The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants to the American Colonies, Quebec, or the United States Who Were Themselves Notable or Left Descendants Notable in American History. SECOND EDITION. In Three Volumes

Description

Most Americans with sizable New England Yankee, mid-Atlantic Quaker, or Southern “planter” ancestry are descended from medieval kings–kings of England, Scotland, and France especially. This book tells you how. Outlined on 1,084 pages of charts are the best royal descents–i.e., from the most recent king–of 900 (actually 993) immigrants to the American colonies, Quebec, or the United States who were themselves notable or left descendants notable in American history. These three volumes are a considerable expansion on previous books on this subject, even the author’s own 1993, 2004-10, and 2018 works named above. To the 2018 edition this work adds over 23 new immigrants; changes (usually improving the lines) a dozen more, including several French Canadians; adds various British and Continental items of interest, and includes all new royal descents known to the author through mid-2022.

This new RD 900, is also an enormous distillation undertaken over a period of more than 50 years, of virtually all printed sources that lead to these royal lines. A survey of this size has never before been attempted. The result is a book that quantitatively and qualitatively redefines this area of genealogical research and outlines–definitively to date–American genealogical links to medieval kings and their “dark age” forebears.

By far the most comprehensive treatment of the subject in print, this new Second Edition does not supersede such works as Weis’s Ancestral Roots and Magna Charta Sureties; Plantagenet Ancestry, Magna Carta Ancestry, or the five-volume 2013 Royal Ancestry by Douglas Richardson; The Complete Peerage; or the Europäische Stammtafeln series. Rather, RD 900 builds on and outlines the “best” royal descents from these and similar works, providing a bibliography for each immigrant and ready means of access to royal descent literature.

This new RD 900 is basically the 2018 edition plus the research of five more years (mid-2017 through mid-2022) plus the addition of many cross references to later lines, new discoveries of surprising British or Continental cousins, new sources, detailed Internet research, and of course, many corrections of typographical or other errors. Several colleagues also developed new descents that might not otherwise have been published.

Of the 993 immigrants treated in this work, 501 came to the American colonies and left descendants, in some cases now numbering several million, but almost always many thousands. Among the progeny of each of the 501 is at least one figure in the Dictionary of American Biography, American National Biography, or similar works covering 20,000-or-more important people in American history. The remaining immigrants (colonial governors or other officials, “Great Awakening” or Revolutionary figures who often returned to Europe, and many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century notables) collectively suggest much about distant kinships of living Americans; the total contributions to American life of persons of noble, royal, and gentle ancestry; and genealogical connections between Americans and many major leaders in world history.

How Royal Progeny Came to America

The 993 immigrants and their millions of descendants share royal ancestry because of a pattern of social evolution common to most Western European nations. Younger sons or daughters of kings become or marry nobles. Younger sons or daughters of the nobility become or marry “gentry”—knights, manorial lords, gentlemen with coats-of-arms, baronets, lairds, and seigneurs. Younger sons or daughters of the gentry become or marry merchants, clergymen, Puritan or Huguenot leaders, university fellows, bureaucrats, or professional soldiers. Members of these last groups, or their younger sons and daughters, immigrate to the American colonies, Quebec, and later the United States.