Re: Cotton of Conington
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In reply to:
Re: Cotton of Conington
Martin Wood 12/04/07
Martin,
Nichol's History was something I referred to early, not only for work on the Cottons but on the Malloys. I think he is still indispensible for anyone studying. Concerning the Cotton genealogies, he was copying material originating, on the one hand, from Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, and, on the other, from the Visitations. His original contributions is in bringin the Leicestershire Cottons in their gentry lines more or less up-to-date. Unfortunately, he ignores totally the non-gentry lines that came of gentry stock. So far, I have found the beginnings of one non-gentry branch of the Leicestershire Cottons making a start in Warwickshire, but haven't managed to get it more than one generation further. I lucked out with another non-gentry branch that made it to London and was able to carry them to the early 1800s, one generation before national record keeping would have made it easy to carry a pedigree down to modern times. Then, they changed locations and lost any distinguishing characteristics that would allowed me to move forward.
Nichol's Leicestershire Cotton pedigrees are good as far as they go, the problem being don't go very far. His Hampstall-Ridware pedigree is corrupt, not because Nichol's was sloppy, but because he was trusting and had no way in the times he lived to do original research based on primary sources produced at times contemporary with the people being researched. The basic problem, which couldn't be corrected in Nichol's, is that the early 17th century pedigrees which everyone afterwards more or less just kept copying had the branching off of the Conington Cottons from the main line one generation too late and had its connection with the Wesenham's one generation too early, as well as totally ignoring everything non-gentry.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness in presenting the Nichol's material. Many researchers might not be aware of that work, which, if used with due care, still is a truly fantastic resource.
Around the same era, Ormerod produced a work of similar scope about Cheshire. Concerning the pedigree of the Cottons of Cotton Edmund's, he was extremely critical, writing that it was one of the most corrupt pedigrees he ever come across and that the best he could do was to simply fix its worst parts and hope for the best. Indeed, as I continued my research on this family, practically everything had to be redone with reference to contemporary documents of the people concerned to get right it right. They were my ancestors, though, so I felt I owed it to them, but it involved a massive amount of intensive research, that on occasion meant translating from medieval Latin and medieval Norman French.
If you know any Cottons or are related to any that have Leicestershire origins in their male line, would you see if they might be interested in participating in a y-chromosome DNA project? I would be happy to pay the testing costs of one or two, if there is a Leicestershire lineage that could be established back into the 18th century when it generally becomes quite difficult to trace people due to the over-abundance of unindexed material.
Hikaru
More Replies:
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Re: Cotton of Conington
Martin Wood 12/05/07