Being Aware of Past Incidences of Genealogical Fraud
Not intending to throw a “monkey wrench” into anyone’s long and relentless pursuit of family history, but I draw attention to another important thing to be aware of: blatant genealogical fraud which occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Believe it or not, it is in fact still possible these genealogical hoaxes have crept into our own research today.
Harriet de Salis was a British authoress (publishing under the name “Mrs. de Salis”) of numerous books in the late nineteenth century. She was well known for a variety of published cookbooks and it appears she fancied herself an expert on an array of other subjects such as raising dogs (Dogs: A Manual for Amateurs, 1893) and poultry (New-Laid Eggs: Hints for Amateur Poultry-Rearers, 1892). Her book, The Housewife’s Referee, was a “treatise on culinary and household subjects”.
Mrs. de Salis also had a rather short career in the field of genealogy. In the 1870s she began sharing tidbits of genealogical “research” which came to be recommended by one of the most distinguished resources for early American ancestry, The New England and Genealogical Society. Harriet had formerly worked with Joseph Lemuel Chester, who although born and raised
in America, left the country and settled in England in the late 1850s.
Chester embarked upon a career in genealogical research after receiving a commission from the United States government to research wills recorded in England prior to 1700, thereby contributing vital research data concerning early American ancestry. Joseph Chester was the person who eventually revealed the de Salis deception after she confessed to him she had
fabricated at least two wills. By 1880 Mrs. de Salis’ genealogical career was over and eventually her fraudulent claims were corrected.
Meanwhile, back in America, Horatio Gates Somerby (1805-1872) was subtly perpetrating a similar fraud. Somerby wasn’t necessarily attempting to link various family lines to famous or noble ancestors. As Paul C. Reed noted in his 1999 article published in American Genealogist, Horatio Gates Somerby was “not necessarily better at fakery than Mrs. de Salis”.1 Still, Somerby probably thought he could get away with it because records were far less accessible than they are today.
In 1976 American Genealogist identified some lesser-known genealogical fraudsters: C.A. Hoppin, Orra Eugene Monnette (founder of the Bank of America), Frederick A. Virkus and John S. Wurts. The history surrounding these hoaxes is fascinating, but one man’s genealogical hi-jinks topped them all.
The King of Genealogical Fraud
Swedish-born Gustave Anjou perhaps got off on the wrong foot in life, so to speak, as Gustaf Ludvig Jungberg, the illegitimate son of Carl Gustaf Jungberg and his family’s housekeeper Maria Lovisa Hagberg. After serving a prison term for forgery in 1886, he changed his name to Gustaf Ludvig Ljungberg. Following his marriage in 1889 Anjou took his wife’s maiden name and changed the spelling of his first name to Gustave.
After immigrating to America in 1890, Gustave was up to his old tricks – more or less back in the forgery business. Anjou began developing a mail-order business, targeting wealthy American families who were willing to pay $9,000 for their family history. That was a lot of money and today would probably equate to well over $200,000.
Coal baron Josiah Van Kirk (“J.V.”) Thompson ended up paying Anjou over $50,000 to research several family lines he was interested in. Thompson had declared voluntary bankruptcy in 1917 and began devoting himself to genealogical research, with hopes to compile his research, publish it and make a tidy profit. In 1930, before an Orphan’s Court, defending himself against contempt charges, Thompson admitted to paying the considerable sum to Anjou.
Anjou would travel – his obituary cited some sixty trips to Europe and several around the world – to “research” his clients’ ancestries. He would place various noble and royal ancestors on their family trees, often using made-up European parishes and forging wills and vital records. Many of these genealogies would be published, reprinted several times and distributed to the genealogy collections of large libraries.
Not content to forge his clients’ genealogies, Anjou forged his own as well. According to Robert Charles Anderson, author of an article entitled “We Wuz Robbed!”, an Anjou genealogy would typically consist of four recognizable features:
- A dazzling range of connections among dozens of immigrants (mostly to New England).
- Many wild geographical leaps, outside the normal range of migration patterns.
- An overwhelming number of citations to documents that actually exist, and actually include what Anjou says they include.
- Here and there an “invented” document, without citation, which appears to support the many
connections as noted in the first item.2
One can imagine what all the fakery could lead to – estate fraud stands out as one of the most damaging. Someone basing their claims, even if unknowingly, on a fraudulent genealogy would have themselves been committing fraud.
It wasn’t uncommon either for so-called “confidence men” to pepper advertisements throughout American newspapers searching for “missing heirs”, the prospects of which were “ripe for the picking” on the unsuspecting (and gullible) general public. Newspapers like the Boston Evening Transcript and the New Orleans Times-Picayune began running genealogy columns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because “Dr.” Anjou was considered an “expert” his work was sometimes cited as a resource.
Of course, Gustave Anjou wasn’t a genealogist, but rather a forger of genealogical records. Somewhere along the way he “obtained” a Ph.D apparently as the New York Times reported on November 17, 1905 that “the library of Gustave Anjou, Ph.D, an extensive collection of American history and genealogy, was sold.” The collection consisted of “privately printed or locally published family and local histories of America, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England”, which unknowingly at the time were likely based largely on falsified records.3.
In 1921 an article appeared in the Baltimore Sun, stating Anjou was willing to pay $100 for information about the Jack/Jacques family. Was Anjou about to be exposed and perhaps he decided to establish some sort of legitimacy? Although it’s unclear as to why, by 1927 Anjou had dropped his fees considerably as he spread the net wider to garner more clients – making his fees and services “within the reach of many”. However, he made no guarantees as to the accuracy of the genealogies provided.
An article appeared in the December 12, 1927 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, sounding like the editors might have figured out that Anjou was mostly a fraud, mildly mocking the “gullible with social aspirations . . . trying to convince themselves that there may be something after all” to Anjou’s mail-order offer. For only $250 they might receive a complete list of “forefathers running back to the Crusaders.”4
Of course, Anjou’s mail-order catalog included glowing testimonials like this one:
I am delighted at what you have accomplished in regard to our line, and am really amazed at it, as all clews back of my grandfather seemed obliterated and shrouded in oblivion. I consider you quite a genius in this particular work.5
Anjou conducted his scam from an office building on Staten Island. He was described as “a well-groomed man of 60 with gray hair, a waxed mustache with turned-up ends and he speaks with a foreign accent.” He could not promise royal ancestry, however, the caveat being that many “noble families did not have stamina enough to become ancestors of our sturdy immigrants”.6
Gustave Anjou died on March 2, 1942 and his obituary, published in several newspapers across the country, was a little short on details of his life (or maybe not – since after all this was what he was known for):
Gustave Anjou, 78, genealogist who made 60 trips to Europe and several around the world, tracing lineages of wealthy families at a price of $9,000 a pedigree, died Monday night.7
It would take years, however, to uncover the blatant fraud following Anjou’s death. Some newspapers would cite his research for years to come. Meanwhile, false information continued to be propagated and other fraudulent genealogies were uncovered in the meantime. Such was the case of the Horn Papers. More on the duplicity of William F. Horn later.
If you’ve relied heavily on “hints” that lean more to conjecture rather than solid historical facts and records to fill out your family tree – and one or more of your family lines is on “The Anjou List” (see the link below to download) you might want to do a little more research to ensure you aren’t perpetuating any myths and hoaxes, and as the saying goes “barking up the wrong
tree.” Caveat investigator.
If you have research which you suspect might have been “tainted”, feel free to contact me for a consultation.
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Footnotes:
- Paul C. Reed, “Two Somerby Frauds or ‘Placing the Flesh on the Wrong Bones’”, The American Genealogist (January 1999): 74.
- Robert Charles Anderson (1991). “We Wuz Robbed, The Modus Operandi of Gustave Anjou”. Genealogical Journal, Utah Genealogical Association, 19 (1 & 2) (1991): 47–70.
- New York Times, November 17, 1905, accessed at https://tinyurl.com/yd5he9gt on December 13, 2017
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1927, accessed at www.newspapers.com on December 13, 2017, 3.
- The Burlington Free Press, December 17, 1927, accessed at www.newspapers.com on January 30, 2018, 11.
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1927, accessed at www.newspapers.com on December 13, 2017, 3.
- Des Moines Tribune, March 3, 1942, accessed at www.newspapers.com on December 13, 2017, 3.