GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

From: Pat Boren <>
Subject: FAQ: Monthly Posting for soc.genealogy.medieval
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 17:19:28 -0700

Frequently Asked Questions for soc.genealogy.medieval
-----------------------------------------------------

Summary
~~~~~~~

This regular posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) and their answers about medieval genealogy. It should be
read by anyone who wishes to post to the soc.genealogy.medieval or
to the associated mailing list GEN-MEDIEVAL.

If you have any comments or additions, or would like to suggest
further topics to be included, then please contact Pat Boren
().

Contributions by:
Pat Boren, Don Stone, Todd Farmerie, Bill Lemay, William
Addams Reitwiesner

Copyright
~~~~~~~~~

Copyright (c) 1995 by Pat Boren. All rights reserved.

This document may be freely redistributed in its entirety without
modification provided that this copyright notice is not removed. It may
not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial documents (e.g.
published for sale on CD-ROM, floppy disks, books, magazines or other
print form) without the prior written permission of the copyright
holder. Permission is expressly granted for this document to be made
available for file transfer from installations offering unrestricted
anonymous file transfer on the Internet.

If this document is incorporated in a commercial document, a
complimentary copy should be sent to Patricia Boren ().

This document is provided AS IS without any express or implied warranty.

Questions Discussed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. What is soc.genealogy.medieval?
2. How do I subscribe to GEN-MEDIEVAL?
3. Basic newsgroup and mailing list "Netiquette"
4. Are there on-line sources of information?
5. How do I start tracing medieval ancestors?
6. What are the chances that I have royal ancestry?
7. Who were the parents of X?
8. Can I be descended from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror?
9. Can we discuss Biblical lines here?
10. Why do mythical people pop up here?
11. Glossary

1. What is soc.genealogy.medieval?
******************************

soc.genealogy.medieval is an unmoderated newsgroup for the
discussion of genealogy and family history among people
researching individuals who lived in medieval times. The
primary focus of the group is likely to be on Europe and
neighboring regions, but postings about genealogy in other
areas during this time period are welcomed.

The mailing list associated with the soc.genealogy.medieval
newsgroup is GEN-MEDIEVAL. The newsgroup and mailing list are
gated, i.e., all email sent to the mailing list also appears as
a posting in the newsgroup, and all postings in the newsgroup
(except those that originated with the mailing list) are emailed
to the mailing list. See question 2 for information about
subscribing to the mailing list.

All who have access to soc.genealogy.medieval or GEN-MEDIEVAL
are welcome to participate.

Scope of the medieval time period
*********************************

The medieval period is loosely defined for the purposes of this
group as the period extending from the breakup of the (Western)
Roman Empire until the time public records (such as church,
tax, and census records) relating to the general population
began to be kept. This period would extend roughly from AD 500
to AD 1600, but these limits are not intended to exclude
related topics of discussion lying outside of these boundaries.

The scope of the group reflects the different nature of
genealogical research in the medieval period. Vital records
and census records are not available for this period, and the
researcher must rely instead on records of inheritance of
property or tenancy, heraldic visitations, monastic charters,
chronicles, onomastic evidence, and even numismatic evidence.
The group is intended to address all these various facets.

The group is open to anyone with an interest in genealogy in
the time period in question, including, but not limited to:
royal and noble descents, origins of American colonists, feudal
descent of property, value of pre-historical sources (such as
sagas), adoption of surnames and insignia by families, source
availability and reliability, and reviews and correction of
published works.

Inappropriate topics and posts
******************************

While the group is open to discussions of genealogical topics
falling outside the boundaries of the medieval period, such as
the genealogy of modern nobility and genealogical links to
antiquity, it is not the place for postings of a general
historical or cultural nature which are completely unrelated to
genealogy. Historical non-genealogical topics are more
appropriate to the soc.culture newsgroups.

Advertising or selling of a product or service is not in
general regarded as acceptable. The announcement of a product
or service and its cost is acceptable.

We highly recommend "lurking"--reading messages without posting
anything--for a bit so you can get an idea of how people
typically phrase their postings and how to formulate good
questions or comments.

2. How do I subscribe to GEN-MEDIEVAL?
**********************************

You may subscribe to the GEN-MEDIEVAL mailing list by sending
an email message to with the following
one line as the only text of the message:

SUBSCRIBE GEN-MEDIEVAL first_name last_name

Do NOT include any other text such as a sig file. If you do,
the LISTSERV software will attempt to read it as a series of
commands and probably send you a message or messages saying it
cannot understand you.

To Unsubscribe to GEN-MEDIEVAL
******************************

You may leave the GEN-MEDIEVAL mailing list at any time by
sending the following message to :

SIGNOFF GEN-MEDIEVAL

No name is needed. In fact, it will not work if you put your
name.

To get copies of past messages
******************************

If you think you have missed an important GEN-MEDIEVAL message,
you can get a copy of all the messages for a particular week.
You can do this by sending an email message to
with the following line as the text of
the message:

GET GEN-MEDIEVAL LOGyymmw

Where
yy is the last two digits of the year.
mm is the month
w is the week letter.

For example LOG9506A will provide a copy of all the messages
handled by the GEN-MEDIEVAL list for the first week of June
1995.

To get the messages as a digest
*******************************

If you would prefer to get the messages from GEN-MEDIEVAL as a
single digest, or 'super-message' containing all the messages
for that 24-hour period, send an email message to
with the following line as the text of
the message:

SET GEN-MEDIEVAL DIGEST

Some email readers have the ability to read a digest and to
break it down into separate messages for you to read.

To get the messages as separate messages
****************************************

If you would prefer to get the messages from GEN-MEDIEVAL as
separate messages, send an email message to
with the following line as the text of
the message:

SET GEN-MEDIEVAL

I keep getting 'unknown address.' What can I do?
*************************************************

From time to time, you may find that when you try to send
a reply to a GEN-MEDIEVAL message, the message gets returned by
your name server with the reason 'unknown address.' There is a
good chance that the mail.eworld.com machine will know the
address. To send your message via this machine (NOT VIA
), you will have to modify the
address you are using.

For example, suppose that the 'bad' address was:



To send your message via mail.eworld.com, change the
'@' to a '%' and add the @mail.eworld.com to the end:

user_name%

This means that you want to use the nameserver of
mail.eworld.com instead of your local nameserver.

3. Basic newsgroup and mailing list "Netiquette"
*********************************************

The netiquette for all newgroups in the soc.genealogy
hierarchy is the same. We recommend you read the FAQ for
soc.genealogy.misc for further details. It may be found at
the newsgroup or the URL below:

http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/soc.genealogy.misc.html

Rules we wish to emphasize or are unique for medieval posts:

1. Always include a descriptive subject line in your message.
Make sure it describes the main point of your message.
Remember that many readers use the subject line to decide
if they should read your message or not. "Need help" or
"Genealogy" are not good subject lines.

Also, if the focus of the discussion has changed from
when the thread began, please modify the subject line to
indicate this.

2. Please put *entire* names in UPPERCASE in the Subject line
and throughout your message. Many medieval people had no
surnames or went by nicknames. Seeing a name like
IVAR THE BONELESS in caps helps readers quickly determine
which messages are of interest to them.

3. Please keep the lines of your messages to under 70 characters.
Long lines will overflow when quoted by others and become
very difficult to read.

4. Posts may be in any language but will probably be understood
by the largest audience if in English. All posters are
encouraged to provide references for genealogical
information presented, and to present lineages in as
condensed a format as will still convey the necessary
information.

4. Are there on-line sources of information?
*****************************************

If you are using the World Wide Web (aka WWW, W3, Mosaic,
Netscape, Lynx), you can reach several pages related to
medieval lineages. Their URLs:

Descendants of Charlemagne
http://faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/chl-enter.html
30,000 German nobles
http://faui80.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/ww-person.html
GEDCOM to WWW Royalty Experiment
http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/public/genealogy/GEDCOM.html
Queen Victoria's lineage
http://www.vest.sdata.no/cgi-bin/ll-gw/BASE=royal92/
Index=I1?LookupInternal

We do not vouch for their contents.

5. How do I start tracing medieval ancestors?
*****************************************

To trace genealogical connections, step by step, generation by
generation, for a thousand years is not a trivial task. For
those of you with ancestors in the U.S. in the 17th century, a
quick look for immigrant ancestors is often the fastest way to
make a connection. Two books provide a good starting point:

Roberts, Gary Boyd: "The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to
the American Colonies of the U.S."
Weis/Sheppard/Faris: "Ancestral Roots of Certain American
Colonists"

These are well-respected *secondary* sources that give the
author's opinion of what he found in *primary* sources,
which include:

Legal primary documents:
charters
grants
patents
wills
deeds
contracts
petitions

And other primary sources:
diaries
letters
annals of monasteries and abbeys
contemporary narratives.

You may want to draw your own conclusions by studying the
primary sources first hand, which is recommended because
neither of these books (nor any other) is error-free.

Primary sources vary in quality, accuracy, and completeness,
too. So how can you determine what sources are best/most
accurate? By checking recent genealogical publications and
discussing it here in soc.genealogy.medieval. The more
you learn, the better you'll be able to draw your own
conclusions about accuracy and quality of source material.

Prepare for doing the genealogy by reading up on the history,
geography, and languages of time and place you intend to
research; what you remember (or think you remember) from school
is almost certain to be inadequate.

For those of you with ancestors in Britain (from the
medieval period up to the present), a good starting point is
the set of three indices to pedigrees in printed works and
periodicals:

Marshall, George W.: "The Genealogist's Guide," 4th ed.
(1903, repr. 1973)

Whitmore, John B: "A Genealogical Guide: An Index to
British Pedigrees in Continuation of Marshall's
Genealogist's Guide" (1953)

Barrow, Geoffrey B.: "The Genealogist's Guide: An Index to
Printed British Pedigrees and Family Histories,
1950-1975, Being a Supplement to G. W. Marshall's
Genealogist's Guide and J. B. Whitmore's
Genealogical Guide" (1977)

6. What are the chances that I have royal ancestry?
***********************************************

Roberts notes (loc. cit., p. xiv) that almost 350 colonial
immigrants

"left sizable, often huge, progenies...These 350 are a large
enough group so that living Americans with 50-100 colonial
immigrant ancestors in New England (or Long Island), in
Quaker (but not German or Scots-Irish) Pennsylvania, or in
the Tidewater South (but often not the Piedmont, Shenandoah
Valley, or mountainous 'backcountry') can expect to find a
royally descended forebear."

Of these 350 immigrants, 167 left ten or more descendants
treated in the Dictionary of American Biography. In the New
England Historic Genealogical Society newsletter NEXUS,
June-September 1994, Roberts says (p. 104) that 100 million is
very likely quite a conservative estimate of the number of
American descendants of these 167.

[Similar information is needed for other countries. Volunteers?]

7. Who were the parents of X?
*************************

The soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup does not have an official
position on any lineage. Individual participants can and do
have strong views on medieval family lines. Consider this a
forum to share and air our views and the conclusions we've each
drawn about these ancestries. We want a free flow of
information that allows each reader to take responsibility for
evaluating the information we share, pursuing the references
cited therein if appropriate.

While we all would like definite answers, the fact is that the
surviving evidence from the medieval period is sometimes very
sketchy, and, in some cases, the evidence is open to a number
of incompatible interpretations. The temptation is to consider
medieval lineages as verified because they've been around so
long. In truth, some authors have made up connections or have
made unwarranted assumptions about parentage in an attempt to
tie families to royalty or nobility. For this reason, even
long-accepted genealogies should not be taken as correct
without some investigation.

No genealogy can be "proved," but newsgroup discussion should
help you to rate lineages on a scale from very likely to very
unlikely.

By all means, if you have anything to add to any discussions,
we more than welcome you and your opinions. Don't be
intimidated by the on-line experts.

8. Can I be descended from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror?
************************************************************

If you are of European ancestry, yes, it is possible. Both
Charlemagne and William left progeny--sometimes illegitimate--
who have descendents living today.

In medieval Europe, illegitimacy had a more strictly legalistic
significance than today, relating to automatic inheritance
under either primogeniture or division of legacy. Many
illegitimate lines are well known and traced. William the
Conqueror himself was known as William the Bastard, not for his
personality but for his birth "on the wrong side of the
blanket."

Remember that "descended from" and "able to document a descent
from" do not mean the same thing. In the medieval period, most
genealogical connections went unrecorded, and in only a certain
percentage of cases do the records survive today. So, it is
possible that you may be a descendant but unable to prove it.

9. Can we discuss Biblical lines here?
**********************************

This is not the proper forum for discussing the Biblical
connections of ancient lines. They are off-topic mostly
because they're outside the medieval time period (500 AD to
1600 AD). While mention of the Biblical connections is
permissable, discussion should focus on the medieval portions
of these lines.

10. Why do mythical and semi-mythical people pop up here?
****************************************************

There are several reasons for this. One is the deliberate
attempt to show descent of royalty from important people,
including mythical gods and goddesses. Another is the
confusion between a real historical person and a legend, which
renders a semi-mythical person. Keep in mind that older
sources of information, such as the Norse and Icelandic sagas
that were written in the middle ages, may have been
embellished upon by the writer--or maybe not. Maybe Mother
Nature, Odin, and King Arthur, et al. aren't mythical afterall.

Mythical people will inevitably be discussed here--mainly to
help us understand where the myth begins and ends, but also
because myths tell us something about the people that believed
in them. They're also fun and spice up medieval genealogy.

11. Glossary
********

royalty: the rulers (princes) and their near families.

nobility: families of high and hereditary rank. Often
descendend from younger sons of kings. Often the only
families which royalty would marry into. In the English
system today, the head of a noble family is a duke,
marquess, earl, viscount, or baron.

gentry: remaining families of hereditary rank. In the English
system, the baronets and the knights.

squire: [British only] a freeman without hereditary title who
owns (rural) land, especially the most important free landowner
in a district.
--
Pat(ricia) Boren

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• FAQ: Monthly Posting for soc.genealogy.medieval by Pat Boren <>