Pedigree differences between Heralds Visitation and Richardson's Ancestry

Question

I have a copy of Dr. Burton's MS Pedigree for the Thorpe Family of Thorpe Garth/Welwick which states that the Stephen Thorpe Esq who married Isabel Constable is the son of Stephen Thorpe and Rebecca Eyre and not Joan Eyre, in addition, the latter Stephen's father is Robert Thorpe and not Stephen. If someone knows why Richardson's pedigree is different is it possible to please share the reasoning why on the profile etc. The current profile does not link back to the St. Quintin family as it should be based on other pedigrees and research. Thanks again for any help on these issues.

Comments

Thank you to all who commented below. I do not have access to Richardson, as I cannot afford his books at this point in time. So, like many, I see him cited as a source and 99% of the time there are no issues and I am ok with the information on the profile. I took a look at the references suggested by C Handy and yes, it is correct, however, the profile for Thorpe - 199 is missing a generation. I started researching the Thorpe line from Margaret Thorpe who married John Newton of Burstwick. Her father is Stephen Thorpe Esq, her mother is Isabel Constable as his second wife, his first wife is Joan Eyre (no children born from his marriage with Joan), which is correct in Burke's Commoner’s, but it is documenting the Eyre pedigree, not the Thorpe pedigree. From Burke, the Eyre generation prior to Joan states a John Eyre who dies without a legitimate heir, so I think Rebecca Eyre (as cited by Dr. Burton) is a base daughter of John Eyre (his father is Robert Eyre who acquired Padley by marriage to Joanna Padley daughter of Robert Padley Esq) who married Stephen Thorpe (d. circa 1475) and is Stephen Thorpe Esq (Thorpe - 199), mother. With all of this confusion, I think that the profiles linked to the parents of Thorpe -199 may need to be reviewed. As it may be his actual mother was Rebecca Eyre the illegitimate daughter of John Eyre of Padley, County Durham. In addition, there is also confusion about who the father is of Thorpe-200, Richardson states his father is Stephen Thorpe, but in both Dr. Burton's and the other visitations, this Stephen Thorpe was a Vicar in Welwick, and no marriage or children are documented. It is his older brother Robert who is Stephen's father (Thorpe-200). This also needs to be checked. So, I am still confused as to what to do regarding the Thorpe Pedigree. Without access to Richardson's materials, I cannot agree or disagree with what is posted on either Thorpe - 199 or Thorpe - 200.  I am pre-1700 certified however not pre-1500. Do I need to reach out to the profile manager or the pre-1500 managers to raise these issues?

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It's always best to talk to an active PM first.

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Profile managers should be alerted to g2g posts attached to profiles they manage.

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Thanks again, and yes I left a message on the profile page and emailed the manager, also I think it is important to have what Richardson says posted on the profile, I can send the information I have from Dr. Burton MS Pedigree chart and post that to the profile, but need access. Like I said I am pre-1700 certified but not pre-1500.

All I would like to see is what Richardson says, so it can be debated and then go from there. I try really hard to fact check each piece of evidence with more than one source (I am a scientist and in science we cannot use just one source or publication to support an hypothesis) Although given the time period we are limited to sources and access to them.

Stephen Thorpe (Thorpe -199) is my 16x great-grandfather as I am a direct descendant, so I guess that is one reason I am being so passionate about the major differences in information. Any help or others willing to help work on this profile is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It's a common problem. Richardson is cited on so many profiles and is not available in UK short of buying copies, but no one ever reveals what he says.

Comments

It's pretty disturbing how much Douglas Richardson has done to put genealogy back on a firm historical footing, only to have his name and reputation hijacked by people on Wikitree and elsewhere to spread bogus nonsense.

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It's worth remembering as well that Richardson is not infallible (as has been repeatedly demonstrated in discussions on soc.gen.med).  For what it's worth, I think he *is* a conscientous scholar who gets it right most of the time - as long as he's not on one of his hobby horses - but he has a bad habit in all of his publications of providing a bulk dump of sources at the end of an entry rather than identifying the specific source for each of his claims.

tl;dr: Richardson's works are more reliable than a visitation pedigree, but shouldn't necessarily be taken as gospel.

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Nobody's infallible, but there is a disturbing and very common thing on wikitree where people copy some junk off of some website that says it uses Richardson as a reference, but when you check the reference, it turns out that it doesn't even resemble what Richardson said. False attribution is worse than plagiarism.

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I agree with C that it can be a problem if, as  very often happens,  Richardson is cited without any detail.This is obviously most important in cases where he suggests an alternative to a visitation or some other pedigree.

 As C says there is little or no access to his books in the UK. (e.g. one copy of Plantagenet Ancestry at the University of Cambridge compared with 27 pages of libraries holding copies in the US.)

I have to say, that a recent experience suggested falibility and an overeliance upon one visitation. He apparently wrote that  a vague 'Throckmorton' was  husband to a daughter of the Browne family . This came straight from the Sussex visitation, presumably with submitted to the Herald by a much younger nephew. I doubt Richardson was overly interested in her. However,  the Dorset Visitation gave her correct husband a Tregonwell(starts with the same letter,the lady was  far from home , the informant had many aunts and uncles). Fortunately the correct husband could be confirmed by her will, the parish register, land records in the local archives which I was lead to by a sourced pedigree compiled 100 years later by the local 'county historian'

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I have seen some mistakes in the Magna Carta books, but his s.g.m posts oddly seem to be more reliable. The problem with any large compendium like that is that it's impossible to give everything the appropriate level of attention, and with anything from that period, every individual is a multi-hour project.

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Well, a few individuals may be a "multi hour" problem ... but those few are the EASY ones with "any" problem.

Most problems these days have become multi-DECADE problems. See soc.gen.medieval.

For my *serious* "problem" cases, Richardson has been very conscientious in my correspondence with him. For the most important case, absolute proof is still lacking after many decades.

Answer 2

Burke's Commoners (1838 edition) names her as Johanna (Joan), not Rebecca. "Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire", 1877, names her as Joan. Heralds' visitations were conducted by heralds from the College of Arms going to the various shires and interviewing persons entitled to arms, who reported their pedigree, which was recorded and entered. It is not uncommon to encounter some errors in pedigrees from visitations (this looks to be a case of someone being mistaken in the name of a great-great-grandmother or 3rd great-grandmother).

Answer 3

Looking at Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire Page 450 it says "These five generations are very uncertain and quite different in Poulson's "Holderness". This suggests that these Thorpe profiles need rather more attention than usual, all the contradictory evidence should be on the profile so that it can be discussed. (Sorry I didn't provide a link. Someone told me how to paste here but I forgot to make a note).

Answer 4

I would tend to trust Richardson versus a Visitation record.  As I noted in the biography of Jakemenkaie de Browne (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Browne-2), the Visitation of Devonshire was clearly wrong in making her the mother of John and Francis Martin.  

Comments

Is it really our business to chose one source over another? Should not everything that is found be entered on profiles? Debate should follow but that is not possible unless what Richardson had to say is mentioned somewhere. It is not good enough to say what you can see is something but someone's highly regarded work which you cannot see says different and we have to go with that. If Wikitree is really serious then I hope we are aiming for the day when secondary sourcing is a thing of the past, but it won't be in my lifetime.

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Oh yes,  I definitely agree that all sources should be listed and the conflicts noted and debated.  But a Visitation is a one time document where the errors don't get corrected (as in the case I mentioned with Jakemenkaie de Browne).

 Richardson on the other hand has a long history of correcting his errors, so that is why I would tend to trust him more than a Visitation that says something different.

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Yes it clearly is our business because wikitree should only show one pedigree and we need to choose which one. Although the alternative should certainly be described on the profile as well.

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Is it incumbent on us to show any pedigree at all if the information isn't conclusive? If Richardson's argument is conclusive then please, please tell us what the argument is. Almost all the profiles that cite Richardson just name the book and the page. Sad that good work on English profiles is not available to English researchers. If I cite Ancestry I try to say what the primary sources there say. If I cite ODNB the same applies. People who cite Richardson don't seem to think it's necessary.

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The fact remains, wikitree is currently publishing a genealogy which is contested. There are three options:

a) Stick with the current one, explaining the alternative in the narrative

b) Switch to the alternative, explaining the other in the narrative.

c) Merge all uncertain profiles into the latest conclusive profile and add to the commentary.

I suspect the last option (which your logic would lead us to) would have very little support.

I honestly don't understand why you are finding this such a difficult concept to grasp. This is a wiki, a pando. Collectively we need to come to a judgement and then apply that judgement.

If your test is for things to be "conclusive" then you're going to be unable to conclude on a lot of things. Genealogy is about sources and evidence, some of which is persuasive and some of which is tentative.We should go with the the genealogy that we are reasonable sure about.

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I think it's pretty important to point out that Richardson isn't the source for this profile, the source is Marlyn Lewis, and someone used Marlyn Lewis' Richardson citations second hand. I've run into this dozens of times on Wikitree, and Lewis is not reliable. He regularly misrepresented Richardson as the authority for a lot of junk pedigrees scraped off the internet. Usually what you find is that Richardson just has the name and maybe an IPM date, and then Lewis added in a bunch of "estimated" vital statistics that he attributed to Richardson but aren't claimed or supported in Richardson. I don't know if that's what happened here, but I've seen it so many times that I would not trust that Douglas Richardson is the real source for anything in it.

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As if happens, I got lucky with the the google books preview lottery, and DRs sources on MCA 2nd p 259 are Flowers Visitation, Hunter's Familiae Minorum Gentium 2, pp. 549-554, Harvey's North 3, p. 142, and NEHGR 111, pp. 195-200, and 114, pp. 217-227
At least in this entry, he has the Joan Eyre marriage year estimate, her parents, son Stephen, four daughters, death about 1475, but no BY estimate.

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You can see the contrast between Richardson and Lewis here. Richardson says nothing about his birth, since there's no evidence for it, but Lewis just blithely says "born circa 1410 at of Danthorpe, Yorkshire, England," as if there's no possibility he was born anywhere else. Lewis probably just knocked 24 years off the marriage date to get the BY, but who knows? Lewis footnotes MCA 1st ed p. 623as the source for it, but it's curious that the BY estimate vanished from the 2nd ed.

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Excellent comments Ben - thank you. They describe one of my pet peeves, which is that Lewis's style for putting footnotes at the end of a phrase or sentence results in facts being attributed to Richardson when those facts are not stated by Richardson. One of the Magna Carta Project's maintenance categories was created primarily for the need to check Lewis citations of Richardson information (Needs Source Check). Lewis is brilliant for uncovering nearly every time Richardson mentions someone, but sometimes the only "fact" that's being cited to Richardson is the name.

Thanks also to Kenneth, Andrew, C. & others for the discussion about the reliability of Visitations. The Magna Carta Project's Reliable Sources page has an entry about Visitations under "Reliable Sources with Conditions" (Lewis & Burke's are listed in that section also).

Cheers, Liz

Answer 5

I want to support the suggestion that ALL sources be listed. When we write research papers for publication, we list the pros and cons in our background section (or should). Same here. List all resources. If there are discrepancies, indicate them in the Biography. This saves other genealogists much frustration when they come across a profile with differing information and changes are made based on their findings. We should all be doing this (and I am trying to heed my own advice as I learn more about how wiki works). This also helps reduce the CAT work, and so forth. It´s not really about whose better or worse. We are all fallible and must try our best. We are all in this together. The details are important to the profile and for all of us. Thanks, Carol (Baldwin-3428)

Comments

Spot on Carol! Does anyone familiar with the work of Mr Richardson  happen to know if he has an interest in the early heraldic visitations of Wales.

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Anne - I think "not so much" would be the answer. Richardson includes some Welsh lines, but not many.

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Thanks Liz, I just hoped he might have addressed some of the conundrums posed by the work of the 16th century heralds in the land of my fathers.