Lists of pedigrees in English printed works are supplied by Marshall’s Genealogist’s Guide (1903), while pedigrees in the manuscript collections of the British Museum are indexed in the list of R. Sims (1849). Valuable genealogical material will be found in such periodicals as the Genealogist, the Herald and Genealogist, the Topographer and Genealogist, Collectanea topographica et genealogica, Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica and the Ancestor. In Germany the Deutscher Herold is the organ of the Berlin Heraldic and Genealogical Society. The Nederlandsche Leeuw is a similar publication in the Low Countries.
Modern criticism of the older genealogical methods will be found in J.H. Round’s Peerage and Pedigree, 2 vols. (London, 1910), and in other volumes by the same author. The Harleian Society has published many volumes of the Herald’s Visitations; and the British Record Society’s publications, supplying a key to a vast mass of wills, Chancery suits and marriage licences, are of still greater importance. The Victoria History of the Counties of England includes genealogies of the ancient English county families still among the land-owning classes. English pedigrees of the age before the Conquest are collected in W.G. Searle’s Anglo-Saxon Bishops, Kings and Nobles (1899).
Genealogical dictionaries of noble French families include Victor de Saint Allais’s Nobiliaire universel (21 vols., 1872-1877) and Aubert de la Chenaye-Desbois’ Dictionnaire de la noblesse (15 vols., 1863-1876). A sumptuous work on the genealogy and heraldry of the ancient duchy of Savoy by Count Amédée de Foras began to appear in 1863. Spain has Lopez de Haro’s Nobiliario genealogico de los reyes y títulos de España. Italy has the Teatro araldico of Tettoni and Saladini (1841-1848), Litti’s Famiglie celebri and an Annuario della nobilità. Such annuals are now published more or less intermittently in many European countries. Finland has a Ridderscap och Adels Kalender, Belgium the Annuaire de la noblesse, the Dutch Netherlands an Adelsboek, Denmark the Adels-Garbog and Russia the Annuaire of Ermerin. But chief of all such publications is the ancient Almanach de Gotha, containing the modern kinship of royal and princely houses, and now accompanied by volumes dealing with the houses of German and Austrian counts and barons, and with houses ennobled in modern times by patent. A useful modern reference book for students of history is Stokvis’s Manuel d’histoire et de généalogie de tous les états du globe (1888-1893). The best manual for the English genealogist is Walter Rye’s Records and Record Searching (1897), while an ill-arranged but valuable bibliography of English and foreign works on the subject is that of George Gatfield (1892).
(O. Ba.)
[1] G.B. Gray’s Hebrew Proper Names (1896), with his article in the Expositor (Sept. 1897), pp. 173-190, should be consulted for the application and range of Hebrew names in O. T. genealogies and lists.
[2] On the subject generally see articles “Genos” and “Gens,” by A.H. Greenidge, in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890), where the chief authorities are given.
[3] The fondness of Euripides for genealogies is ridiculed by Aristophanes (Acharnians, 47).
[4] All the earlier Greek historians appear to have constructed their narratives on assumed genealogical bases. The four books of Hecataeus of Miletus dealt respectively with the traditions about Deucalion, about Heracles and the Heraclidae, about the early settlements in Peloponnesus, and about those in Asia Minor; he further made a pedigree for himself, in which his sixteenth ancestor was a god. The works of Hellanicus of Lesbos bore titles (Δευκαλιώνεια and the like) which sufficiently explain their nature; his disciple, Damastes of Sigeum, was the author of genealogical histories of Trojan heroes; Apollodorus of Athens made use of three books of Γενεαλογικά by Acusilaus of Argos; Pherecydes of Leros also wrote γενεαλογίαι. See J.A.F. Töpffer, Attische Genealogie (1889); also J.H. Schubart, Quaestt. geneal. historicae (1832); G. Marckscheffel, De genealogica Graecorum poësi (1840).
[5] The chief authority on this subject is Polybius (vi. 53); see also T. Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, i. (1887), p. 442.