Richard Church of Hartford's Ancestry
Richard Lesses
This article is based upon several published articles on the ancestry of
Richard Church of Hartford.
In 1914, Charles Washburn Church published Simeon Church of Chester,
Connecticut 1708-1792
and his Descendants. The author lists the English ancestors of Richard
Church as follows:
1.John at Church (1335-1396) and Catherine Winchester
2.John Chyrch (1365-1450) and Catherine
3.John Church
4.Reynold Church and Margaret Greene
5.Robert Church (abt. 1505-)
6.John Church and Catherine Swan
7.John Church and Joan Titerell
8.Richard Church (1570-) and Alice
9.Richard Church (1610-1667) and Anne Marsh
...from whom all his descendants come. The source is given as "condensed
from a report by a
genealogist in London for Mr. Alonzo Church of Newark, N.J."
In the December 1915 issue of The Genealogical Magazine, published in
Boston, J. Gardner
Bartlett, an eminent genealogist, wrote that "this pedigree [is] a
compilation of disconnected Church items found in various printed books,
and a few unauthenticated vital records, the whole put together to satisfy
the whimsical notions of the compiler." He then goes on to dissect the
pedigree piece by piece, suggesting that the '"genealogist in London' to
furnish Mr. Alonzo Church, for publication, explicit references to
original records [italics in the original] covering the following points
of his claims:
1. The original birth or baptismal record for Richard Church (#7 in the
listing above);
2. Evidence linking our Richard Church to a Richard Church who was a
merchant tailor in London;
3. Accounting for the marriage of this Richard Church to said Alice, who
was described as the widow of his brother, expressly forbidden by English
law;
4. Original birth or baptismal records for the children of this Richard
Church, who are furnished with precise dates of birth;
5. Evidence that this Richard Church moved from London to Braintree in Essex;
6. Evidence of our Richard Church (#8)'s marriage to Anne Marsh, daughter
of Edward Marsh;
7. Original birth records for the children of Richard Church and Anne Marsh.
The "genealogist in London" failed to supply the requested information.
Ah, but who was this genealogist in London?
Just after the Second World War, Alice Church of Los Angeles typed a
Church genealogy. Using
carbon paper, she could make just a few copies of the several hundred-page
genealogy. It traced nine generations of Churches from Richard of
Hartford, listing hundreds of Church descendants. She relied upon Alonzo
Church's London genealogist for information on Richard Church himself, and
upon the peripatetic researches of Clarissa Church Dillon of Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Mrs. Dillon had travelled all along the back roads and highways
of New England, New York and parts beyond to uncover original source
documents relating to Church genealogy. Mrs. Dillon, like Miss Church and
myself, was descended from Colonel Timothy Church (1769-1826).
Miss Church accepted Alonzo Church's report, including Richard Church's
marriage to Anne
Marsh, daughter of Edward Marsh of Braintree, and his descent from John at
Church, as listed
above.
In Alice Church's typescript genealogy, the "London genealogist" employed
by Alonzo Church was finally identified; he was a man called Gustave
Anjou.
The tale of "Gustave Anjou" is best read in two articles published in the
Genealogical Journal, volume 19, pp. 47-70: "We Wuz Robbed: The modus
operandi of Gustave Anjou" by Robert
Charles Anderson and ""Gustave, We Hardly Knew Ye: A Portrait of Herr
Anjou as a Jungberg"
by Gordon L. Remington.
In brief, Gustave Anjou was a forger, a genealogical fraud, born Gustaf
Ljundberg in 1863 in Sweden. He fled to the United States with his wife
and mother-in-law after serving a six-month prison term at hard labor for
forgery in his native land. He emigrated from Sweden illegally, and
changed his name to Gustave Anjou. He later fabricated an elaborate
genealogy for himself. During the 1920s, he marketed himself as a
professional genealogist, invented a Ph.D. for himself and imagined he had
been on sixty foreign trips for the purposes of research. He charged
$9,000 at first for his work, but later came down to $250 when the market
proved to be a bit small at that price range. His clientele was
well-heeled and credulous and, alas, his forgeries have continued to
reverberate down the years. Anderson describes his modus operandi as
following four basic rules:
1. A dazzling range of connections between dozens of immigrants to New
England;...
2. Many wild geographical leaps outside the normal range of migration patterns;
3. An overwhelming number of citations to documents that actually exist,
and actually include what Anjou says they include; and
4. Here and there an invented document, without citation, which appears to
support the many connections noted under item 1 above.
(The above list is copyright 1991 by Richard Charles Anderson)
Anjou's concoction of Richard Church of Hartford's English origins follows
these rules perfectly:
1. Richard Church of Hartford was married to Anne Marsh, daughter of
Edward Marsh, an emigrant from Braintree in Essex, a prominent man of
early Connecticut;
2. He moved from London, where he was well-established as a merchant
tailor, to Braintree in Essex, a comparative backwater;
3. Anjou cites a staggeringly wide range of documents, including some
which were serendipitiously destroyed and could no longer be verified
except in digest or index form, and
4.cites parish records for Braintree in Essex for a period prior to the
time they exist.
In 1952, Donald L. Jacobus and Edgar F. Waterman published Hale, House and
Related Families Mainly Of The Connecticut River Valley. In there,
commenting on Charles Washburn Church's genealogy, their verdict is short
and to the point:
These particulars were purveyed to the author of the book by an English
genealogist... There are discrepances and extreme improbabilities in the
ancestral line, and the date of birth assigned to Richard would make him
but seventeen at marriage. (p. 492)
Needless to say, almost any research Anjou made is completely worthless.
He did publish a legitimate book on county records in New York in 1909,
but everything after that was a lie. As far as I can tell, everything in
Alice Church's genealogy is legitimate except some references to Richard
Church, i.e., the descendants of Richard Church are verifiable.
RICHARD CHURCH OF HARTFORD
Richard Church. Born in England about 1600, died at Hadley, Hampshire Co.,
MA, 16 Dec 1667. Married in England Anne _____, born about 1600, died at
Hatfield, Hampshire Co., MA, 10 Mar
1683/4.
Children:
1.Edward. Born in England about 1628, died at Hatfield, Hampshire Co.,
MA, 19 Sep 1704. Married abt 1653 Mary (Hopkins?), died at Hatfield,
Hampshire Co., MA, 30 Sep 1690 or 17 Sep 1691.
2.Mary. Born in England, died 1694/5. Married Isaac Graves, d. 19 Sep 1677.
3.John. Born about 1636, buried at Hartford, Hartford Co., CT, 16 Oct
1691. Married 27 Oct 1657, Sarah Beckley.
4.Samuel. Born about 1638, died at Hadley, Hampshire Co., MA, 13 Apr
1684. Married Mary Churchill, born at Wethersfield, Hartford Co., CT, 24
Mar 1639/40, died 1690.
| Il se faut reserver une arriere boutique toute notre. - Montaigne |
| Richard Lesses mailto:rwle...@tiac.net |
| Check my genealogy page at: http://www.tiac.net/users/rwlesses |