Royal Families: Americans of Royal and Noble Ancestry. Second Edition

The second edition covers nearly 900 new Dudley descendants through the sixth generation. It is an essential work, even if you already own the first edition, as likely several million Americans can prove their descent from this noted governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Also new in this volume are the many connections to distinguished Dudley descendants identified by Gary Boyd Roberts in his two volumes of Notable Kin and elsewhere. Americans linked to Governor Thomas Dudley will find near or distant cousins in actor Humphrey Bogart, astronaut Alan Shepard, Jr., Ella Botts Rice (first wife of entrepreneur and movie mogul Howard Hughes), Mary Storer Potter (first wife of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), and many more "notable kin."

Dudley descendants also share the governor's royal and notable ancestry through his mother and likely his father, and through his second wife Katherine Deighton. His mother was a descendant of Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, and John, King of England. Dudley's progeny can also claim as ancestors at least seven of the twenty-five barons who witnessed King John's signature on the Magna Carta.

This second edition is part of an ongoing multi-volume series concerning Americans of royal and noble ancestry, beginning with the immigrant of royal descent and continuing through the colonial period to the Revolutionary War and often beyond. The format of the work is a modified version of that used in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, with citations primarily to published vital records and major family histories.