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The New England Historic Genealogical Quarterly is in many libraries and should be easy to find.
The article basically does what any good researcher should do----look at what has been written on the family, evaluate it, then go from there. In this case, Nathaniel's ancestry had been provided to Wharton Dickinson in the 1880s by someone eager to please, and it went back to the absurd period of 840 A.D.!!! This then became fixed in stone, by virtue of age. I'm not a descendant of Nathaniel, but of Charles Dickinson, of South Kingstown, RI (d. 1740), and looking for a possible connection to Nathaniel's family, noticed similar names in the International Genealogical Index. I've done a fair amount of English research in that period.
Basically the author of the article looked through the standard sources, having discovered the similarity of names in the Billingborough parish register, and reported his findings. The line doesn't go back to 840 A.D., but it looks accurate to me.
In 1880, Americans knew little of England, of English research, etc., and a gullible, wealthy American could easily find an unscrupulous researcher to provide a bogus pedigree. He not only published a bogus pedigree, but linked all known Colonial American Dickinsons/Dickersons together. In the hundred years since, we know a lot more, but beginners still tend to see something in print and take it as the truth. I saw Wharton Dickinson's book years after I had been doing research and saw it for what it was----an unbelievable attempt.
Paul Gifford
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