THE STUDY'S OBJECTIVES

The revolving RIGGS logo at the top of every page symbolises one of the Study's objectives: to examine the surname from all angles. It researches all occurrences of the surname, on a world-wide basis, as opposed to a particular pedigree or descendancy.

PIECING TOGETHER THE JIGSAW

Researching a single pedigree or descendancy entails piecing together a jigsaw puzzle which is three-dimensional, showing a picture of relationships through time as well as geographical location. Its challenge lies in the fact that you do not start by being handed all the pieces in a package, with a picture on the cover to show what the final picture looks like - that only emerges progressively. Its setbacks are that you may find some of the pieces turn out to be missing or partly damaged, or some existing pieces - put in place by others working on parts of the puzzle - may on closer examination turn out to have been wrongly connected.

A One-Name Study has the added challenge of an extra dimension. You are working on a number of such puzzles, some of which may be able to be consolidated into a single larger picture, but some of which may prove to be self-contained puzzles forming separate pictures.

PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THIS SITE

Although I started researching the RIGGS surname over 30 years ago, I do not claim that the information on this site is necessarily superior or more complete than that of other researchers. But I hope that piecing together the information I have gathered and publishing it on this site will act as a catalyst. Through feedback, it can lead to other parts of the three-dimensional jigsaw falling into place. If so, the site will more than repay my investment of time and effort, and produce greater dividends for RIGGS researchers.

With every jigsaw, you have to decide on the strategy to adopt - some start with the edge pieces, others with easily recognised parts of the picture. The information on this web-site concentrates on the UK, and on those emigrants abroad whose immediate ancestors were born in the UK. Extending it to include every descendant world-wide is outside its current scope, because of the magnitude of that task.

CONTENTS

I chose to start initially with the immediate descendants of Edward of Nazeing, Essex, who migrated to America to become EDWARD OF ROXBURY, Massachusetts. This was because some of the assumptions made by previous researchers have been based on incorrect IGI entries, and on books [S3][S5] written over a century ago which have since been found to contain some errors. I then added THOMAS OF GLOUCESTER, Massachusetts, because some previous researchers believed him to be related. As most RIGGS researchers using the Internet are currently in the USA, this choice brought immediate benefit to the greatest number. I then moved on to Edward Riggs of Riggsdale, Co.Cork, Ireland, partly because of the challenge of overcoming the comparative lack of Irish records available for research, and partly because of the fewer numbers I thought would be involved.

COAT OF ARMS

The Coat of Arms on the Home page of this site is based on four of the six shields granted to certain RIGGS families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I must stress that it is NOT an official Coat of Arms for a RIGGS family - please see the page on RIGGS IN HERALDRY.

MOVING AROUND THE SITE

On the Home Page, linkage buttons are provided for you to move easily to the pages you wish to visit. As well as the section title, these show the date when the page was last updated so that, when you revisit this site, you can easily see what has been added or amended - on the pages themselves, recently added or amended text is shown in red (like this).

Within the pages of the sections, use the "pointing down" icon to move down to the next subject on that page; use the "pointing up" icon to return to the start of that page's contents; and use the "pointing up HOME" icon to bring you back to this map of the site.

DESCENDANTS CHARTS

The normal convention has been followed of listing a person's birth details as a child of his (or her) parents' Family Group. In the case of daughters, and of sons known to have died without issue, details of their marriage(s) and/or deaths are also normally shown within their parents' Family Group, to make the Charts more compact. But, for each son who may have perpetuated the RIGGS surname, his full details are always shown under his own Generation as a new Family Group (or potential Family Group, if details are not currently known): two-way links are provided between each such pair of entries, again highlighted in blue.

PLACES MENTIONED

For placenames in the United States, modern-day county names and States are quoted to identify and help locate the places referred to. But of course these did not exist when those areas were first settled, and some of the original counties were subsequently re-named, split, or had their boundaries redrawn. For example, the whole of Maine was originally the single county of Yorkshire (later called York Co) and was part of Massachusetts - Maine was only recognised as a state as late as 1820. In 1760, York Co was split into Cumberland Co, Lincoln Co and York Co, and the remaining counties were formed by further sub-divisions between 1789 and 1860.

I've included maps to indicate where some of the places referred to are located relative to the "main" places, such as Roxbury and Gloucester, and the distances between them. However, where possible, I've included a number of these places in a single map of the area in question, in order to reduce the number of images you need to download, and therefore speed up your ability to view the pages.

BROWSER AND SCREEN SETTINGS

The page width allows for screen resolutions of only 640x480, but the pages are best viewed at a minimum resolution of 800x600, in High-Color (16 bit) or better, using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This is because Netscape Navigator doesn't always handle line-heights correctly, in particular where a line includes superscript characters, which is why I abandoned using them for source references and generation numbers. And it doesn't always depict the correct hues when using only 256 Colors (as well as being slower loading pages).

TROUBLESHOOTING

If exceptionally you experience any difficulty in viewing this site, let me know the details of the page(s) and what you were using (PC or Mac, browser version, screen resolution, no.of colours). I can then attempt to work with you to overcome your difficulty.

REGNAL YEARS

In the Middle Ages, the year was usually expressed in terms of the regnal year - the xth year of the reign of the King and/or Queen reigning at that time - and this practice persisted until much later on legal documents. Where necessary, a regnal year has been converted in these pages into the equivalent calendar year.

DATES AND YEARS BEFORE 1752

The days of the year were originally measured by the number of days before or after the nearest church festival, feast or fast. When the Book of Common Prayer was introduced with the Reformation, it decreed that the "Year of our Lord" began on March 25th - Lady Day, which is the celebration by the Church of Christ's conception, and also the day on which the original Book of Common Prayer said the world was created.

Usually, entries in Parish Registers and other records between January 1st and March 24th were entered under the previous year so that, for example, December 1700 was followed by January 1700. The changeover to the present calendar system in England and Wales, and the English colonies, took place in 1752 (though Scotland had changed as early as 1600). However, for a period before and after this changeover, some Parish Registers quoted both years for the dates before March 25th.

PURITAN CHURCH RECORDS

This potential confusion is aggravated by the practice in the Puritan Church of writing the months of the year as numbers, but counting from March as month 1. So month 7 in Puritan records would have been September, not July. An example of this is the record of burial of Edward of Roxbury, which was apparently entered under the date of "5:1m:1671-2".

DATES QUOTED ON THESE PAGES

Dates before March 25th for the years prior to 1752 are sometimes quoted literally using the previous year under the "old style calendar", sometimes converted to use the new year under the "new style calendar", and sometimes quoting both years, e.g.1671/72. In these pages, all such dates are standardised wherever possible, using the new style with the year followed by an "N" to remove any doubt, so that Edward of Roxbury is shown as being buried on 5MCH1672N.

The UK Data Protection Acts of 1984 and 1998 require that individuals or organisations holding data on living persons notify the Data Protection Registrar's Office and pay an annual notification fee of £35.00. Genealogical databases are exempt from these requirements, provided that some rather restrictive conditions are observed. One condition is that the data should be for personal use only, which means that the data may not be transmitted to anyone else.

Because publication on the internet clearly violates this condition, I have removed from this web-site all records relating to living people in order to avoid the costs of having to notify under the Acts.

My criteria in establishing if a person is dead is, naturally, evidence of death, burial, or grant of administration for his or her estate (e.g., a will admitted to probate). In the absence of this primary evidence, I will only publish details of a person if he or she was born more than 100 years ago. I acknowledge that there are centagenarians still alive, but this limit has to be acceptable to the authorities since it is the criteria used by the Registrar General for:
A. Permission granted to the FreeBMD Project for the transcription and publication of indexes of births.
B. Release into the public domain, transcription and publication of information in the British censuses.

Apart from common courtesy, I would be in violation of these Acts if I were to provide you with any information relating to living people without their consent, so please do not ask me to do so.

I am, however, only too pleased when I have been able to act as a "marriage broker" and bring together persons researching a common RIGGS ancestor - technically, both parties must give their consent to their information being released, but I have never known anyone refuse such an opportunity !

GENEALOGICAL PROOF STANDARD

In addition to the National Genealogical Society Standards, I also adhere to the Genealogical Proof Standard, which dictates a series of five steps that I must follow in carrying out my analytical researches:
1. making as exhaustive a search as is reasonably possible for sources relating to identity, event, relationship, etc;
2. recording completely and accurately the citation for each source;
3. analysing and evaluating the quality of data in each source to correlate the collected information;
4. resolving any contradictions or conflicting evidence with reasoned deduction;
5. presenting a clearly written and convincing conclusion that is soundly reasoned.
More information on the Genealogical Proof Standard can be found on the web-site of the The Board for Certification of Genealogists.

FEEDBACK

Neverthless, very little research in genealogy can ever be considered to be complete or error-free, no matter how much care has been taken. I welcome any comments, in particular on the source or proof of information where this is uncertain or unknown. I also welcome additional information relating to any of the UK families of RIGGS - provided that, where possible, the source is quoted so that it can be verified.

CHECKING

It is physically impossible for me to check every single source, especially outside the UK of course. So, where I say a source is "said to be ... ", or that an event "allegedly" took place, this does not necessarily mean that I am questioning it, merely that it has not been personally checked. More frequently, in the former case, the source of the fact(s) concerned will be annotated "Information supplied by ... "

EARLIER RESEARCH

Dick Eastman gives the following warning when describing the LDS's Pedigree Resource File. (The excerpt is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter Vol. 4 No. 49, dated 4DEC1999, copyright 1999 by Richard W. Eastman, and is re-published here with the permission of the author). His comments apply equally well to all earlier research, both into the various RIGGS families and into other surnames:

"Like all other collections of data submitted by thousands of different individuals, there is no guaranty of accuracy or of the quality of the research. The information is presented "as is" and the viewer must verify each "fact" by other means. Many of the people who submitted this information are highly qualified and highly-motivated genealogy researchers. However, others are not. Some of the submitters may simply have recorded hearsay data or may have guessed at some of the information contained. Others simply copied erroneous data they found in books, thereby perpetuating older mistakes.

"The records that I found ... often included extensive notes and sources that I can double-check. However, other records were presented with no accompanying documentation as to the source of the information. Would I use this data? You bet I would! But I would use each reference as a possible clue, not as a proven fact. In short, the information found ... should be considered as clues of possible ancestors. Every "fact" that I obtain ... will be verified by me before I enter any of the information into my ... database."

Any references in Family Bibles dating far back may have been based to some degree on family legend or hearsay, rather than verifiable fact. And, unfortunately, some of the documents that may previously have been available to verify facts may no longer survive. However, those documents that have survived are now far more accessible in County Record Offices and other archives.

That is why it is now possible to correct some of the suppositions made by some earlier authors such as Wallace [S3] and by some earlier researchers. For example, Thomas and Jane Rigges of Southampton in Hampshire were not the same couple as Thomas and Jane Rigges (nee Richardson) of Stragglethorpe and Fulbeck in Lincolnshire. Similarly, we can now recognise that grafting on to their falsely hybrid tree the tree of Edward Riggs of Nazeing in Essex ("Edward of Roxbury") was almost certainly wishful thinking.

I am not a member of the National Genealogical Society in the USA, because I live in the UK. Nevertheless, I aim always to observe their following sets of Standards. I have also succeeded in getting the "Standards for Sound Genealogical Research" formally endorsed and adopted by the Guild of One-Name Studies, and I strongly recommend them to you as standards you yourselves should aim always to observe:

THE FOLLOWING  EXTERNAL SITES  OPEN IN A  SEPARATE WINDOW: AFTER YOUR VISIT, PLEASE CLOSE THAT WINDOW TO RETURN HERE
Sound Genealogical Research	Using Records Repositories And Libraries	Use Of Technology In Genealogical Research
Sharing Information With Others	Publishing Web Pages On The Internet	Genealogical Self-Improvement And Growth