Person:Hamon Massey (13)

Disputed Lineages

According to Ormerod, Baines, and modern genealogists, the parentage of Hamon is unknown. Renowned genealogist Paul C. Reed had this to say about invented ancestries for him on soc.genealogy.medieval:

It is unknown as far as I am aware. Judge Massey, in the various theories of Norman origin put forth as fact (this is what has been heavily copied by unsuspecting individuals), was guilty of much imagination and assumption.

He strung together a series of possibilities, ignoring what did not fit his theory, and concluded it was fact. That type of thinking is not only unsound, but in a way dangerous because it propagates much that wastes time of more knowledgeable scholars--even the time it takes to explain that such colorful, wishful thinking is groundless, though historical records and legal references are included in his explanations. Just because something reads well don't make it so. Cold print is not hard fact.

1. ↑ Ormerod, George; Peter Leycester; William Smith; William Webb; and Thomas Helsby. The history of the county palatine and city of Chester: compiled from original evidences in public offices, the Harleian and Cottonian mss., parochial registers, private muniments, unpublished ms. collections of successive Cheshire antiquaries, and a personal survey of every township in the county, incorporated with a republication of King's Vale Royal and Leycester's Cheshire antiquities. (London: G. Routledge, 1882)
   4:412.

   This source gives no wife.

2.   Ormerod, George; Peter Leycester; William Smith; William Webb; and Thomas Helsby. The history of the county palatine and city of Chester: compiled from original evidences in public offices, the Harleian and Cottonian mss., parochial registers, private muniments, unpublished ms. collections of successive Cheshire antiquaries, and a personal survey of every township in the county, incorporated with a republication of King's Vale Royal and Leycester's Cheshire antiquities. (London: G. Routledge, 1882)
   Volume 1, page 520.

   This source also gives no wife.
   
   "Hamon Massy, the first baron of Dunham-Massy, held the towns of Dunham, Bowdon, Hale, Ashley, and half of Owlarton, in Bucklow Hundred, under Hugh Lupus earl of Chester, in the reign of William the Conqueror; all which one Elward held formerly, as appears by Doomsday Book; so it seems to me, this Elward was dispossessed of his right therein, and these lands given to Hamon by earl Hugh.
   "This Hamon had also in Maxfield Hundred, Bromhale, and Podinton in Wirrhall Hundred, at the same time, and other lands."

3. ↑ Hamon de Massey, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
4.   Baines, Edward, and James Croston. The History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster (revised). (Manchester, England: John Heywood, 1888-1893)
   4:412.

   This source gives no wife.

5. ↑ According to discussions on soc.genealogy.medieval, his ancestry is unknown.