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From: William Addams Reitwiesner <>
Subject: Frequently Asked Questions for soc.genealogy.medieval
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:12:54 GMT


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 newsgroup 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 William Addams Reitwiesner ().
Contributions by:
Pat Boren, Todd Farmerie, Bill Lemay, William Addams Reitwiesner, Don
Stone

Copyright:

Copyright (c) 1997 by William Addams Reitwiesner. 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 William Addams Reitwiesner, .

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

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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. Can I be descended from Charlemagne or William the Conqueror?
8. Who were the parents of X?
9. Can we discuss Biblical lines here?
10. Why do mythical people pop up here?
11. Glossary & Common Abbreviations

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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 and are
interested
in genealogy in the medieval period are are welcome to participate.

Scope of the Group

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, e.g., royal or noble genealogy in earlier or
later time periods. A related newsgroup is alt.talk.royalty.

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
* reviews and correction of published works.

Inappropriate Topics and Posts:
* Postings of a general historical or cultural nature which are completely
unrelated to medieval genealogy are not appropriate here. For discussions
of a non-genealogical nature, try instead soc.history.medieval.
* 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. In other words, "Lurk before you
leap."

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2. GEN-MEDIEVAL

* 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.

* How do I 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 include name.

* How do I 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.

* How do I 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.

* How do I 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 MAIL

* 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.

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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 Basic Newsgroup and Mailing List "Netiquette" for
further details. It is posted periodically to soc.genealogy.medieval.

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

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

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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. We do not vouch for their
contents. Their URLs:
* Descendants of Charlemagne
http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/chl-enter.html
* German Nobility Database
http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de//html/ww-person.html
* Royal Family Genealogy
http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/public/genealogy/royal
* Royal Genealogies
http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/royalgen.html
* Medieval Pommeranians 1503-1588
http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/parcham.html
* Ancestors of King Edward III of England and Phillipa of Hainault
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/edw3chrt.html
* Brigitte's Royal and Nobility Genealogy
http://www.genealogy.com/brigitte/index.html
* Glossary of Royal/Noble Titles
http://128.220.1.164/heraldry/topics/odegard/titlefaq.htm
* Lacy/de Lacy Pedigree
http://www2.cy-net.net/~lacey/
* Genealogy of Homer Beers James
http://www.tiac.net/users/pmcbride/genweb.html#james
* Medieval Ancestors of Paul McBride
http://www.tiac.net/users/pmcbride/rfc/toc.htm
* Monarchs of England and Great Britain
http://www.ingress.com/~gail/
* NetSERF: The Internet Connections for Medieval Resources
http://www.cua.edu/www/hist/netserf/home.htm
* Swedish Queens
http://www.luth.se/luth/present/sweden/history/queens/
* Translation of Icelandic Sagas
ftp://UKANAIX.CC.UKANS.EDU/pub/history/Europe/Medieval/translations

Some general genealogical pages have links to medieval compilations such as the
above, including:
* RAND Genealogy Club
http://www.rand.org/personal/Genea
* ROOTS-L Resources: Royalty
http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/royalty.html

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5. How do I start tracing medieval ancestors?

To trace genealogical connections, step by step, generation by generation, for
a
thousand years or more is not a trivial task.

For those of you with ancestors in 17th-century America: a quick look for
immigrant ancestors with noble or royal ancestry is often the fastest way to
acquire a long pedigree. Three books provide a good starting point:
* Faris, David. Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth- Century Colonists.
1996.
* Roberts, Gary Boyd. The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American
Colonies or the U.S. 1993. Note the additions and corrections given in
NEXUS (NEHGS), May-Aug. 1996, vol. 13, pp. 124-130.
* Weis/Sheppard/Faris. Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists. 1992.

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.

The books in the first group above and most of the books or articles referenced
in the indices in the second group above are *secondary* sources that give the
author's opinion of what he found in *primary* sources, which include:
* Legal primary documents:
o charters
o grants
o patents
o wills
o deeds
o contracts
o petitions
* And other primary sources:
o diaries
o letters
o annals of monasteries and abbeys
o contemporary narratives.

You may want to draw your own conclusions by studying the primary sources first
hand, which is recommended because none 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.

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

In The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, Roberts includes almost 350 colonial
American immigrants with royal ancestry. These immigrants (pp. xiv, ff.):

"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?]

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7. 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 descendants 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." Note, however, that the
majority of descents from medieval English monarchs are legitimate, not
illegitimate.

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.

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8. 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.

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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.

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

There are several reasons for this. One is that many pedigrees have been
created
showing the descent of royalty from important people, including mythical gods
and goddesses. Another is the tendency over time to amplify the accomplishments
of a real historical person, producing a semi-mythical figure. Maybe Wodin,
King
Arthur, et al., aren't completely imaginary.

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

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11. Glossary & Common Abbreviations

Also see Glossary of Royal/Noble Titles
http://128.220.1.164/heraldry/topics/odegard/titlefaq.htm

Definitions:
royalty
the rulers (princes) and their near families.
nobility
families of high and hereditary rank. Often descended 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.

Abbreviations:
* sp == Latin, "sine prole," without issue, or French, "sans posterite"
* dsp == "died sp"
* osp == Latin, "obit sine prole," died without issue.
* vp == Latin, "vita patris," life of the father
* dvp == "died vp," died before his (or her) father
* ipm == "inquisition post mortem," performed when anyone holding land
directly under the king (or land under a minor, who held under the king)
died. Its purpose was to determine what land was held, who the heir was,
and whether that heir was a minor to ensure that the king derived the
various benefits available from guardianship. It is useful in providing
death dates (sometimes precise, sometimes approximate like older than 21
or 40 years), who was in possession of land at a specific date, who the
deceased was holding his land under, and who was holding under the
deceased.

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soc.genealogy.medieval FAQ / April 1997 /

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