Editor’s Note: NEHGS Senior Research Scholar Emeritus Gary Boyd Roberts continues his series of articles updating entries to his Ancestors of American Presidents, 2009 Edition, and its 2012 reprint; the previous entry appears here.
William Howard Taft ancestor William Eure, 1st Baron Eure, p. 429, was a son of Sir Ralph Eure (and Muriel Hastings), son of Sir William Eure (and Margaret Constable), son of Sir Ralph Eure and Elizabeth Greystock, daughter of John Greystock, 4th Baron Greystock, and Elizabeth Ferrers, daughter of Robert Ferrers, 2nd Baron Boteler of Wemme, and Joan Beaufort (pp. 648–49). Thus Taft is a tenth presidential descendant of Joan’s father John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and a fifteenth presidential kinsman of modern royalty. See Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry, 5 vols. (2013), 2: 527–30 (Eure to Mrs. Elizabeth Mansfield Wilson), 3: 138–39 (Greystock/Greystoke), 5: 340–41 (Ferrers). This line was brought to my attention by Martin E. Hollick. As I noted in American Ancestors 14 [2013]: 4: 52–55, Mrs. Elizabeth Mansfield Wilson was also the nearest New England immigrant cousin of H.R.H. The Duchess of Cambridge, the former Catherine Elizabeth Middleton.
- Douglas Richardson reports that Clifford L. Stott has disproved the royal descent of Thomas Newberry of Mass., which in its specifics was also doubted by Sir Anthony Richard Wagner. Thus the top section of pp. 333 and 335, plus all of p. 334, should be deleted, as should the listing for Thomas Newberry among the RD [royally-descended] ancestors of Hayes (p. 264) and Ford (p. 274), and the bolded notice of the Thomas Newberry line for Ford on p. 376.
- Hayes and Ford ancestor Judith, wife of Edward Ward of Little Wrotting, Suffolk, was almost certainly Judith Luckyn, daughter of William Luckyn and Thomasine Walter, daughter of William (ap) Walter and Isabel Denton, daughter of Thomas Denton (and Jane Webbe), son of John Denton and Isabel Brome, daughter of John Brome and Beatrix Shirley, this last of royal descent, as covered in Roberts, The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States… (2008), pp. 422-23 and improved in the forthcoming RD800. See The American Genealogist 83 [2008–9]: 13–18 and The Genealogist 28 [2014]: 137–54 (Ward, Luckyn); W.C. Metcalfe, ed., Visitations of Essex, 1552, 1558, 1570, 1612, 1634 (Harleian Society Publications, Visitation Series, vol. 13, 1878), p. 310 (Walter); and W.H. Turner, ed., Visitations of Oxfordshire, 1566, 1574, 1634 (Harleian Society Publications, Visitation Series, vol. 5, 1871), pp. 228–29 (Denton).
To be continued
