Category: Dunham Genealogy Fraud

Categories: Frauds and Fabrications

The Dunham Genealogy by Isaac Watson Dunham (published in Hartford, Connecticut, 1907, contains a fraudulent account of the ancestry of Plymouth Colony immigrant Deacon John Dunham, Sr. The book claimed that he was from the Dunham family of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, which was traced to royalty. As discussed by Paul C. Reed in "The Fraudulent Ancestry of Deacon John Dunham of Plymouth" in The American Genealogist, vol. 73 (1998):101-104 (link points to the article on the NEHGS website), this account was fraudulent. The Dunham family of Scrooby is fictitious.

Reed opined that Isaac Watson Dunham (who was elderly at the time the book was published) probably did not invent the Scrooby ancestry, but rather suggested that it was "imposed upon him by researchers of questionable repute." He commented that the Scrooby pedigree "looks very much the sort of thing that Gustave Anjou -- then in his heyday -- would have produced." (See Category: Gustave Anjou Fraud.)

This category is a location to identify the profiles of people whose biographies or family histories have been affected by the Dunham Genealogy Fraud. "Affected" is the operative word -- listing in this category does NOT mean that the profile itself is fraudulent; hopefully it is listed because the fraudulent or fabricated information has been identified and corrected.

This page was last modified 14:19, 17 October 2017. This page has been accessed 789 times.