Category: Horatio Gates Somerby Fraud
Categories: Frauds and Fabrications
Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-1872) was a 19th-century American genealogist who fabricated some of his genealogy. He successfully deceived most of his peers, who incorporated his deceptions into their work.
In a 1933 article ("The Lawrence Family of Groton and Boston, Massachusetts," The American Genealogist. Vol. (1933), page 78ff.), G. Andrew Moriarty observed that after the American Revolution the newly prominent families of New England sought to establish "a descent worthy of their new importance," and procured the assistance of Somerby, who moved to England in 1840 and supported himself researching pedigrees for Americans, including some that appeared to be accurately compiled based on authentic sources, and others that provided "a splendid but fictitious descent."
Paul C. Reed published an article in The American Genealogist in 1999 entitled "Two Somerby Frauds, Or 'Placing the Flesh on the Wrong Bones'". In his introduction he stated that Somerby "is noted more and more for the frauds he perpetrated on the genealogical public in the last century" and suggested "perhaps the reason that more of Somerby's frauds have not come to light is that he did not always concoct them to connect to some grand noble ancestor or royal line." According to Reed, "Somerby would happen across a family with the same name ... as that of a well-known immigrant. He would then either invent a document, such as a will, that seemed to prove the connection across the sea, or [would]... just imply that such a document existed, without providing any specific details, as he did in the ancestry purported for Abraham, John, and Richard Browne of Watertown."
This category is a location to identify the profiles of people whose biographies and family histories have been affected (or in some cases may have been affected) by Somerby's fabrications. "Affected" is the operative word -- listing in this category does NOT mean that the profile itself is fraudulent; hopefully it is listed because the fabrication has been identified and corrected.
- See False Arnold Pedigree which provides a link to the false pedigree along with the early Brythonic and Welsh names in it.
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