Burke's Peerage is INSANE
Seriously, have any of you ever had reason to look at this book? It is an account of all the noble families of Britain, which is creepy enough, but it is written in this bizarre short-hand code where offspring are called "issue," and it's all arranged by generation, so in order to read any particular person's lineage your eyes have to jump forwards and backwards around the text. I'm not explaining this well, but just know that it is a... unique textual experience.
Why was I dipping into this? Well, technically I was not looking at Burke's Peerage, but rather Burke's Irish Family Records, because Manuel Garcia's youngest (or second-youngest?) daughter married Major-General Sir George McKenzie Franks, KCB, from a fairly old Irish family—well, only enough to merit inclusion in Burke's Irish Family Records, at least. (And for the record, I provisionally declare that Garcia had a total of seven children, four by Eugénie and three by Beata: Gustav, Manuel III, Eugénie Jr., Maria, Paula, Manuela (whom they called "Carmen"), and Albert. I believe I am the only person in the world who knows this...)
So anyway, George and Paula had three children: Raynald, Noel, and (Beata) Cynthia. Cynthia died unmarried; Noel married a man from Sweden; and Raynald, the one who contacted the RAM in the 1970s, married Anna Giulia Rowe (possibly related to Marianne Rowe, Victorian opera singer, and Garcia student?) in 1939. Anna and Raynald had one son who died at age 5, and one daughter, Phyllida, who married Timothy Pyper in 1969 and had a daughter of their own, Zoë Marianne Clara (Franks) Pyper, born in 1974. Are you following all this? All this, and much much more information (addresses, dates, etc) is packed into about one-and-a-half column inches.
The point is, somewhere, right now, this Zoë woman, Manuel Garcia Jr's great-great-granddaughter, is about to turn 31. This all does me practically no good at all in terms of actually writing my dissertation. (Someone in the family still owns, for example, the centenary liber amicorum containing 800 tributes and signatures, but it could just as likely have ended up in the possession of the descendants of one the other six children. Probate records might help here, but I'm a little afraid of dipping into that mess.) At the same time—well, at the risk of repeating a phrase I've used recently, it all feels a bit vertigeonous. I mean, I don't even know a single one of my great-great-grandparents' names.
Why was I dipping into this? Well, technically I was not looking at Burke's Peerage, but rather Burke's Irish Family Records, because Manuel Garcia's youngest (or second-youngest?) daughter married Major-General Sir George McKenzie Franks, KCB, from a fairly old Irish family—well, only enough to merit inclusion in Burke's Irish Family Records, at least. (And for the record, I provisionally declare that Garcia had a total of seven children, four by Eugénie and three by Beata: Gustav, Manuel III, Eugénie Jr., Maria, Paula, Manuela (whom they called "Carmen"), and Albert. I believe I am the only person in the world who knows this...)
So anyway, George and Paula had three children: Raynald, Noel, and (Beata) Cynthia. Cynthia died unmarried; Noel married a man from Sweden; and Raynald, the one who contacted the RAM in the 1970s, married Anna Giulia Rowe (possibly related to Marianne Rowe, Victorian opera singer, and Garcia student?) in 1939. Anna and Raynald had one son who died at age 5, and one daughter, Phyllida, who married Timothy Pyper in 1969 and had a daughter of their own, Zoë Marianne Clara (Franks) Pyper, born in 1974. Are you following all this? All this, and much much more information (addresses, dates, etc) is packed into about one-and-a-half column inches.
The point is, somewhere, right now, this Zoë woman, Manuel Garcia Jr's great-great-granddaughter, is about to turn 31. This all does me practically no good at all in terms of actually writing my dissertation. (Someone in the family still owns, for example, the centenary liber amicorum containing 800 tributes and signatures, but it could just as likely have ended up in the possession of the descendants of one the other six children. Probate records might help here, but I'm a little afraid of dipping into that mess.) At the same time—well, at the risk of repeating a phrase I've used recently, it all feels a bit vertigeonous. I mean, I don't even know a single one of my great-great-grandparents' names.
posted by Grrg at 2:37 PM
2 Comments:
When I was working the reference desk at a public library in a north suburb of Chicago people would actually call up and ask me to read sections of Burke's Peerage to them. I decided the book wasn't half as insane as the freak show that needed to use it.
By the way, I'm having strange issues with the name "Manuela." It gives me the creeps to read it. Just thought I'd share.
Have you tried GEC's Peerage? Madness multiplied
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