Gustave
Anjou was born Gustaf Ludvig Ljungberg in Sweden in 1863 and died
in 1942. Widely known today for his fraudulent genealogies of
early American families in the late 1800's and early 1900's, Anjou
was known to receive as much as $9,000 for a genealogy report
from his wealthy clients. His report usually took three weeks
to complete and included a coat of arms and surname history.
Much
of the fraud in genealogy can be attributed to a desire for establishing
a royal, noble, or otherwise distinguished descent or for laying
claim to an estate.
According
to the American Genealogist (July 1976) the genealogical works
of Gustave Anjou, Charles H. Browning, C. A. Hoppin, Orra E. Monnette,
Horatio Gates Somerby, Frederick A. Virkus and John S. Wurts "are
so unreliable that nothing they say should be accepted without
clear and unmistakable verification."
Only
three of the Anjou genealogies were actually printed, the works
on the Freeman, Blaisdell and Shapleigh families. Only Freeman
was actually published by Anjou, the other two were later publishing's
of
his original typescript.
The
unprinted genealogies were all bound typescripts or carbons of
the original and even the unsigned ones are recognizable as being
Anjous' creations. In 1927, Anjou published a catalog of 192 "genealogies,"
leaving many unaccounted for. At this date over 305 surnames have
been identified as the misleading work of Gustave Anjou.
The
surname, Caldwell, was one of those 192 genealogies.
Mr.
Robert Charles Anderson is the Director of the Great Migration
Study Project sponsored by the New England Historic Genealogical
Society, a Certified Genealogist, a fellow of the American Society
of Genealogists, a fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association.
With numerous articles published in The New England Historical
and Genealogical Register, The American Genealogist, the National
Genealogical Society Quarterly, The Genealogist, and is quoted
from the Genealogical Journal Volume 19, Numbers 1 & 2, 1991
as saying;
"A
typical Anjou pedigree displays four recognizable features:
1.
A dazzling range of connections between dozens of immigrants to
New England; for example, connections far beyond what may be seen
in pedigrees produced by anyone else:
2. Many wild geographical leaps, outside the normal range of migration
patterns;
3. An overwhelming number of citations to documents that actually
exist, and actually include what Anjou says they include; and
4. Here and there an invented document, without citation, which
appears to support the many connections noted under item 1 above".
The
leaps through time and space in the Caldwell myths most certainly
sound like something that could have come from Anjou, but did
they? Or maybe some of these stories were created by the first
America "professional" genealogist, Horatio Gates Somerby.
The
Autobiography and Biography of Rev. Joseph Caldwell, D.D., L.L.D.,
First President of the University of North Carolina, by
J.B.
Neathery, 1860, makes reference to ancestors of the Rev. Joseph
Caldwell as being those Huguenot's who were Muslim pirates around
1500, only to retire to France as Huguenots on their way to ride
with Cromwell against the Irish in 1649, before buying a castle
in Scotland during the rein of James I who died in 1625.
The
Reverend James Caldwell, Patriot 1734-1781, by Norman F. Brydon,
Caldwell Bicentennial Committee, Caldwell, NJ, 1976 also references
this Caldwell as a descendant of Caldwell Huguenots who fled France
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Personally,
I think that the Rev. James would know that his father was born
in Ireland in 1683 (two years before the Revocation) as was his
grandfather, Joseph in 1657 (near the end of Oliver Cromwell's
life) as was his great grandfather, John in 1630 (twelve years
before the beginning of the civil wars).
The
Rev. James was a Presbyterian minister as was his father, John
Caldwell, founder of Cub Creek, VA.
What
I do find very interesting is that Dr. Orra E. Monnette acted
as chairman of a meeting of Huguenot descendants which was held
in California on Sunday, March 3, 1935, stating that the purpose
of the Society was to be an organization of Huguenot descendants
to enable them to become better acquainted and to cultivate a
happy Christian fellowship with each other, as well as to extend
the great principles of political and religious liberty for which
the Huguenots had always stood.
Something
that strikes me as interesting is the overwelming number of Orra
Monnette genealogies with Huguenot ancestory. Actually, just about
every genealogy conducted by Monnette contains Huguenots. Was
Monnette primarily focused on finding Huguenots, or creating them?
The
story of French Huguenots in the line of Cub Creek John Caldwell
is a stretch, to say the least. This does not mean that there
weren't Caldwells who were French Huguenots, just not in the line
of John Caldwell and Margaret Phillips. After all, my ancestors
became Quakers, but that doesn't mean that they all traveled with
George Fox to Holland before coming to America - but that's another
story.
One
thing is for certain, and many genealogists agree, including Richard
Pence, author of "The 'Three Brothers'" Paradigm"
that researchers should be wary of all stories that begin, "Three
Brothers...."
What
makes that particularly interesting for me is that in mine direct
line, three brothers left Ohio and settled Iowa in 1855. One thing
that's different in this instance is that these three brothers
coming to Iowa are well documented, and family members still own
the original family homestead.
Sources
- FAMILY
GROUP RECORD FRAUD, by Elaine C. Nichols
- Locating
Published Genealogies, by Donna Przecha
- Sons
& Daughters of America's First Families
- QUAKERS
in BRIEF, by David M Murray-Rust
- The
Huguenot Society of California