Booth Family Genealogies

The volume contains Booth Genealogies, A.D. 1275-1954 - with Memoranda and Notes, being a collection of genealogical tables showing the descents of various branches of the Booth family in Britain and the United States from the medieval period to the 20th century. According to an inscription on the opening page, it was compiled by Redivalls, William Henry Booth, of Hatfield, Salisbury, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland [now Harare, Zimbabwe]. The family trees are preceded by an index and a foreword in which the author states that This Book has been specially written for the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Stamford, the present owner of the ancient estates, etc. of the family of Booth of Dunham Massey.

The Booth family held Dunham Massey for over three hundred years, from the early fifteenth century until the mid eighteenth century, when they were succeeded by the Greys, Earls of Stamford. The Booth family acquired the manor of Barton on Irwell in Lancashire towards the end of the thirteenth century. The family produced a number of churchmen in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including two bishops, of Exeter and Hereford, and numerous archdeacons and rectors, besides the two archbishops of York.

The barony and manor of Dunham Massey came into the possession of the Booth family through Sir Robert Booth (d 1460). During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Booths seem to have married predominantly into gentry families from Cheshire and south Lancashire, such as Venables of Bollin, Dutton of Dutton, Ashton of Ashton under Lyne, Butler of Bewsey near Warrington, Trafford of Trafford, Warburton of Arley, and Carrington of Carrington. Before the end of the sixteenth century the Booths had acquired the whole manor of Ashton.

Sir William Booth (1540-1579) served as sheriff of Cheshire 1570-1, and was returned as a member for Cheshire in 1571. His son, Sir George Booth (1566-1652), served as sheriff of Cheshire twice, in 1596-7 and 1621-2, and as sheriff of Lancashire in 1622-3. George Booth (1622-1684) had a remarkable political career, rising in 1659 in support of the restoration. George Booth (1675-1758), 2nd Earl of Warrington, married Mary Oldbury, the daughter of a wealthy London merchant. Their only daughter, Mary (1704-1772), married Harry Grey, 4th Earl of Stamford. The estates were entailed after Mary's death in 1772 to her son, George Harry Grey, 5th Earl of Stamford.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Presented to the John Rylands Library by Roger Grey (1896-1976), 10th Earl of Stamford, in March 1955.

Description compiled by Jo Humpleby, project archivist.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1952-1970 (English MS 1181).

The JRUL also holds the extensive papers of the Grey family of Dunham Massey, Earls of Stamford (ref.: GB 133 EGR), which include papers of their predecessors, the Booth family.

Somerset Archive and Record Service holds some deeds and papers relating to Dunham Massey (ref.: GB 168 DD/BR/gr/14-15), and Trafford Local Studies has some estate rentals and surveys (ref.: GB 742 TBC441).

See Ernest Axon, 'The family of Bothe (Booth) and the church in the 15th and 16th centuries', Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, vol. 53 (1938), pp. 32-82 ; James R. Jones, 'Booth's rising of 1659', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 39, no. 2 (1957), pp. 416-43 ; and J.V. Beckett and Clyve Jones, 'Financial improvidence and political independence in the early eighteenth century: George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington (1675-1758)', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 65, no. 1 (1982), pp. 8-35 .