Anyone working with Dictionnaire de la noblesse, and willing to connect de Fiennes ancestry? [closed]

Question

One of the ancestors of a German immigrant line to Iowa that I work on is Charles de Fiennes. Currently, he is sourced only to FindAGrave which is insufficient. However, FindAGrave gives tome 8 of Dictionnaire de la noblesse of 1783 as a source (which is viewable online via GoogleBooks). The line on FindAGrave goes all the way to Eustace de Fiennes who also has a WikiTree profile. Anyone interested and able to work on connecting those?

Connected question: Is the cited 1783 source reliable according to WT standards?

Also: I cannot get involved myself as I don’t have pre-1500 certification (application still pending).

Answer 1

Hi Oliver
I think such generic secondary sources as the Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, that don't usually cite primary sources are not suitable as sources for Pre-1500 profiles.

Charles Cawley's Medieval Lands database  which is considered more reliable does have a section about the Seigneurs de Fiennes but for that branch of the family that became the du Bois family, he is relying solely on Pere 
Anselme's Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison Royale de France, and the Pre-1500 Resource Page does list this but has a note that it should be used with caution.  Anselme's Genealogie of the Fiennes family is in volume 6, starting on p. 167.

Although the Charles de Fiennes is mentioned on p. 174, (though I suspect his birth date is before 1500, his parents were apparently married in 1480) there is no other information about his son Antoine de Fiennes, other than he was Seigneur de Vermeille, which makes the fact that he is listed on WikiTree with a wife and son, somewhat suspect.

Overall, I think we need better sources before adding the connection of Charles de Fiennes back to the earlier Fiennes family, and better sources for the Fiennes or du Bois genealogy after Charles.

Comments

Thank you, John!

That is exactly the answer that I needed. So I also concur with Darlene that it is the best answer :)

It remains my hope that better sources will be(come) available so that a Fiennes-enthusiast with pre-1500 certification will be able to provide the needful.