Gustav Anjou

Question

The following message from GeneJ X was posted on the WikiTree profile of Sarah Worcester.

To the best of my knowledge, the identification of William Worcester's wife as "Sarah Brown" dau. of Samuel Brown and Susannah Bates can be traced the Gustave Anjou manuscript. [1] Anjou cites "Brown Coll., iii.78, in Willesden Hist. Coll.[HS or MS.] C.3 [?a or h]." Third parties report his manuscript can not be identified. Do we want to rely on these without ability to verify? [1] Gustave Anjou, "The Worcester Family," compilation for Edwin D. Worcester, Jr., [pre-1914], 36 pp.; digital images, supplied by K. Jaffa, 2014, citing FHL film 908504 item 8 [as 40 images, including both catalog and title pages, 32 page report on 34 images (2 duplicated pages), three page appendix]. See separately, Gustave Anjou, _Wikipedia_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Anjou : accessed 2014).

Comments

There are three profiles on WikiTree that each somehow purport to have devised a different maiden name for Sarah ____, wife of early Lynn and Salisbury settler, Rev. William Worcester. One of these profiles reports as Sarah Brown/Brown-26402, one as Sarah Blake/Blake-857 (for WikiTree purposes, this Blake seems an alias for Sarah Brown); the other as Sarah Pickering/Pickering-225. 

Collectively, I believe the sources associated with the three profiles to be (a) Ancestry Public Trees, (b) _American Genealogical-Biographical Index_, (c) Heritage Consulting's _Millennium File_, (d) FindAGrave and (e) Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700. None of these sources are historical records per se. The last of these (Torrey) concludes her name is Sarah ____, citing about 7 references. 

Since mid February, via notes and other collaboration, we have sought input about historical references that might support the different further identities of Rev. William's wife. The only such reference known by me today is in a citation by Gustave Anjou, referring to a manuscript at Willesden Historical Society (England). Third parties report this manuscript can not be further identified or located. (Separate inquiry has been made of the society in Willesden.)

Conversely, modern work has been done with the English records about the Worcester family, with results published in two _The American Genealogist_ articles.* Neither of these articles suggest information by which Rev. William's wife would be known as anything other than Sarah ___.  (The TAG articles do, however, provide English records showing the births and deaths of children in the family who were not previously known.)

*The two articles are (a) Robert L. V. French and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, "The Rev. William^1 Worcester of Salisbury, Massachusetts: Information on His Family from the Olney, Buckinghamshire, Bishops' Transcripts," TAG 71 (1996):50-51 and (b) Dean Crawford Smith, “Some Olney Cluster Corrections: Newhall, Farrington, Worcester, Fuller,” TAG 73 (1998): 119­-122, for Worcester, p. 122. 

Answer 1

Gustav Anjou was a known fraud. Any genealogy published by him is highly suspect.

See his wikipedia entry.

Comments

Totally agree.

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Hi Jillaine,  Yes, the link to the Wikipedia article about Anjou is in the WikiTree profile message.

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Gene, yes, I saw that after I posted; but I wanted to emphasize the fact that the man was a fraud.

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Thanks both of you.

is there an online list of all his frauds? If so we might add a category on the pm?

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Don't have time to scour all these, but take a look here:

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Fraudulent_Genealogies

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Hi Sir William,

Gustave Anjou produced many, many compilations. As far as I have been able to learn, some of the information in the articles can be authenticated, but some can not. Dozens of his works are available via the FamilySearch catalog by searching by "author" only and including an e at the end of his given name.  

No doubt preaching to the choir here, all sources (including authored works) are subject to error, omission, bias and even fraud. We just usually can't tell from among the granual information which bit is reliable and which is not.  Blah, blah, blah ... is why we'd always seek out the cited references, historical verification and consider logic and reasoning.

As Jillaine Smith's link provides, Anjou isn't the only one to have made a living producing materials of dubious veracity. For example, the article by Paul C. Reed, "Two Somerby Frauds," appeared in TAG 74 (1999).

From Reed's article, "Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-1872) is note more and more for the fauds he perpetrated ... He was far more subtle than Gustave Anjou, but not necessarily better at fakery than Mrs. de Salis."  Reed cites Robert Charles Anderson's "We Wuz Robbed! ..." (_Genealogical Journal_ vol. 19). which overviews Anjou, and Reed's article, "Whitney Origins Revisited ..." (TAG vol. 69) for comments about Harriet Bainbridge de Salis.

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Appears Ron Wild compiled a list of known Anjou genealogies from the FamilySearch Catalog. See his article, "Beware of Faudulent Genelaogies," _Family Chronicle_, 2001; digital version online (http://www.familychronicle.com/Fraudulent.html : accessed 2014).

The article is a good read.--GeneJ

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Richard Torrens, "A Genealogiclal Scam," (c) 1999-2000, link follows, apparently had the opportunity to see Anjou's letterhead. Down the left side, were listed why Torrens suspects were all the families for whom genealogies had been developed. Seems he found 199 names. Torrens' questions, "How long would it have taken, around 1900, to research 199 families?"

Although I gather at one time an image of the letterhead was on Torrens' site, could not track it down.

http://www.torrens.org.uk/Genealogy/Torrens/Essays/Anjou/anjou.html

Update:  Found his transcribed list of genealogies as Exhibit 7 in the middle frame at link below. There are indeed 199 names.

http://www.torrens.org.uk/Genealogy/Torrens/Essays/Anjou/anjou.html

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http://archive.org/web/

.?

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Hi Sir William,

Did find Torrens' transcribed list of 199 names. Updated the comment just above; also now below. 

Let me know if a frame opens that is titled, "Texts of Various Letters."  From that header, scroll to "Exhibit 7" for a few particulars followed by the list of names.  

http://www.torrens.org.uk/Genealogy/Torrens/Essays/Anjou/anjou.html

"Gustav Anjou - torrens.org.uk" 

 

Answer 2

Today, I found a profile that is a direct propogation of one of Anjou's Fraudulent lineages.  How do you broach this with the two profile managers?

Comments

May be they are already aware

i would just tell them, quoting Wikipedia. :

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I will, but i am doing some research into the research first.  Thanks Sir William.  Mags

Answer 3

I created today a subcategory of "Legends" called "Gustave Anjou Fraud" and linked Sarah Brown to it.  Sarah needed a profile manager so I adopted her with the intention of detailing her current lack of documentation.  I believe it's ideal that we end up with two profiles -- one for the documentable person who should be Sarah Unknown, and the other for Sarah Brown, who is a legendary, i.e. unreal person.  I believe it's important that there remain a Sarah Brown profile because it is such a temptation when people see a Sarah Unknown to think, "Ah ha, I know her last name because I saw it on ancestry."  When they try to change unknown's name, they'll run into the fact that a Sarah Brown already exists.  The fictional person, however, will be cross-linked to others only in the narrative.   People who never existed do not have parents, siblings, spouses or children.

Comments

We need (1) free-space pages and (2) a category for fraudulent genealogists, not just a category for the fake people they created.

I'd like to have a place to put information about fraudulent genealogist Raymon Meyers Tingley, although I can't say that I know very much about his fabrications. Robert Charles Anderson apparent thought that Tingley's fabrications were too preposterous to be worth much discussion in The Great Migration books.

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I agree, that creating a separate category for Fraud is a logical next step for someone to take.  Then "Gustave Anjou Fraud" -- which I've already linked to a couple of profiles -- can be moved to the new category.  I personally try to avoid unpopulated categories, so I'm content to leave it under Legends until someone else is inspired to create the new category!  Meanwhile, by all means create a subcategory called "Raymon Meyers Tingley Fraud!"

I'm a firm believer that we need these writeups and links to profiles because the frauds may be too preposterous for discussion in Great Migrations, but you can be sure they will creep into WikiTree, not because we're a bad site, but because we have thousands of authors rather than just one!

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One spot where "frauds" and "legends" mix is that sometimes the fraudsters create fake people.  Then since the fake people are in circulation, they need to retain their profile, have a narrative describing why they are fake, and all links to other profiles cut.  They then are a "legend."

More often, the fraudsters take real people and give them fake facts and connections.  These need to be noted in the narrative as a warning to others, "John Doe says Dwight Eisenhower married Elizabeth I and is widely quoted, but this has no basis in fact and originates with Joe Fraudster in his discredited book XYZ"   Then I'd suggest putting a Category: Joe Fraudster Fraud on the page as a further warning.

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I fully agree, Jack. The Tingley "information" most definitely made it into WikiTree. And because Anderson didn't identify the false names that Tingley had injected into his genealogy, I had to find Tingley's book in order to verify that he was referring to a person whose WikiTree profile had been created and tended by multiple contributors.

Sadly, it's likely that almost all of Tingley's work was valid, but it's not exactly easy to tell where the truth ends and where the fabrication begins. The fabrication identified by Anderson (see Gilbert Brooks' profile at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brooks-181 for some details) apparently was aimed at giving his family a pedigree among the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony.

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The writeup of the fraud on Gilbert Brooks' page was so good I copied it verbatim to the category page you created for the Raymon Meyers Tingley Fraud!

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After thinking about this a bit, I believe we need a new top-level category for "Fictitious Genealogy" to include "Legends" (imaginary family histories that have attained the status of legends) and "Frauds and Fabrications" (genealogy that was deliberately fabricated).

This will provide the scope needed to document the full range of fictitious family histories, without regard to how famous they are (not every fabricated genealogy has attained the status of a legend).

I'm going to go ahead and create this new category structure.

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I wish you wouldn't move quite so fast on this -- this started out with King Arthur who has something of a following.  That's why I used the word "legend" which is a bit more neutral than "fictitious."  By using fictitious as the overall category, I think you limit the applicability of the categories rather than your intent, which I think is to expand them.   

I think of Legends as being untrue much more by accident, as opposed to frauds, which are deliberate.  I think using the word Fictitious will offend people I'm trying not to offend.  I think it will limit our ability to deal with profiles like King Arthur.

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Oh well, it's done.  We'll just have to see how it plays out!

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I see your point regarding King Arthur as not necessarily fictitious, although I have the impression that genealogies that include him are based on works that are best described as historical fiction.

What's done can be undone!

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Let's keep it as you have it now -- if we need to change later, top level changes are easy -- it's the lower level where all the profiles are linked that it's harder!

King Arthur is probably the trickiest of the lot, because while gobs of fictitious stuff have grown up around him, it's not impossible that there was a real chieftain to whom the legends got attached.  We just don't have any documentation of such a person that I know of!