19th Century Historians

The deeper I delve into the history of Belchamp Walter and the surrounding area the more skeptical I am becoming about some of the references that I find quoted in many sources. A lot of information seems to have been taken from 19th Century Historians and this has now found its way into more contemporary media such as the plethora of geneoligical websites.

In keeping with the 21st century "Celebrity Culture", the Victorian's seemed to have a desire to prove their ancestry was "royal". I guess in this regard not much has changed!

As I add pages to this website I try and add as many references as I can if I can find them. If I have a general critisism of many texts and other websites it is that this information is not always easy to find.
Many of the geneological websites (Family Tree) are purely lists and dumps from an undisclosed database. In many cases this database turns out to be the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, GEDCOM database, or at least the one started by them.

Many of the historical manuscripts have been sold to private collections, predominantly in the US and are not easy to find on the Internet. As a consequence the difficulty in accessing them tends to add weight to their authenticity, unfairly in my opinion. This is particularly the case with 19th Century Historians.

Burke's - Royal Descents and Pedigrees of Founders' Kin - dated 1864

Samuel Millbank Raymond, of Belchamp Hall, Essex, died in 1863 and appears to have commissioned a copy of Burke's tome.

The Historians - or Genealogists

Having described Burke he is only one of many from this period that promoted the "art" of documenting the "significant" families of the country. As this was the time when everything had to be written down long-form and the closest thing to a database was a family tree, there was much scope for speculation and interpretation giving rise to the potential of misinformation.

• Burke
• George Edward Cokayne - The Complete Peerage
• The Marquis