TheGenealogist has just significantly boosted the number of records in its Peerage, Gentry and Royalty collection.
While most family history researchers believe that their forebears were simply ordinary folk, it turns out that many of us can find a link to a family that has a published pedigree. For example, look at how celebrities Danny Dyer and Josh Widdecombe discovered their royal and aristocratic ancestors in episodes of the Who Do You Think You Are? UK TV series.
Event if your relationship to the upper levels of society may be as a result of an illegitimate line, nonetheless a link to an ancestor that features in a pedigree is of huge help in tracing back many generations because much of the work has been done for you by the compilers of the records.
‘Heraldic Visitations’, one of the record types included in this release, were tours of inspection undertaken by Kings of Arms throughout England, Wales and Ireland. Their purpose was to register and regulate the coats of arms of nobility, gentry and boroughs, and to record pedigrees. A number of later books, while they can not precisely be described as Heralds Visitations, provide similar information and can likewise help the researcher to populate their family tree back through the ages and are also in this record release.
This latest release covers the following searchable book records:
- Armorial Families, Arms Authorized by The Laws of Heraldry 1863,
- Boyle’s court guide 1888,
- Burke’s Handbook to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire 1921,
- Burke’s Landed Gentry Volume 1886,
- Debretts House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1887,
- Encyclopedia of Heraldry or General Armory of England Scotland and Ireland 1844,
- Genealogica Bedfordienses Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700,
- Grantees of Arms to The End of The XVII Century,
- Herefordshire Visitation Of 1569,
- His Majesty the King 1910-1935,
- Imperial British Calendar 1823, #
- Index Nominum to the Royalist Composition Papers,
- Kelly’s Handbook To The Titled Landed and Official Classes 1909,
- Landed Gentry of Bedfordshire 1538-1700,
- Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica – Third Series Vol IIIV,
- Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica – Third Series Vol IV,
- Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica Fourth Series Vol II 1908,
- Nottingham Visitation 1569 and 1614, Short View of the
- Peerage of Ireland 1759,
- Standing Council of the Baronetage Official Roll of the Baronets 1929,
- Suffolk Visitations of 1561 1577 1612, Sussex Visitations 1530 and 1633-4,
- The Pedigree Register for London 1907-1915,
- The Peerage of Ireland 1754,
- The Royal Kalendar 1786,
- The Royal Kalendar 1788,
- The Royal Kalendar 1796,
- The Royal Kalendar 1804,
- The Royal Kalendar 1820,
- Webster’s Royal Red Book Court and Fashionable Register January 1915,
- Worcestershire Visitation 1569
