Pedigrees

This section of the Members’ area contains the pedigrees and accompanying narratives for those Worthington families, other than from Lancashire or directly linked to Lancashire, which were envisaged by the 17th Century Project to be those which would populate the second Volume of The Worthington Families of the Seventeenth Century. The first volume of which was published as a hardback book by the WFHS in 2020 (see Publications page).

In the interests of making this information accessible to members sooner rather than later, Council decided to make these pedigrees and narratives available on line, as they are completed. A decision will be made at a later date, how they might be published in paper form.

Background

Ian A Worthington, Stuart G Worthington, Heather A Lawrence and Dr Sidney Worthington have checked, verified, agreed and recompiled most of the currently 39 family groups which will be included in part 2. These are families from the English and Welsh counties other than Lancashire as well as Connecticut in the United States. The process of checking, verifying etc was essential to ensure that the pedigrees include the latest available information (some were originally drafted more than 10 years ago) and have been drawn up to the same exacting standards of those in Volume 1. The high standard adopted was that of the College of Arms. There has however been a relaxation of the strict parameters adopted in Volume 1 with regard to dates. Where information has been found and deemed useful, in that it adds to the story of a particular branch of a Worthington family, it has been included.  This means that some of the pedigrees cover earlier parts of the 16th century and beyond 1730 into the 18th century than those dealt with in Volume 1.

While all effort has been made to produce “perfectly accurate” pedigrees, mistakes or typos may have been made and will be spotted by viewers. Please, if you do spot an error or inconsistency, send an email to Ian Worthington. The advantage of the body of work being on line is that it can be corrected or brought up to date easily and quickly.

Pedigrees and narratives

Each narrative is accompanied by one or more pedigree charts. (These were called chapters and pedigrees in Volume 1.) They have been divided into county groups, and where there is evidence, or even “reasoned” speculation, that there was a family connection between them or between them and other county groups, this has been recorded in a separate overview note. Like the pedigrees, the overview notes will be updated as new information becomes available.

Viewing the pedigree charts

Initially you will only be able to view the pedigree charts on line. To do so it might be best to use a computer screen rather than an iPad or tablet, although they should still be viewable on the latter. You will be able to use the special magnifying tool, available on each page, to hover over the entry you wish to read more clearly. At present the pedigrees have not been prepared in a way that they can easily be downloaded, but we are working on ways to allow this in due course: Most probably by way of a downloadable gedcom file, which you will be able to import into your own Family History software programme. The accompanying narratives, which are in .pdf format can already be downloaded. The first eleven pedigrees to be added are from the counties of Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire. They are accompanied by thirteen pedigree charts. Other counties will appear as each is completed.

For the immediate future, this body of work is meant only for members and will only be available via the website. It does not, at present, have a full record of sources attached to each narrative. That said, the vast majority of the information included in compiling the pedigrees has been gleaned from the eleven volumes of our own Registers of Worthington References, which are all available on the WFHS website. In some cases these have been backed up by searches using commercial databases such as Ancestry, FindMyPast and FamilySearch, as well as generally on the internet. It is intended to add a full list of references and an index covering all the families included in this second part of the project, before the work is eventually published on paper.

This project has been a major piece of work undertaken by a handful of people. Any volunteers to help speed up the rate of them being added to the website should please contact Ian Worthington (address is in the Council members’ contact details).

Pedigree Chart Legend

b=born, bp=baptised, m=married, d=died

Browsers

The pedigree charts and narratives have been tested on a range of devices and viewed using several browsers. They are best viewed using Safari on a Mac and Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge on a PC (older browsers have not been tested). Not all the features, especially some of those on the document reader are available when browsing using a tablet but this should not prevent you from reading or downloading the full narratives.