include their family's information in my postings. Fortunately, I recently was given the green-light to begin discussing the details publicly as my research has progressed to the point that it is immediately relevant to my findings. I've been doing my personal research largely without the use of this yDNA info, but it becomes relevant when we look at my Smith male population as a whole.

Feel free to browse the rest of my blog. It is a work in progress, but I've tried to tidy up as best I can. I have no objections for my work to be peer reviewed as necessary.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Smith
https://smithgenealogy.wordpress.com

Copyright Christopher Smith - 2021

[Chris Smith]

Correction... Nicholas Smith married an Elizabeth Flood, not a Mary Flood.