Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1882 — Hunting Up a Pedigree. [ARTICLE]

Hunting Up a Pedigree.

I live in a small country parish of 194 inhabitants, and our parish register dates from 1630. A young American gentleman came to my friend the Rector, and said that it had only come to his knowledge two days previous that it was from this village that his father’s grandfather emigrated to America about the year 1750, and there laid the foundation for the present wealth of his descendants. The gentleman, with a party of fourteen, had been fifteen months away from New York, visiting the chief places of the Continent, the Holy Land, Egypt, &c., and ending up with the principal sights in England and Scotland ; and they were to embark from Liverpool on the following morning. He had traveled specially to this little village. Would the Rector be good enough to refer to the parish registers, and see if his ancestors were therein mentioned ? The Rector did so— ’ the ancestors were there found in regular descent, from the very beginning of the register—and the gentleman, in less than two hours’ time, was set up with a pedigree dating back two and a half centuries, which he said he should have drawn up in heraldic fashion, and which doubtless now adorns some room in his American home. It was evident that the ancestors were of the humblest class, as in another book mention of “ Goody” was frequently made as being the recipient of a tenpenny charity. But the surname happens to correspond with one in the English Baronetage, and while the Rector was transcribing the numerous registers the American gentleman was busy copying from Debrett the coat of arms of the Baronet in question, bloody hand and all. I regret to add that the Rector never received a sixpence for his trouble, though he might have charged a heavy sum in fees ; but he was restoring his church, and he left it to the American gentleman to give some donation for that purpose, either in money or in the form of a stainedglass window or other memorial to his, ancestors.— Notes and Queries.