Massey Coat of Arms and Royal Ancestry
Having Massey ancestry, I have become one of the sponsors of a project which aims, based on investigation of original documents, to clarify the relationships between the various Massey lines of descent in England before the 17th century and establish with scientific accuracy their connections with the various Massey immigrants to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. A massive amount of work has been done, proving that previous research, being based on inadequate source materials, has produced a significant number of mistaken identities. Interestingly enough, this research has confirmed a strong likelihood of a royal descent of a large number of Masseys from King Edward III of England.
In connection with proving conclusively this royal Massey connection (especially for the descendants of the early 18th century Virginia Hezekiah, Richard, and Joseph Massey lines), it has become important to identify the location of an "achievement" (a coat of arms drawn or painted on vellum or other suitably durable material which immigrants of the gentry class sometimes took with them when they immigrated to the American colonies in the colonial period) which Judge Massey mentioned in his widely used books on the Massey family. Unfortunately, Judge Massey did not identify the precise descent of this achievement or its present possessor. This knowledge is now important, not only for the three lines mentioned above, but also for helping to determine the relative relationships that other early colonial lines might have with the original Dunham Massey line.
At present, the level of certainty in what has been achieved is about 97%. If the aforementioned achievement can be found and located, and it can be judged by experts in the field to be sufficiently authentic it will raise the level of certainty in the conclusions which have been reached to 99.9%, at which point publishing will become possible.
Reaching a level of 100% certainty, however, due to the inadequacies of the documentation available would demand genetic testing of the y-chromosome of male-line descent Masseys of the major major identifiable branches of the Massey family in England and America. This might eventually be an attractive option, but, at present, location and examination of the achievement seems to be of more important.
Please contact me at [email protected], if you can provide me with any lead concerning the achievement or if you might be interested in helping to sponsor financially the completion of this project. Thousands of hours of work have already been devoted to its completion and it is now in its final stages. Another four or five thousand dollars should be enough to see the manuscript published. I have already donated $2,000 in the last six months to the organization which is responsible for this project and will donate the rest if I have to. However, if I do this by myself, I will not be able to supply the remaining funds for another 12 to 18 months, thus significantly delaying thepublication of an article which will help clarify the ancestry of literally millions of individuals in the English-speaking world. With proper funding (and, hopefully, with the chance to accurately identify the history of the achievement), the article could be ready for publication within a month.
Hikaru Kitabayashi
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