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Re: Anjou

I just read you piece on Anjou. Have you researched Orra Monnette, his methods and his notes? It seems as if you and Mr. Anderson are ready to condemn him in, but you until you review his notes, his research methodology, both you and Anderson are simply stating an uneducated opinion. I would also note that Monnette - he never obtained a doctorate, and never presented himself as such. This makes your "Dr." Salutation of him misleading - never offered his services to clients as Anjou did. Monnette was too busy running banks to present himself to clients as a professional genealogist. It was his personal hobby. While he did sell his Piscataway books, he never presented himself as a professional genealogist. Furthermore, Monnett documented and saved, everything. His personal papers include harsh criticisms levied at him by his foes, if he were a fraudster, would he keep such criticisms and defend them?

Strangely, Anderson, who you quote with great confidence, never accessed Monnette's original notes, correspondence or other documents. Instead Anderson takes his information Monnette from a screed written by Donald Lines Jacobus in the American Genealogist, written 20+ years after Monnette's death. Reading Jacobus's piece on Monnette, it become apparent that he too, never looked at the methods Monnette used.

Finally, as to his work with Huguenot's and your inference that such made his works more suspect because that was was Anjou's preferred ourve is really illogical.

One cannot call to question the motivations, quality or even how incorrect conclusions are reached if one does not examine the primary source documentation of a researcher. But to criticize, without benefit or such an examination, mearly places the person who draws such conclusions, without benefit of such research into realms of hearsay themselves.

I have delved into Monnette's personal notes. Have you?

Comment:So let me get this straight; I quote a 1976 edition of American Genealogist that list seven "genealogists" as suspect and I'm some sort of slacker because I didn't research - let alone to your standards - the research of the person that I quoted regarding one of those seven that's not even actually the focus of the article? Got it. Regardless of whether or not Anjou added a dash of Huguenot ancestry in his dubious genealogy reports it doesn't change the fact that the propensity of Monnette's genealogical research contained some connection to Huguenots; let alone the fact that Monnette chaired a meeting of Huguenot descendants (or were they?), but move along; nothing to see here.... There is not one of us without warts of some kind in our ancestry, and while it's noble that almost 80 years after his death you wish to add some sort of corrections or nuance to your ancestors story, I'm going to follow Occam's razor on this one....