Texas Living Columnist Lloyd Bockstruck

04:04 PM CDT on Saturday, July 30, 2005

Within a hundred years of the close of the Revolutionary War, American society had produced its share of scientists, authors, artists and politicians. The nation had come of age.

The level of education had risen remarkably since the Colonial period, and leisure time gave rise to all aspects of creativity. For genealogists, that included a keen interest in the descent from medieval kings to modern Americans. Such authors as Charles H. Browning, John S. Wurts and Marcellus D.R. von Redlich compiled works of varying quality. Some of these adopted a critical eye toward sources, akin to the scholarship adopted for our universities and colleges from the German educational model. Others (notably Mr. Browning and Mr. Wurts) were not scholars, and their pedigree inaccuracies continue to haunt researchers on the World Wide Web.

Whether the descent was from a medieval monarch or a baron who forced King John to acknowledge the Magna Carta, the interest was there. Most recently, Douglas Richardson has continued to build on the studies of past researchers. Last year, he produced Plantagenet Ancestry (Genealogical Publishing Co., $85). His newest work, Magna Carta Ancestry (Genealogical Publishing Co., $100), sets forth the descent of more than 200 colonists from the Magna Carta barons of 1215. With hundreds of biographical summaries, more than 28,000 citations and an index of 18,000 entries, this 1,135-page tome features many new discoveries.

This volume is the second in his series, with future ones to focus on the descendants of Charlemagne and on early feudal English barons. Mr. Richardson selected colonists from the published literature available. He is guarded, for example, in linking Essex Beville of Henrico County, Va., and Thomas Booth of Gloucester County, Va., with people of the same name in England.

Mr. Richardson includes the references for his findings so others can weigh the evidence and evaluate his work. In the case of Mr. Booth, the tombstone contemporary with his death bears the arms of the Booth family of Dunham-Massey. Since this stone was erected in 1720, when Americans were informed about the legal rights for bearing coat armor, the case is convincing when weighed with all of the other evidence.

What Mr. Richardson has done is to include ancestors who came to New Spain and New France. That body of literature is not in British North America. Whereas the English scheme of nobility ensured their survival with the eldest male heir inheriting the title and estate, continental Europeans extended nobility to all offspring. Nevertheless, there are such gateway ancestors in those colonies as well.

Copies of Magna Carta Ancestry are available for $100 plus $4 handling from Genealogical Publishing Co., 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 260, Baltimore, MD 21211, or by calling 1-800-296-6687.

Lloyd Bockstruck supervises the genealogy section of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in Dallas. Address questions to Family Tree, Texas Living section, The Dallas Morning News, P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265.

E-mail texasliving@dallasnews.com