“A well researched, informative and helpful book for the many family historians whose Protestant ancestors lived in Northern Europe.” —Federation of Family History Societies Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, many thousands of Protestants fled religious persecution in France and the Low Countries. They became one of the most influential immigrant communities in the countries where they settled, and many families in modern-day Britain will find a Huguenot connection in their past. Kathy Chater’s authoritative handbook offers an accessible introduction to Huguenot history and to the many sources that researchers can use to uncover the Huguenot ancestry they may not have realized they had. She traces the history of the Huguenots; their experience of persecution, and their flight to Britain, North America, the West Indies and South Africa, concentrating on the Huguenot communities that settled in England, Ireland, Scotland and the Channel Islands. Her work is also an invaluable guide to the various sources researchers can turn to in order to track their Huguenot ancestors, for she describes the wide range of records that is available in local, regional and national archives, as well as through the internet and overseas. Her expert overview is essential reading for anyone studying their Huguenot ancestry or immigrant history in Britain. “This is a useful, up to date, practical guide for anyone who has, or thinks they have, Huguenot ancestors in the British Isles. It provides social and contextual assistance along with guidance on what records have survived, where to find them and how to use them.” —Milner Genealogy

The volume at hand--a reprint of Volume II of the printed records of Cambridge--is a transcription of the records of Cambridge town meetings and meetings of selectmen from the town's beginnings until 1703.

The quest for roots has been an enduring American preoccupation. Over the centuries, generations have sketched coats of arms, embroidered family trees, established local genealogical societies, and carefully filled in the blanks in their bibles, all in pursuit of self-knowledge and status through kinship ties. This long and varied history of Americans’ search for identity illuminates the story of America itself, according to François Weil, as fixations with social standing, racial purity, and national belonging gave way in the twentieth century to an embrace of diverse ethnicity and heritage. Seeking out one’s ancestors was a genteel pursuit in the colonial era, when an aristocratic pedigree secured a place in the British Atlantic empire. Genealogy developed into a middle-class diversion in the young republic. But over the next century, knowledge of one’s family background came to represent a quasi-scientific defense of elite “Anglo-Saxons” in a nation transformed by immigration and the emancipation of slaves. By the mid-twentieth century, when a new enthusiasm for cultural diversity took hold, the practice of tracing one’s family tree had become thoroughly democratized and commercialized. Today, Ancestry.com attracts over two million members with census records and ship manifests, while popular television shows depict celebrities exploring archives and submitting to DNA testing to learn the stories of their forebears. Further advances in genetics promise new insights as Americans continue their restless pursuit of past and place in an ever-changing world.

This work, which was originally published as an appendix to Sylvester Judd's flawless History of Hadley, contains several hundred genealogies arranged alphabetically by the surname of the founder of the Hadley line. Every person mentioned in the genealogies is cited in the index, which contains 7,500 references.