By the late seventeenth century there were hundreds of baronies in Scotland; however, in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745-1746, the British government enacted the Heritable Jurisdiction Act of 1747, which reduced the powers of barons and the nobility in general.

For this work, Mr. Dobson has traced the origin and line of descent of nearly 1,000 Scottish baronies and baronetcies, including some whose progeny eventually moved to the Americas. In assembling this unprecedented collection, Mr. Dobson consulted numerous primary and secondary sources. His principal source was the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland from about the year 1320. This required him to examine over 20,000 documents written in Latin. Typical of these descriptions is the following one for Hector McLean, Baron of Duart:

MCLEAN OF DUART IN ARGYLL. On 9 January 1540, King James V granted several properties in Inverness-shire incorporated into the Barony of Duart to Hector McLean, son and heir apparent of Hector McLean of Duart; on 12 November 1542 King James V granted Hector McLean, son and heir apparent of Hector McLean of Duart, the lands and Barony of Duart; on 4 February 1549, Queen Mary granted Hector McLean of Duart the lands and Barony of Ardgour in Inverness-shire; John McLean, alias Makaleer, a merchant in Gothenborg, Sweden, was enobled there in 1649, and later was created a Baronet by King Charles II during his exile, McLean died in Gothenborg when his son Sir John McLean succeeded to the title. Sir Hector McLean, son of Sir John McLean, a Jacobite who fought at the Battles of Killiecrankie and at Sheriffmuir. [An Anglicisation of the Gaelic Mac Gille Eoin meaning ‘son of the servant of John’, examples date from the thirteenth century.] [John McLean, a rebel, was transported to Jamaica in 1685, while Donald McLean, a merchant, died in St Augustine in 1778.] [The Jacobite Peerage, Edinburgh, 1904].

The work includes a list of principal sources and an appendix consisting of Scots-Irish baronetcies established in Ireland and in the New World.

The post Scottish Baronial Families, 1250-1750 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

This compilation is the result of a 26-year, masterful reconstruction of the 1698 census of New York by the esteemed genealogist and librarian Kory Meyerink. In this effort, Mr. Meyerink was aided by not only the “surviving” portions of the 1698 census but also the statistical summaries of the census which have survived the passage of time. The fact is that we know exactly how many men, women, and children (all free whites) and slaves (usually black, and sometimes Native American) were counted in the census. With these numbers in hand, Mr. Meyerink was able to locate more or less contemporary substitute sources (e.g., militia lists, tax lists, church records, town minutes, etc.) and reconstruct the residents of the missing counties, towns, and manors. In a number of cases, he was able to find the names of the same New Yorkers on multiple lists, thereby enhancing the accuracy of the reconstruction. In other cases, he assembled lists as “composites” from multiple sources (e.g., Easthampton, Rye, etc.). In all, he has identified by name 96% of the men, 50% of the women, and at least 40% of the children alive in the colony of New York in 1698.

New York in 1698 is arranged alphabetically by county and thereunder by town, ward, or manor. Mr. Meyerink begins each county chapter with a detailed discussion of the reconstruction variables: original source(s), spelling, layout of the original information, statistical recap, a brief history of the area under investigation at the time of the census, and a bibliography for further research on that county. The chapter-by-chapter lists of persons are arranged to conform to the earliest known transcription of the 1698 census, or substitute. The volume concludes with a complete name index of 13,700 and, owing to the significant New Netherland heritage of turn-of-the-17^th century New York, a substantial listing of Dutch names with their English versions. Mr. Meyerink’s historical and methodological Introduction to the book–which also contains a separate bibliography–not only provides insight into the “missing” census itself but also is must reading for any genealogist or historian planning to conduct research into this fascinating period.

The post New York in 1698 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

The Grampian Highlands were mostly controlled by landowners such as the Earl of Aboyne or the Earl of Airlie, or heads of families or clans such as Forbes, Gordon, Farquharson, Burnett, Irvine, Douglas, Lindsay, Carnegie, Ogilvie, Spalding, Stewart, and Robertson. These families were generally Royalist and supporters of the House of Stuart, notably in the Jacobite Wars of 1689, 1715, and 1745.

Most seventeenth-century Highlanders, however, were Protestants (Presbyterian and Episcopalian), with a few Roman Catholics in remote glens, such as around Braemar.  Emigration from the Grampian Highlands did not occur until the early eighteenth century, apart from prisoners of war banished to the Plantations.

The post The People of the Grampian Highlands, 1600-1699 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

In his previous books, Phillips identified these children by name and listed their ages and dates of their court appearances. He searched all available birth and baptismal records and, where possible, cross-checked them with marriage and death records to identify the parents of 1,400 of these children. He also examined all available shipping records to identify 125 white slave ships and, if possible, the names of the captains who commanded them.

Since the publication of the trilogy, many records that were previously unavailable have been posted online. The parish registers for London and for Essex, downstream on the Thames, are now complete, as are the parish registers for Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset, thus enabling Phillips to complete his search for the birthplaces of the children. The marriage and death records for Bristol, where only the baptismal records were previously indexed, have now been examined, thus clarifying cases of mistaken identity. One more parish register from Ireland, previously omitted, is included here.

Dozens more captains of white slave ships have been identified from colonial records of Virginia. More than forty indictments for kidnapping have been found in the court records of London. And more than 100 white children sold into servitude along the Delaware River have been identified, some of whom have been matched with their baptismal or marriage records, despite the fact that the records from Philadelphia have not survived.

All of these records are compiled in this supplement. So far as is known, this completes the data set for the trilogy.

The post White Slave Children in Colonial America: Supplement to the Trilogy appeared first on Genealogical.com.

The books track the movements of 170 white slave ships, identify with a high degree of certainty the parents of 1,400 children, and reveal what became of 200 survivors. The author has subsequently compiled records of kidnapped children sold in Pennsylvania and has traced the migration of dozens of runaways and their descendants through the Appalachian Mountains.

The epic poem is divided into 75 passages, in lyric poetry, with rhyme and meter. Some of the passages are, or will become, folk songs. The White Slave Children Trilogy, published in paperback by Genealogical Publishing Company, is also available in a hard-bound, cloth cover, stitched page edition directly from the author.

The post Lost History of Stolen Children: An Epic Poem appeared first on Genealogical.com.

You could make a lifetime’s study of the American court system, but if your goal is family history research, this Genealogy at a Glance outline will provide an indispensable shortcut, guiding you through the major types of court records that are crucial in your research–for example, probate records, naturalization records, land records, marriage and divorce records, tax records–in short almost every type of record that helps to identify family relationships. The main thing you will learn is that county courthouses generally contain the records of most interest to genealogists, and therefore this guide offers invaluable tips for finding and accessing records at the county courthouse level.

Like all Genealogy at a Glance outlines, this one also offers guidance on the principal supplementary record sources, provides a list of the best online resources, and identifies the major repositories, all the while dealing with a complex subject in the simplest way possible.

The post Genealogy at a Glance: Court Records Research appeared first on Genealogical.com.

For this early period, the single most useful bit of evidence included in the depositions is the age of the deponent. While most depositions vary in quality from being virtually useless to providing corroboration of marriages, wills, and deeds, ages alone provide incontrovertible value to the genealogist. Sometimes the age of a deponent was very important to a particular case. Men over sixty, for example, were often brought into court to support the claims of the ancient boundaries of litigants’ property. Likewise, many older women who were experienced midwives were called upon to offer opinions on the timeliness of a birth in a fornication case.

Also, one of the most common errors in genealogical work is confusing two or more individuals of the same name. If senior or junior or tertius is not used, it is very difficult to assign events to the correct individual. Frequently, fathers and sons with the same given name came to court together, but with stated ages they are easily differentiated. Men with the same name and of the same generation can be another problem, but again a deposition with a specific age given can make all the difference.

With this index–which lists the names and ages of 11,000 deponents, and the year and source of the court records–researchers can quickly determine whether it is worthwhile to track down the original court record.

The post Ages from Court Records, Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk Counties, Massachusetts appeared first on Genealogical.com.

The post Magruder’s Maryland Colonial Abstracts appeared first on Genealogical.com.

The post The County Court Note-book and Ancestral Proofs and Probabilities appeared first on Genealogical.com.

He will also need to know whether search services are provided, the fees involved, and whether there are alternative locations for the records. And if he’s a diligent researcher, he’ll need to know something about the origins of the county itself—names of parent counties, dates of formation, former names, etc.

Such is the kind of guidebook required, and such is Elizabeth P. Bentley’s County Courthouse Book, now in its third edition, the first edition to provide websites and e-mail addresses. Besides its obvious genealogical uses, the County Courthouse Book can also be used for land title searches, legal investigations, questions of property rights and inheritance, and indeed personal searches and investigations of all kinds. But it is the genealogist who stands to benefit most from the book because it offers a concise guide to the county courthouses and courthouse records which are the main focus of his research.

This edition of the County Courthouse Book is a complete overhaul of the 2nd edition of 1995, and it is up-to-date and more useful than ever.

The post County Courthouse Book. 3rd Edition appeared first on Genealogical.com.