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Once again Gary Boyd Roberts has assembled all recent royal descent research, some yet unpublished, and produced an authoritative, up-to-date compendium. In the 2006 edition of The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants he added eighteen new immigrants to his previous 650. In this edition, he has added twenty-eight more, so that with a few disproofs (Curwens/Corwins of Massachusetts and New York, Byes of Pennsylvania, and Edwardses, one Evans and Hugh Jones of Pennsylvania), this total is now 688.

New immigrants treated in the 2008 edition include Mrs. Jane Greene Poole (wife of the earlier treated William) and Mrs. Margaret Estouteville Shepard (ancestor of the two presidents Adams and FDR), both of Massachusetts; Mrs. Audrey Barlow Almy of Rhode Island (ancestor of presidents Harding, Nixon, and Carter); Mrs. Henrietta Constantia Worsam Meade and Charles Willing of Pennsylvania; and various Virginia immigrants, many developed by GPC author John Anderson Brayton. New Virginians include Mrs. Elizabeth Wood Barcroft, an ancestor of Jimmy Carter; John Baskerville; Benjamin Harrison, immigrant ancestor of the two presidents Harrison; Mrs. Dorothy Walker Jones; Philip Ludwell, ancestor of the Stratford Lees and the first husband of Martha Washington; and Stephens Thompson, ancestor of the Masons of Gunston Hall.

Mr. Roberts is especially pleased to include two new North Carolinians—John Alston (a third cousin of John Alston of South Carolina) and Mrs. Ann Coddington Fenner, an ancestor of Senator John McCain.

Also included, in Appendix VIII to the Introduction, are new descriptions of recently revised, likely but unproved, royal descents for the five Winslow brothers, John Whitney, and John Whitcomb, all of Massachusetts.

With this enlarged compendium, plus the works of Douglas Richardson on Magna Carta and Plantagenet ancestry, which add much biographical detail on many medieval figures and cover over 200 of the 688 immigrants, royal descent literature has reached a new level of comprehension and reliability. Genealogical Publishing Company is proud to offer the public these benchmark works that lead to an almost 800- year expansion (ca. 900–1700) of the ancestry of many thousands of Americans.

About the Author
Gary Boyd Roberts, nationally renowned Senior Research Scholar emeritus at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston, Massachusetts, is well known for American Ancestors and Cousins of The Princess of Wales (1984), Ancestors of American Presidents (1989, 1995), Notable Kin, 2 vols. (1998-99), his Internet column on the NEHGS website, his introduction to C.A. Torrey's New England Marriages Prior to 1700, and his selections and introductions for fifteen volumes of journal articles reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company. His 1993 compendium, The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants, was an "instant classic," and became the springboard for much further research. He contributed to the last two or more editions of Ancestral Roots, Magna Charta Sureties, and The Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists. In addition, he has helped NEHGS patrons trace their royal descents and "notable kin" since 1974 and has lectured widely on various related topics.

Mr. Roberts' lifetime work, a twenty-three volume manuscript called "The Mowbray Connection," copies of which can be found at NEHGS, the New York Public Library, and the Society of Genealogists in London, is subtitled "An Analysis of the Genealogical Evolution of British, American, and Continental Nobilities, Gentries, and Upper Classes Since the End of the Middle Ages."

SEE ALSO THESE RELATED ROYAL AND NOBLE BOOKS:
Plantagenet Ancestry
The Jacobite Peerage
Royal Families: Americans of Royal and Noble Ancestry
Royalty for Commoners
Descendants of England's King George I
The Magna Carta Sureties, 1215
Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists
The Blood Royal of Britain and the Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal